Introduction : shadow governments and the remaking of the American local state / Dennis R. Judd, Evan McKenzie, and Alba Alexander -- City-building capacity and special-purpose authorities : institutions, interests, and the local state / James M. Smith -- Phantom governments : multiple-function...

There is a considerable literature describing the performance of municipal services that often uses imperfect or partial measures of efficiency. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has emerged as an effective tool for measuring the relative efficiency of public service provision. This paper uses DEA...

Discrimination in access to public services can act as a major obstacle towards addressing racial inequality. We examine whether racial discrimination exists in access to a wide spectrum of public services in the US. We carry out an email correspondence study in which we pose simple queries to...