Population Shifts and Discrete Public Services: Rationing Rules and the Support for Public Goods

Cities with declining populations face increasing per-capita costs to maintain discrete public goods—those with fixed costs that cannot be easily scaled to demand. Likewise, growing cities may face decreasing benefits from congestible public goods. In either case, there are two policy actions: limit...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inPublic finance review Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 585 - 602
Main Authors Cherry, Todd L., Cotten, Stephen J., McKee, Michael
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.05.2019
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Cities
Economic models
Experiments
Externality
Fixed costs
Public goods
Public services
Rationing
Taxation
congestible public goods
rationing
experiments
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Cities with declining populations face increasing per-capita costs to maintain discrete public goods—those with fixed costs that cannot be easily scaled to demand. Likewise, growing cities may face decreasing benefits from congestible public goods. In either case, there are two policy actions: limit access (ration) or expand output (higher revenues per person required). We report the results of a series of experiments designed to investigate the effect of alternative rationing rules on the propensity for individuals to support increases in taxes to overcome congestion externalities or decreases in the tax base.
ISSN:1091-1421
1552-7530
DOI:10.1177/1091142117735376