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The Organization of Public Service Provision

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Author Info
Billy Jack () (Department of Economics, Georgetown University)
Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how the responsibility for the delivery of social services, including health, education, and welfare programs, should be divided between state and central governments. We combine a random voting model and the incomplete contracts paradigm to formalize the trade off between central and state responsibility for service delivery, and find that authority should rest with the party for whom the marginal impact of the service on re-election chances is greater. This in turn means that, other things equal, states with lower than average health, education, or welfare status should be given responsibility for service delivery, while authority in states with above average indicators should reside with the central government. Also, we show that there is no presumption that states that are given authority for service delivery should necessarily be granted expanded tax authority.

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File URL: http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/wgj/jack-final-jpet.pdf
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Georgetown University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number gueconwpa~03-03-14.

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Date of creation: 01 Jan 2003
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Handle: RePEc:geo:guwopa:gueconwpa~03-03-14

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Postal: Georgetown University Department of Economics Washington, DC 20057-1036
Phone: 202-687-6074
Fax: 202-687-6102
Email:
Web page: http://econ.georgetown.edu/

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Postal: Marcia Suss Administrative Officer Georgetown University Department of Economics Washington, DC 20057-1036
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Web: http://econ.georgetown.edu/

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Related research
Keywords: public service provision; political economy; random voting; incomplete contracts;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations

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This page was last updated on 2009-12-11.

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