Local public goods, debt and migration

Local Public Goods and Clubs1

Migration and Local Public Services

Using unique Swedish micro data we examine the impact of local public services on community choice. The choice of community is modeled as a choice between a discrete set of alternatives. The US literature has produced conflicting evidence with respect to the importance of local public services. We find a robust positive (negative) relationship between local public services (local income tax rat...

Local Public Investment and Debt Limitation in a Federation

The paper considers the local provision of public infrastructure when population is mobile. It shows that inflexible deficit limitation may result in too little local public investment if population is perfectly mobile in the long run. Conversely, given the existence of migration externalities, implementing Musgrave's pay as you use finance, according to which new debt should match net investme...

Local public goods and the demand for high-income municipalities

Affluent towns often deliver high-quality public services to their residents. I estimate the willingness to pay to live in a high-income suburb, above and beyond the demand of wealthy neighbors, by measuring changes in housing prices across city–suburban borders as the income disparity between the two municipalities changes over time. I find that a $10,000 increase in town-level median income i...

Trade Shocks and the Provision of Local Public Goods

We analyze the impact of trade-induced income shocks on the size of local government, and the provision of public services. Areas in the US with declining labor demand and incomes due to increasing import competition from China experience relative declines in housing prices and business activity. Since local governments are disproportionately funded through property and sales taxation, declinin...