The normative literature on decentralization of public goods provision has many testable empirical implications. This paper explores some of these implications by looking at the relationship between decentralization and an environmental public good, water quality in rivers at monitoring stations around the world. It examines pollution levels and interjurisdictional variation in these levels for both a local and a regional pollutant. When fixed effects are included, greater decentralization is associated with higher levels of the regional pollutant only, suggesting interjurisdictional free riding. Federal countries exhibit greater interjurisdictional variation in both pollutants, consistent with the traditional view that decentralization allows policies more tailored to local conditions.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
13098.
Length: Date of creation: May 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13098
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Carson, Richard T. & Hanemann, W. Michael, 2006.
"Contingent Valuation,"
Handbook of Environmental Economics,
in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 17, pages 821-936
Elsevier.
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