In many countries, studies give evidence of a complementary relationship between local spending at different levels. Allowing spatial heterogeneity in the demand behaviour, we show that the usual result of a systematic complementarity between the Municipal and the County spending decisions is...

This paper aims to test the existence of vertical interactions in terms of public spending between overlapping local jurisdictions in France using a data set of 110 French municipalities and their corresponding departments in 2001 and 2005. To do so, we consider that demand for municipal...

[fre] Le développement de la coopération intercommunale en France n'a pas remis en cause la finesse du découpage administratif communal. Toutefois, alors que les pouvoirs publics attendaient une réduction des taux d'impôts cumulés, communal et intercommunal, la coopération intercommunale...

[eng] Inter-municipal cooperation in France involved more than 80 % of municipalities and inhabitants in 2006. There is a wide choice of legal and financial options for cooperation but their impact on municipal spending behavior is controversial, hence this study. We provide two results. First,...

Despite increasing co-operation between French municipalities, the structure of the local public sector may not have significantly changed. Although the central government expected that this co-operation would result in a decrease in the combined rates of municipal and inter-municipal taxation,...