Efficiency of public goods provision in space

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThis article incorporates a political decision process into an urban land use model to predict the likely location of a public good. It fills an important gap in the literature by modeling the endogenous location of open space. The article compares open space decisions made under a majority-rules voting scheme with welfare-improving criterion and finds households tied to a location in space compete against each other for public goods located nearer them. Significant differences emerge between the two decision criteria, indicating that requiring referenda for open space decisions is likely to lead to inefficient outcomes. Specifically, many open space votes are likely to fail that would lead to welfare improvements, and any open space decisions that do pass will require amenities larger than needed to achieve the social optimum. The more dispersed and large the population, the larger is the gap between the socially efficient level and the level needed for a public referendum to pass.

The Economics of Conservation and Finance: A Review of the Literature

“…That paper goes further to suggest that a large-scale conservation group trying to target communities in which to encourage conservation referenda could benefit by focusing efforts less disproportionately on wealthy, white, Northeastern communities and more towards communities in the Southeast with significant minority populations. However, theoretical work by Warziniack (2010) finds that in the presence of spillovers of conservation benefits among communities, local provision of open space by majority voting is unlikely to achieve efficient provision of conservation -many conservation projects that would be welfare improving will fail to pass a majority vote. Local referenda alone will not be sufficient to finance efficient levels and patterns of conservation.…”