IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v48y1986i1p27-35.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Municipal residency laws and local public budgets

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Mehay
  • Kenneth Seiden

Abstract

Prior research has shown that residency laws increase the productivity of municipal employees, which tends to reduce per unit operating cost. However, this gain in efficiency appears to have been lost when one considers that public employee groups tend to be ‘high demanders’ who have a greater tendency to vote in local elections and to support expenditure increases (Bennett and Orzechowski, 1983). Our results tend to provide additional evidence to support the findings of previous studies that public employee groups tend to exert a disproportionate impact on local budgetary decisions. It is also noteworthy that Hirsch and Rufolo (forthcoming) report that cities with police residency laws are characterized by lower police wages than cities without the laws. Thus, insofar as such laws do reduce per unit cost, the main benefit appears to accrue to the local bureaucracy in the form of greater output, expenditures, and agency size, not to employees in the form of higher wages, or to city residents in the form of tax relief. Because these laws also impose restrictions on employee mobility and residential choice, their overall effect may be to generate social costs in excess of their social benefits. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1986

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Mehay & Kenneth Seiden, 1986. "Municipal residency laws and local public budgets," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 27-35, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:48:y:1986:i:1:p:27-35
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00239557
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00239557
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00239557?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. Thomas McGuire, 1981. "Budget-maximizing governmental agencies: An empirical test," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 313-322, January.
    2. 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.
    3. Borcherding, Thomas E & Deacon, Robert T, 1972. "The Demand for the Services of Non-Federal Governments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 891-901, December.
    4. Romer, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard, 1982. "Median Voters or Budget Maximizers: Evidence from School Expenditure Referenda," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 20(4), pages 556-578, October.
    5. James Bennett & William Orzechowski, 1983. "The voting behavior of bureaucrats: Some empirical evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 271-283, January.
    6. Epple, Dennis & Zelenitz, Allan, 1981. "The Implications of Competition among Jurisdictions: Does Tiebout Need Politics?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(6), pages 1197-1217, December.
    7. Romer, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard, 1979. "The elusive median voter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 143-170, October.
    8. Hausman, Jerry, 2015. "Specification tests in econometrics," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 112-134.
    9. Heckman, James J, 1978. "Dummy Endogenous Variables in a Simultaneous Equation System," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(4), pages 931-959, July.
    10. Dudley, Leonard & Montmarquette, Claude, 1984. "The Effects of Non-clearing Labor Markets on the Demand for Public Spending," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 22(2), pages 151-170, April.
    11. Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1977. "Voting in a Local School Election: A Micro Analysis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 59(1), pages 30-42, February.
    12. Edwards, Linda N & Edwards, Franklin R, 1982. "Public Unions, Local Government Structure and the Compensation of Municipal Sanitation Workers," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 20(3), pages 405-425, July.
    13. Rodolfo Gonzalez & Stephen Mehay, 1985. "Bureaucracy and the divisibility of local public output," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 89-101, January.
    14. Bruno Frey & Werner Pommerehne, 1982. "How powerful are public bureaucrats as voters?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 253-262, January.
    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. Mark Partridge & Tim Sass, 2011. "The productivity of elected and appointed officials: the case of school superintendents," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 149(1), pages 133-149, October.
    2. Brian Duncan, 2005. "Using Municipal Residency Requirements to Disguise Public Policy," Public Finance Review, , vol. 33(1), pages 84-116, January.
    3. Lynn MacDonald, 2008. "The impact of government structure on local public expenditures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 457-473, September.
    4. Kevin M. O'Brien, 1997. "Do Municipal Residency Laws Affect Labour Market Outcomes?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 34(11), pages 1759-1769, November.
    5. Alain Mingat & Pierre Salmon, 1988. "Alterable electorates in the context of residential mobility," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 67-82, October.

    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. Kenneth Mackenzie, 1999. "Diseño institucional y política pública: una perspectiva microeconómica," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 1(1), pages 17-58, July-dece.
    2. Rodolfo Gonzalez & Roger Folsom & Stephen Mehay, 1989. "Bureaucracy, publicness and local government expenditures revisited: Comment," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 71-77, July.
    3. Rodolfo Gonzalez & Stephen Mehay, 1987. "Municipal annexation and local monopoly power," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 245-255, January.
    4. Jan Brueckner & Kevin O'Brien, 1989. "Modeling government behavior in collective bargaining: A test for self-interested bureaucrats," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 63(1), pages 15-41, October.
    5. Eric J. Brunner & Stephen L. Ross, 2007. "How Decisive Is the Decisive Voter?," Working papers 2007-28, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2008.
    6. James Ferris, 1983. "Demands for public spending: An attitudinal approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 135-154, January.
    7. James Ferris, 1985. "Interrelationships among public spending preferences: A micro analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 139-153, January.
    8. Randall Holcombe, 1989. "The median voter model in public choice theory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 115-125, May.
    9. N. Vasudeva Murthy, 1987. "Bureaucracy and the divisibility of local public output: Further econometric evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 265-272, October.
    10. John Akin & Michael Lea, 1982. "Microdata estimation of school expenditure levels: An alternative to the median voter approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 113-128, January.
    11. William D. Duncombe, 1991. "Demand for Local Public Services Revisited: the Case of Fire Protection," Public Finance Review, , vol. 19(4), pages 412-436, October.
    12. G. Tridimas*, 1985. "Budget Deficits and the Growth of Public Expenditure in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 53(4), pages 251-257, December.
    13. Kevin M. O'Brien, 1997. "Do Municipal Residency Laws Affect Labour Market Outcomes?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 34(11), pages 1759-1769, November.
    14. Rodney Fort, 1988. "The median voter, setters, and non-repeated construction bond issues," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 213-231, March.
    15. Tidiane Ly, 2018. "Sub-metropolitan tax competition with household and capital mobility," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(5), pages 1129-1169, October.
    16. Ferreira, Fernando, 2010. "You can take it with you: Proposition 13 tax benefits, residential mobility, and willingness to pay for housing amenities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 661-673, October.
    17. Dennis Mueller & Peter Murrell, 1986. "Interest groups and the size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 125-145, January.
    18. Marc Baudry & Matthieu Leprince & Cyriaque Moreau, 2002. "Préférences révélées, bien public local et électeur médian : tests sur données françaises," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 156(5), pages 125-146.
    19. Eric J. Brunner & Stephen L. Ross, 2009. "Is the Median Voter Decisive? Evidence of 'Ends Against the Middle' From Referenda Voting Patterns," Working papers 2009-02, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised May 2010.
    20. Theodore Panayotou, 2000. "Economic Growth and the Environment," CID Working Papers 56A, Center for International Development at Harvard University.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:kap:pubcho:v:48:y:1986:i:1:p:27-35. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.