This article incorporates a political decision process into an urban land use model to predict the likely location of a public good. It fills an important gap in the literature by modeling the endogenous location of open space. The article compares open space decisions made under a majority-rules voting scheme with welfare-improving criterion and finds households tied to a location in space compete against each other for public goods located nearer them. Significant differences emerge between the two decision criteria, indicating that requiring referenda for open space decisions is likely to lead to inefficient outcomes. Specifically, many open space votes are likely to fail that would lead to welfare improvements, and any open space decisions that do pass will require amenities larger than needed to achieve the social optimum. The more dispersed and large the population, the larger is the gap between the socially efficient level and the level needed for a public referendum to pass.
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Paper provided by University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
0483.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights L29 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Other M10 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Business Administration - - - General
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Thomas J. Nechyba & Randall P. Walsh, 2004.
"Urban Sprawl,"
Journal of Economic Perspectives,
American Economic Association, vol. 18(4), pages 177-200, Fall.
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