IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/pscirm/v9y2021i1p72-88_5.html

Political representation and effects of municipal mergers

Author

Listed:
  • Harjunen, Oskari
  • Saarimaa, Tuukka
  • Tukiainen, Janne

Abstract

We study the effects of municipal mergers using novel geocoded data on local public sector jobs and local politicians' place of residence. We find that the mergers had no effects on municipal expenditures overall after eight years. However, the mergers led to highly unequal geographic political representation in the post-merger councils among the merged municipalities. Small and politically marginalized municipalities experienced a substantial reduction in local public jobs in administration and health and social care services relative to the municipalities with stronger representation. Development of house prices suggests that the quality of the service-tax bundle deteriorated in these politically marginalized municipalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Harjunen, Oskari & Saarimaa, Tuukka & Tukiainen, Janne, 2021. "Political representation and effects of municipal mergers," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 72-88, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:72-88_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2049847019000177/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Blesse, Sebastian & Roesel, Felix, 2019. "Merging county administrations – cross-national evidence of fiscal and political effects," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 45(5), pages 611-631.
    2. Lapointe, Simon, 2018. "“Love thy neighbour”? The effect of income and language differences on votes for municipal secessions," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 229-245.
    3. Blesse, Sebastian & Diegmann, André, 2022. "The place-based effects of police stations on crime: Evidence from station closures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    4. Blesse Sebastian & Rösel Felix, 2017. "Was bringen kommunale Gebietsreformen?: Kausale Evidenz zu Hoffnungen, Risiken und alternativen Instrumenten," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 18(4), pages 307-324, November.
    5. Touria Jaaidane & Sophie Larribeau & Matthieu Leprince, 2024. "Inter-municipal cooperation and public employment: evidence from French municipalities," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 72(3), pages 987-1014, March.
    6. Davide Luca & Felix Modrego, 2021. "Stronger together? Assessing the causal effect of inter‐municipal cooperation on the efficiency of small Italian municipalities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 261-293, January.
    7. Hitoshi Saito & Haruaki Hirota & Hideo Yunoue & Miki Miyaki, 2023. "Do municipal mergers internalise spatial spillover effects? empirical evidence from Japanese municipalities," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 70(2), pages 379-406, April.
    8. Dagmara Kociuba & Waldemar Kociuba, 2023. "Variants of Boundary Changes—A Case Study of Poland," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-17, June.
    9. Pengju Zhang, 2023. "The fiscal and economic impacts of municipal dissolution: evidence from New York," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(4), pages 948-1001, August.
    10. Jaaidane, Touria & Larribeau, Sophie, 2023. "The effects of inter-municipal cooperation and central grant allocation on the size of the French local public sector," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism

    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:cup:pscirm:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:72-88_5. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ram .

    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.