A Pure Theory Of Local Expenditures
Charles M. Tiebout 1956 JPE
presented by Haijun Ou
2015/4/13
Introduction（1/2）
• Musgrave and Samuelson: No market type solution to
determine the level of expenditures on public
goods.
• A rather large portion of national income
allocated in a non-optimal way when compared with
the private sector.
• Government adopts to consumers preferences. The
rational consumers will understate…….
• The current method ……political mechanism,
ability-to-pay principle.
• Musgrave and Samuelson assume that expenditures
are handled at the central government level.
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Introduction（2/2）
• In actual, it is not like this. Local VS
central……
• Whether at the local level of government any
mechanism operates to insure that expenditures on
these public goods approximate the proper level?
• Consumer-voters vote by feet to ensure the
efficiency of local public goods.
• Pure public goods VS local public goods?
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Model(1/4)
• Assumptions1: Consumer-voters are fully mobile and
will move to community where their preferences are
best satisfied. (heterogeneous)
• Assumptions2: …have full knowledge of differences
among…
• Assumptions3: …a large number of communities…
differ in provision of local public goods
(competition)
• Assumptions4：Restrictions due to employment
opportunities are not considered. All persons are
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living on dividend income.
Model(2/4)
• Assumptions5: The public services supplied
exhibit no external economies or diseconomies
between communities.
• Assumptions6: The optimum community size(the
lowest average cost) exit…some factor is
fixed. (competition)
• Assumptions7: Communities below the optimum
size seek to attract new residents to lower
average costs. Those above optimum size do
just the opposite.
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Model(3/4)
• Vote by Feet to ensure the efficiency of
provision…local public goods.
• Moving (or not) reveal the real preferences
of consumer-voters on local public goods.
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Model(4/4)
• Policy Implications1: municipal integration
is justified only if more of any service is
forthcoming at the same total cost and
without reduction of any other service.
• Policy Implications2: policy that promotes
mobility and the knowledge of consumersvoters will improve the allocation of
government expenditures.
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理论进展（1/3）
• Tibout模型将竞争引入政府部门,成为公共经济学的基准模
型
• Tibout模型中的地方政府也是个“黑箱”
• Tibout模型直接假定了地方政府能够有效地供给公共物品
• Musgrave(1959)只有税收和支出责任相对应时,分权才能够
改善公共福利
• Oates(1972)研究了最优分权的条件
• 分权将地方政府更直接地置于居民的监督之下
(Dethier,1999)
• 分权体制下政府间的“标尺竞争”使得选民可以参考其他地
区评价本地区的政府效率（Baicker,2005）
• 分权能够促进公共物品供给
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理论进展（2/3）
• Tiebout模型所描述的机制并不能很好地运作，以
至于分权并没有普遍地提升公共物品的供给效率
 居民不会因公共服务的差异而完全流动,公共服务的差异
通常不是主要的流动因素（Faguet,2004）
 地方政府的运行并不满足效率原则（无效的监督，更容易
被俘获，非效率目标）（Triesman,2000）
 在人员素质、技术水平和管理能力上地方政府更差
（Bardhan,2002）
 当地方在初始禀赋上差异过大时，落后地区就可能放弃努
力，地方政府竞争可能加剧地区分化（Cai et al., 2005）
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理论进展（3/3）
• 第一代财政分权理论：财政分权与公共品提供
• 第二代财政分权理论：财政分权与对地方政府的
激励、经济转型和经济增长
• 激励：Helping hands VS Grabbing hands?
• 转型和增长：维护市场，TVEs，基础设施，FDI…
• Race to top VS race to bottom？
• 市场分割，重复建设，对教育卫生支出的忽视，
环境破坏…
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• 谢谢
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