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Demand for Locally provided Public Services Within the Median Voter`s Framework: The Case of the Brazilian Municipalities

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  • Constantino Cronemberger Mendes
  • Maria da Conceição Sampaio de Sousa

Abstract

Neste estudo, estimou-se a demanda para a despesa pública local nas municipalidadesbrasileiras dentro de uma abordagem do eleitor mediano. O teorema do eleitormediano provê um método de agregação de demandas individuais para obter ademanda comunitária. A razão para o uso dessa abordagem advém do fato de que emsistemas federativos as preferências dos eleitores são mais bem representadas em nívellocal por meio dos consumidores desses serviços, que têm melhor conhecimento doscustos e benefícios das despesas públicas locais. Os resultados sugerem que o impactodo tamanho da cidade na qualidade de bens mostra efeitos de aglomeração entre zero eum. Contudo, o congestionamento marginal diminui com a despesa, resultado estesurpreendente, uma vez que sugere que o efeito congestionamento deve ser maiselevado em cidades grandes. As indivisibilidades que impossibilitam a provisão dedeterminados serviços em cidades pequenas influenciam a concentração de suasprovisões em cidades maiores. As despesas mais elevadas daquelas cidades grandesrefletem não somente um custo de aglomeração, mas também o fato de que essascidades oferecem uma escala maior de serviços. Assim, no Brasil, contrariamente aosresultados tradicionais, o efeito reduzido do congestionamento ao longo das classes dadespesa reflete a predominância dos elementos da escala medidos pelas elasticidadesda população sobre os efeitos do preço. In this paper we estimated the demand for local public spending for the Brazilianmunicipalities within a median voter?s framework. The median voter theorem providesa method of aggregating individual voter`s demands to obtain community demand.The rationale for applying that framework came from the fact that in federal systemsvoter?s preferences are more likely to be reflected at the local level as the consumers ofpublic services have a better knowledge of the benefits and costs of the local publicexpenditures. Results obtained are consistent with the theoretical background thussuggesting that this hypothesis might be useful to describe the demand for local publicgoods in Brazil. In particular, the use of quantile regression permitted to investigate theimpacts of the conditioning variables on local public expenses across differentexpenditures classes thus allowing for heterogeneity across municipalities. Our resultsalso suggest that the impact of the city size on the quality of club goods showscrowding effects as g is between zero and one. However, in the estimated models,marginal congestion slightly decreases with expenditure. This is a rather surprisingresult as one is tempted to conclude that the congestion effect should be higher on bigcities. Yet, a more careful look shows the drawbacks of such interpretation. Theindivisibilities preclude the provision of certain services in small towns, concentratingtheir provision on larger cities. Hence, the higher expenditures of those big cities reflectnot only a crowding cost but also the fact that these towns offer a wide range of serviceswhen compared to the small ones. So, in Brazil, contrary to the traditional results, thereduced congestion effect along the spending classes reflect the predominance of thescale elements measured by the population elasticities over the price effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Constantino Cronemberger Mendes & Maria da Conceição Sampaio de Sousa, 2004. "Demand for Locally provided Public Services Within the Median Voter`s Framework: The Case of the Brazilian Municipalities," Discussion Papers 1046, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.
  • Handle: RePEc:ipe:ipetds:1046
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    References listed on IDEAS

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