IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/regeco/v43y2013i2p209-219.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does regionalization of local public health services influence public spending levels and allocative efficiency?

Author

Listed:
  • Bates, Laurie J.
  • Santerre, Rexford E.

Abstract

This paper uses a panel data set of Connecticut communities to offer several empirical insights into the economics of local public health services. First, the demand characteristics associated with local public health services are explored. Tax-share, income, and aid elasticities of local public health demand and the congestability of local public health services are estimated and compared to similar estimates for local public education and municipal services. Second, local and regional demands for public health services are compared with respect to their underlying characteristics and spending levels. Third, Brueckner's test is conducted to determine if resources are efficiently allocated to local public health services in communities with an independent health department and those participating in a regional health district. Empirical evidence reveals that the demand for local public health services is inelastic with respect to tax share, unrelated to income, and relatively sensitive to intergovernmental aid. Moreover, regionalization appears to increase spending on public health services especially relative to both municipal and local education services. Finally, regional health departments serving large populations appear to overspend on local public health services.

Suggested Citation

  • Bates, Laurie J. & Santerre, Rexford E., 2013. "Does regionalization of local public health services influence public spending levels and allocative efficiency?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 209-219.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:regeco:v:43:y:2013:i:2:p:209-219
    DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2012.07.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046212000609
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2012.07.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Goodman, Robert P, 1973. "Private Demands for Public Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 280-296, June.
    2. Brueckner, Jan K., 1982. "A test for allocative efficiency in the local public sector," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 311-331, December.
    3. Brueckner, Jan K., 1979. "Property values, local public expenditure and economic efficiency," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 223-245, March.
    4. Romer, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard, 1979. "The elusive median voter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 143-170, October.
    5. Brennan,Geoffrey & Buchanan,James M., 2006. "The Power to Tax," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521027922, September.
    6. Bates, Laurie J. & Santerre, Rexford E., 2003. "The impact of a state mandated expenditure floor on aggregate property values," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 531-540, May.
    7. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    8. Deller, Steven C., 1990. "An application of a test for allocative efficiency in the local public sector," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 395-406, November.
    9. Oates, Wallace E, 1969. "The Effects of Property Taxes and Local Public Spending on Property Values: An Empirical Study of Tax Capitalization and the Tiebout Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 77(6), pages 957-971, Nov./Dec..
    10. James A. Thorson, 1996. "An Examination of the Monopoly Zoning Hypothesis," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 72(1), pages 43-55.
    11. Rexford E. Santerre, 1985. "Spatial Differences in the Demands for Local Public Goods," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 62(2), pages 119-128.
    12. Howard R. Bowen, 1943. "The Interpretation of Voting in the Allocation of Economic Resources," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 58(1), pages 27-48.
    13. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    14. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    15. Taylor Lori L., 1995. "Allocative Inefficiency and Local Government," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 201-211, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Laurie J. Bates & Rexford E. Santerre, 2015. "The Demand for Municipal Infrastructure Projects," Public Finance Review, , vol. 43(5), pages 586-605, September.
    2. Shi, Jiangang & Dai, Xingying & Duan, Kaifeng & Li, Jiajia, 2023. "Exploring the performances and determinants of public service provision in 35 major cities in China from the perspectives of efficiency and effectiveness," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Deller, Steven & Maher, Craig, 2005. "Government, Effectiveness, Performance and Local Property Values," Staff Paper Series 482, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    2. Stephen Billings & Thomas Thibodeau, 2011. "Intrametropolitan Decentralization: Is Government Structure Capitalized in Residential Property Values?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 416-450, May.
    3. Rexford Santerre, 1989. "Representative versus direct democracy: Are there any expenditure differences?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 145-154, February.
    4. Lisa Barrow & Cecilia Elena Rouse, 2000. "Using Market Valuation to Assess the Importance and Efficiency of Public School Spending," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1446, Econometric Society.
    5. Laurie Bates & Rexford Santerre, 2006. "Leviathan in the Crosshairs," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 133-145, April.
    6. Bradbury, Katharine L. & Mayer, Christopher J. & Case, Karl E., 2001. "Property tax limits, local fiscal behavior, and property values: evidence from Massachusetts under Proposition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 287-311, May.
    7. Grossman, Philip J. & Mavros, Panayiotis & Wassmer, Robert W., 1999. "Public Sector Technical Inefficiency in Large U.S. Cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 278-299, September.
    8. Janet G. Stotsky, 1990. "The Effect of the Elimination of Sales Tax Deductibility on State Fiscal Decisions," Public Finance Review, , vol. 18(1), pages 25-46, January.
    9. Sung Hoon Kang & Mark Skidmore & Laura Reese, 2015. "The Effects of Changes in Property Tax Rates and School Spending on Residential and Business Property Value Growth," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(2), pages 300-333, June.
    10. Wildasin, David E. & Wilson, John Douglas, 1996. "Imperfect mobility and local government behaviour in an overlapping-generations model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 177-198, May.
    11. Christian A. L. Hilber, 2017. "The Economic Implications of House Price Capitalization: A Synthesis," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 45(2), pages 301-339, April.
    12. Benoît Le Maux, 2009. "Governmental behavior in representative democracy: a synthesis of the theoretical literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 447-465, December.
    13. Steven C. Deller & David L. Chicoine, 1993. "Representative Versus Direct Democracy: a Test of Allocative Efficiency in Local Government Expenditures," Public Finance Review, , vol. 21(1), pages 100-114, January.
    14. James Alm & Abel Embaye, 2010. "Explaining The Growth Of Government Spending In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 78(2), pages 152-169, June.
    15. Joseph Michael Newhard, 2016. "An Interest Group Theory of Public Goods Provision: Reassessing the Relative Efficiency of the Market and the State," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 31(Winter 20), pages 21-41.
    16. Roger Hewett & Charles A. Holt & Georgia Kosmopoulou & Christine Kymn & Cheryl X. Long & Shabnam Mousavi & Sudipta Sarangi, 2005. "A Classroom Exercise: Voting by Ballots and Feet," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 253-263, July.
    17. Sergey Sinelnikov & Pavel Kadochnikov & Ilya Trunin, 2008. "From Elections to Appointments of the Regional Governors: Major Challenges and Outcomes," Published Papers 2, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2008.
    18. John Bradbury & W. Crain, 2005. "Legislative district configurations and fiscal policy in American States," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 125(3), pages 385-407, December.
    19. Ignatius J. Horstmann & Kimberley A. Scharf, 2008. "A Theory of Distributional Conflict, Voluntarism and Segregation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(527), pages 427-453, March.
    20. Brasington, David M., 2001. "Capitalization and Community Size," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 385-395, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:regeco:v:43:y:2013:i:2:p:209-219. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/regec .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.