L'économie publique locale quinze ans après : entre espace et territoire

The paper concentrates on the changes which would be necessary to introduce in a new edition of the textbook « Économie Publique Locale » authored by Pierre-Henry DERYCKE and Guy GILBERT and first published in 1988, in order to take into account the development of economic analysis and the evolution of the institutional and economic conditions since that time. Two perspectives are chosen ; the first one highlights the development of spatial economic theory, the second emphasizes an institutional view of local public economics. The developments concentrated on three separate topics ; firstly the tax capitalization hypothesis which enriched now with a spatial perspective ; secondly the concept of congestion applied to local public goods which is introduced in a more satisfactory way in the modeling of local spending behavior ; thirdly fiscal competition among local governments (vertical as well as horizontal) which received considerable attention through the two last decades both from a normative and a positive point of view. New topics of research appeared as well related with the issue of the intergovernmental fiscal relations (i.e. the « fiscal federalism ») ; the economic literature expanded in two separate directions, one « spatial » which incorporates the land surplus in the fiscal federalism conceptual framework, the second reinterpreting the traditional TIEBOUT - OATES - BUCHANAN model with the of the modern microeconomics of asymmetrical information. Classification TEL : D00, H2, H7, RI, R5, R51.