Local Provision of Public Services: The Tiebout Model after Twenty-Five Years describes several theoretical and empirical branches of economic research related to Charles Tiebout's provocative hypothesis that consumer mobility and interjurisdictional competition result in an efficient allocation of resources to the local public sector. The book provides insights on the issues being considered in policy debates regarding the appropriate means of providing essential public services. Chapters in the book include an overview of the Tiebout model; income redistribution in a federal system; empirical relationships in the political economy of local public finance; and two conflicting views of the incidence of the property tax. Economists, local government leaders, and experts in public finance will find the book very insightful.

The book is the first of its kind to provide a comparative analysis of the provision of social and public services in France, Italy, Germany, the UK and Norway. This volume, co-authored by leading national experts, topically examines whether, when, how and why the delivery of social and public services, which was historically a responsibility of local authorities, has been significantly shifted to marketized and commodified forms. However, despite this considerable change, there have been recent indications of remunicipalisation in some sectors. Combining both cross-country and cross-policy co.

Built on independent research and financial audits of a number of newly created Shared Service Centers (SSCs) in Poland, Local Government Shared Services Centers: Management and Organization is the first book to thoroughly examine the organization, development and effectiveness of the shared service market in the Polish public sector.

This open access book explores new research directions in social inequality and urban segregation. With the goal of fostering an ongoing dialogue between scholars in Europe and China, it brings together an impressive team of international researchers to shed light on the entwined processes of inequality and segregation, and the implications for urban development. Through a rich collection of empirical studies at the city, regional and national levels, the book explores the impact of migration on cities, the related problems of social and spatial segregation, and the ramifications for policy reform. While the literature on both segregation and inequality has traditionally been dominated by European and North American studies, there is growing interest in these issues in the Chinese context. Economic liberalization, rapid industrial restructuring, the enormous growth of cities, and internal migration, have all reshaped the country profoundly. What have we learned from the European and North American experience of segregation and inequality, and what insights can be gleaned to inform the bourgeoning interest in these issues in the Chinese context? How is China different, both in terms of the nature and the consequences of segregation inequality, and what are the implications for future research and policy? Given the continued rise of China’s significance in the world, and its recent declaration of war on poverty, this book offers a timely contribution to scholarship, identifying the core insights to be learned from existing research, and providing important guidance on future directions for policy makers and researchers.

Abstract: This paper discusses decentralization (administrative, fiscal and political) of government in public service provision. It aims to facilitate understanding among practitioners, policy makers, and scholars about what decentralization entails in practice compared to theory. A review of the empirical literature and experience of decentralization is presented. The paper highlights issues that policy makers in developing and transitional countries should be aware of when reforming government, considering their unique political and economic environment. The author argues that decentralization produces efficiency gains stemming from inter-jurisdictional competition, enhanced checks and balances over the government through voting at the subnational level, and informational advantages due to proximity to citizens. By contrast, arguments against decentralization include the risk of an increased level of corruption, coordination problems stemming from multiple layers of government, low capacity of subnational government, and unproductive inter-jurisdictional competition. Decentralization itself does not render increased government effectiveness in public service provision. Instead, the effectiveness of government largely depends on the quality of human capital and institutions.

A Brookings Institution Press, Committee for Economic Development, and Urban Institute Press publication For decades, the use of vouchers has been widely debated. But often lost in the heat of debate is the fact that vouchers are just another tool in the government's tool chest, a restricted subsidy that falls somewhere between the extremes of cash and direct government provision of services. The instrument itself is not new—the 1944 GI Bill of Rights was a voucher, and vouchers for food, college aid, and housing have been in place for decades. Until now, however, the study of vouchers has been restricted to a few controversial applications. This volume, which grew out of a conference sponsored by the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute, and the Committee for Economic Development, fills the gap, offering a framework for comparative analysis of specific policy issues related to vouchers. Its 16 essays address the economics, politics, and legal issues of voucher use and explore how vouchers are currently employed in the United States and abroad for education, child care, job training, housing, and health care. C. Eugene Steuerle is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and has worked under four different U.S. presidents on a variety of reform issues in such areas as social security, budget, tax, and health policy. Robert D. Reischauer, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, was director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1989 to 1995. George Peterson is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute; from 1976 to 1985 he directed the Institute's Public Finance Research Center. Van Doorn Ooms, senior vice president and director of research at the Committee for Economic Development, was formerly executive director for policy and chief economist of the Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives, 1989-1990, and was the Budget Committee's chief economist from 1981 to 1988.

This book compares the trajectories and effects of local public sector reform in Europe and fills a research gap that has existed so far in comparative public administration and local government studies. Based on the results of COST research entitled, ‘Local Public Sector Reforms: an International Comparison’, this volume takes a European-scale approach, examining local government in 28 countries. Local government has been the most seriously affected by the continuously expanding global financial crisis and austerity policies in some countries, and is experiencing a period of increased reform activity as a result. This book considers both those local governments which have adopted or moved away from New Public Management (NPM) modernization to ‘something different’ (what some commentators have labelled ‘post-NPM’), as well as those which have implemented ‘other-than-NPM measures’, such as territorial reforms and democratic innovations.