IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v6y2004i3p409-425.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Organization of Public Service Provision

Author

Listed:
  • William Jack

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.

Suggested Citation

  • William Jack, 2004. "The Organization of Public Service Provision," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 6(3), pages 409-425, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:6:y:2004:i:3:p:409-425
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00172.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00172.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00172.x?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Caroline Minter Hoxby, 2003. "School Choice and School Productivity. Could School Choice Be a Tide that Lifts All Boats?," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of School Choice, pages 287-342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 1998. "Power in a Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 387-432.
    3. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    4. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1999. "Centralized versus Decentralized Provision of Local Public Goods: A Political Economy Analysis," NBER Working Papers 7084, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Wallace E. Oates & Wallace E. Oates, 2004. "An Essay on Fiscal Federalism," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 22, pages 384-414, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    7. David de Meza & Ben Lockwood, 1998. "Does Asset Ownership Always Motivate Managers? Outside Options and the Property Rights Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 361-386.
    8. Oliver Hart & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1997. "The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 112(4), pages 1127-1161.
    9. Hart, Oliver, 1995. "Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288817.
    10. Jan K. Brueckner, 1999. "Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom: Theory and Evidence," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 66(2), pages 505-525, 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. Sacchi, Agnese & Salotti, Simone, 2014. "The asymmetric nature of fiscal decentralization: theory and practice," MPRA Paper 54506, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Fabio Fiorillo & Michele G. Giuranno & Agnese Sacchi, 2021. "Asymmetric decentralization: distortions and opportunities," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(2), pages 625-656, July.
    3. William Jack, 2005. "Comparing the Distortionary Effects of Alternative Intergovernmental Transfers," Public Finance Review, , vol. 33(4), pages 488-505, July.
    4. Billy Jack, 2003. "Comparing the distortionary effects of alternative in-kind intergovernmental transfers," Working Papers gueconwpa~03-03-17, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.

    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. Robert Gibbons & John Roberts, 2012. "The Handbook of Organizational Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9889.
    2. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2015. "Government versus private ownership of public goods: The role of bargaining frictions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 23-31.
    3. Ilya Segal & Michael D.Whinston, 2012. "Property Rights [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    4. Halonen-Akatwijuka, Maija, 2012. "Nature of human capital, technology and ownership of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 939-945.
    5. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Information Gathering, Transaction Costs, and the Property Rights Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 422-434, March.
    6. Stephen King & Rohan Pitchford, 2008. "Private or Public? Towards a Taxonomy of Optimal Ownership and Management Regimes," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(266), pages 366-377, September.
    7. Chatterjee Kalyan & Chiu Y. Stephen, 2007. "When Does Competition Lead to Efficient Investments?," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-39, July.
    8. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    9. Schmitz, Patrick W, 2001. "The Hold-up Problem and Incomplete Contracts: A Survey of Recent Topics in Contract Theory," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(1), pages 1-17, January.
    10. Fredrik Andersson & Henrik Jordahl & Jens Josephson, 2019. "Outsourcing Public Services: Contractibility, Cost, and Quality," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 65(4), pages 349-372.
    11. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2001. "Partial Privatization and Incomplete Contracts: The Proper Scope of Government Reconsidered," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 57(4), pages 394-411, August.
    12. Tobias Regner & Maija Halonen-Akatwijuka, 2004. "Digital Technology And The Allocation Of Ownership In The Music Industry," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2004 54, Royal Economic Society.
    13. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 1998. "Power in a Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 387-432.
    14. Andersson, Fredrik, 2004. "A Trickle-Down Theory of Incentives with Applications to Privatization and Outsourcing," Working Papers 2004:13, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    15. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2014. "Optimal ownership of public goods reconsidered," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 21-24.
    16. Müller, Daniel & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2016. "Transaction costs and the property rights approach to the theory of the firm," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 92-107.
    17. Muthoo, Abhinay & Francesconi, Marco, 2006. "Control Rights in Public-Private Partnerships," CEPR Discussion Papers 5733, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Andersson, Fredrik & Jordahl, Henrik, 2011. "Outsourcing Public Services: Ownership, Competition, Quality and Contracting," Working Paper Series 874, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    19. Kusterer, David J. & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2020. "Public goods, property rights, and investment incentives: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 514-532.
    20. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations

    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:bla:jpbect:v:6:y:2004:i:3:p:409-425. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.html .

    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.