We analyze voluntary coalition formation using a unique panel data for 1,056 municipalities in the French region of Brittany between 1995 and 2002. We use a control function approach to develop a binary discrete choice model with spatial interactions. We find that a municipality’s decision to...

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of fiscal cooperation on local taxation in a decentralized country, using the French experience in urban municipalities. We estimate a model of tax setting for local business tax using spatial and dynamic econometric techniques, for the...

Cooperation among local governments has been encouraged to enable the aggregation of resources and improved public sector efficiency. However, if cooperation through the joint delivery of local public services is likely to be welfare enhancing for the agglomeration, but will lead to losses for...

This article contributes to the small literature on the relationship between the range of local public services and population size. Using new data on French local jurisdictions, we test the hypothesis that larger jurisdictions provide a broader range of public goods (the so-called ?zoo effect?,...

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of inter-municipal fiscal cooperation on municipal public spending, based on the French experience. We estimate a model of municipal spending choice using panel data and spatial econometrics for municipalities over the period 1994-2003. We...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of local taxation on property prices in an urban French context, using data on property taxation and real estate transactions, over the period 1994-2004. Our empirical methodology pairs transactions in the same spatial environments to estimate...

The main purpose of this paper is to test the existence of a taxable agglomeration rent in the French local tax setting by taking account the tax interactions among the urban jurisdictions. After presenting a simple economic geography model with fiscal interactions, we estimate a model of tax...

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of fiscal cooperation on local taxation in a decentralized country, using the French experience. We estimate a model of tax setting for local business tax using spatial and dynamic econometric techniques, for the period 1993-2003. We find...

From the observation that many public goods ?such as zoos? are indivisible, OATES (1988) put forward the idea that the range of public goods should increase with localities? size; this is the "zoo effect". But despite this argument appears obvious, it suffers from a limited empirical literature....

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of inter-municipal fiscal cooperation on municipal public spending, based on the French experience. We estimate a model of municipal spending choice using panel data and spatial econometrics for municipalities over the period 1994-2003. We...