Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance,
Stockholm School of Economics

No 626: Do Politicians Free-ride? - an empirical test of the common pool model

Björn Tyrefors ()
Additional contact information
Björn Tyrefors: Dept. of Economic Statistics, Stockholm School of Economics, Postal: Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: In the twentieth century there was a significant trend towards larger local governments through amalgamations in the western world. Amalgamations provide potential economic benefits but might also give rise to costs driven by opportunistic political behavior. This study uses a compulsory amalgamation reform of municipalities in Sweden to test for such behavior. The reform gives a local government incentives to accumulate debt before the amalgamation takes place, since the cost will be shared by all tax payers in the new municipality. The strength of this incentive to free ride will be determined by the locality's population size, relative to the future size of the new locality. We find an economically large and statistically significant free riding effect and the result is robust.

Keywords: common pool; amalgamations; free riding; local government; difference-in-difference

JEL-codes: D72; E62; H70

24 pages, First version: April 26, 2006. Revised: February 28, 2007. Earlier revisions: September 19, 2006, September 19, 2006, November 28, 2006, November 28, 2006, February 28, 2007.

Full text files

hastef0626.pdf PDF-file Full text

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Helena Lundin ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-11 18:19:16.