America's local governments spend about one-eighth of our national income, one-fourth of
total government spending, and employ over 14 million people. This paper surveys the large …

Problem, research strategy, and findings: While contracting for the private delivery of public
services is common, reversals from private to public provision are also common. Indeed, our …

Using data on the adoption of e-government, reinventing government, and strategic
practices, and the typology of municipal government form, the authors investigate the …

Several countries have voted reforms in order to reduce the number of national
representatives and many others have debated about that possibility. There is, however, no …

Local government scholars are giving increasing attention to market solutions to urban
service delivery. Intermunicipal contracting and privatization are two market approaches to …

Scholars of urban politics often argue that cities will shy away from extensive funding of
social welfare programs, as fiscal realities make developmental policies far more attractive …

One of the fundamental questions in democratic governance is whether policies are best
decided by elected officials or by appointed bureaucrat-experts. The study examines this …

This paper shows that partisan cable news broadcasts have a causal effect on the size and
composition of budgets in US localities. Using exogenous channel positioning as an …

Effective environmental systems have been recognized as essential to achieving
sustainable development. Existing research on enhancing the effectiveness of …

Politicians allocate public resources in ways that maximize political gains, and potentially at
the cost of lower welfare. In this paper, we quantify these welfare costs in the context of …