Mehay, S. L. (1984). The effect of governmental structure on special district expenditures. Public Choice, 44(2), 339-348.

초록이 없어 요약 및 결론 부분을 가져옴.

 

Summary and conclusions
The empirical results presented here once again confirm the importance of local public supply institutions in establishing the incentives and con- straints influencing the behavior of local public managers. Holding other factors constant, fire protection districts that are organized as subordinate bureaus of multipurpose governments appear to spend considerably more than independent fire districts. While neither the bureaucracy nor the me- dian voter theory can be proved or disproved by these results, they do not
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support the contention that independent special districts are ‘invisible’ governments unresponsive to voters demands. The truth appears to lie in the opposite direction – bureaus of general purpose governments appear to be controlled more by the politician-bureaucrat than the median voter. These results reinforce Wagner and Weber’s hypothesis that multipur- pose governments have fewer constraints and therefore larger budgets than single-purpose governments. Moreover, since the multipurpose districts in this California sample are several times larger on average than the indepen- dent districts, the results here give no evidence that economies of scale are important, at least for fire protection services. Finally, the empirical results here confirm DiLorenzo’s (1981a) finding that legal restrictions on the use of special districts will tend to raise local government spending. The findings here and in earlier public choice studies represent a growing body of empirical evidence that counters the propositions and recommen- dations of the political reform tradition. This literature has consistently shown that the negative effects of laws restricting competition, or institu- tions promoting large, multipurpose governments have more than offset any cost savings from scale economies. The budget-enhancing effects of centralized, multipurpose governments on the supply side, combined with the welfare losses that consolidation imposes on residents, provide a very weak case for consolidating local jurisdictions into general purpose units.

 

Mehay, S. L. (1984). The effect of governmental structure on special district expenditures. Public Choice, 44(2), 339-348.

https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00118767