IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-02613181.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Welfare Consequences of Centralization: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in Switzerland

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Flèche

    (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEP - LSE - Centre for Economic Performance - LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science)

Abstract

Many countries are reallocating tasks and powers to more central levels of government. To identify centralization's welfare effects, I use a difference-in-differences design that relies on time and cross-cantonal variation in the implementation of centralization reforms in Switzerland. I find that centralization provokes significant decreases in residents' life satisfaction. I identify one mechanism driving the effect, namely the procedural disutility that individuals experience from having less influence over the formulation of political decisions. This effect is largest among individuals with higher expected benefits from being involved in the political decision process, with detrimental effects on local political participation.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Flèche, 2021. "The Welfare Consequences of Centralization: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in Switzerland," Post-Print hal-02613181, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02613181
    DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00894
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-02613181
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://amu.hal.science/hal-02613181/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1162/rest_a_00894?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:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Gabriel Loumeau & Christian Stettler, 2021. "Fiscal Autonomy and Self-Determination," CESifo Working Paper Series 9445, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    centralization; life satisfaction; procedural utility; political participation;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hal:journl:hal-02613181. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.