Districting and Government Overspending

Reza Baqir

No 2001/096, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: The common-pool problem is a central issue in the relationship between the political structure of jurisdictions and the size of public spending. Models predict that, other things being equal, greater political districting of a jurisdiction raises the scale of government. This paper presents new evidence on this and related predictions from a cross-section of city governments in the United States. The main finding is that one additional legislator is associated, on average, with 3 percent larger expenditures per capita. Evidence also suggests that forms of government with strong executives, particularly those with veto powers, break the link between districting and government size.

Keywords: WP; government size; form of government; government expenditure; government spending; fiscal institutions; electoral systems; comparative politics; city government; mayor-council forms of government entail; manger-council forms of government; government scale; government employment regression; government program; Personal income; Public employment; Income inequality; State decentralization; city government structure; scale of government; Income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48
Date: 2001-08-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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