Service Delivery in Rural Municipalities: Privatize, Cooperate, or Go It Alone?

John M. Halstead, Robert D. Mohr and Steven Deller ()

No 60991, 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Choices in production and contracting arrangements for a wide range of services were studied using data from approximately 1,000 small, mostly rural municipalities from Illinois, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Results suggest the use of both for-profit contractors and cooperative agreements with other governments correlate negatively with population. Small municipalities are less likely to use competitive bidding processes, compare costs between production options, or report that privatization produces savings. Median income, rural geography, and ideology show statistically-significant associations with contracting choices. Respondents generally consider themselves ―satisfied‖ with services provided by contract, although satisfaction levels are lower than those associated with self-provision. Satisfaction associated with services provided by other governments is lower than satisfaction with services provided by private contractors, suggesting no tradeoff in service quality directly attributable to ―for-profit‖ contractors.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2010-07-28
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/60991/files/aaea10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea10:60991

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.60991

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().