Too many municipalities?

Revista Brasileira de Economia

Bev Dahlby¹ 

[1] ,University of Alberta Department of Economics

关键词: Referendum;    Succession;    Median Voter;   

DOI  :  10.1590/S0034-71402011000100002

来源: SciELO

【 摘 要 】

Does democracy lead to the creation of too many municipalities? We analyze this issue within the context of the Alesina e Spolaore (1997) model where the quality of municipal services deteriorates with the distance from the center of a municipality. Individuals can vote in a referendum to split an existing municipality. We show that social welfare will decline when municipalities are split if the level of the public service, as chosen by the median voter, is lower in the new smaller municipalities. In general, the model indicates that there may be a democratic bias in favour of creating too many municipalities.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
 All the contents of this journal, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License