Districting and Government Overspending
- 1 December 2002
- journal article
- Published by University of Chicago Press in Journal of Political Economy
- Vol. 110 (6), 1318-1354
- https://doi.org/10.1086/342804
Abstract
Theories of government spending driven by a common-pool problem in the fiscal revenues pool predict that greater districting of a political jurisdiction raises the scale of government. This paper presents evi- dence on this and related predictions from a cross section of city governments in the United States. The main finding is that, when other plausible determinants of government spending are controlled for, greater districting leads to a considerably greater scale of govern- ment activity. The results also show that at-large electoral systems do not, and forms of government that concentrate powers in the office of the executive do, break this relationship.Keywords
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