The authors present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public good the city supplies. Results show that the shares of spending on productive public goods - education, roads, sewers, and trash pickup _ in U.S. cities (metro...

The author considers the overspending bias in legislatures when the benefits of public policies are concentrated in particular districts but the costs of financing them are spread over the entire political jurisdiction. He formalizes this idea in a simple theoretic framework, in the context of...