Jered B. Carr

INCENTIVES, ENTREPRENEURS, AND BOUNDARY CHANGE A Collective Action Framework

The authors develop an institutional choice framework to examine and interpret change in local boundaries and provide a single explanation for the use of varied instruments to create new boundaries or expand old ones. Boundary decisions are viewed as the product of actors’ seeking particular outcomes within a context of existing governments and established rules governing boundary change. Selective costs and benefits, rather than collective costs and benefits, are most likely to provide incentives for institutional entrepreneurship and collective action. Such a framework is valuable because it integrates the fragmented literatures on local boundaries, provides a linkage between boundary choices and policy outcomes at the local level, and can guide empirical research into the causes and consequences of boundary change. This framework can provide the foundation of a more general model of institutional choice and institutional entrepreneurship.

Metropolitan Government and Economic Development

Academic and political debate regarding the desirability of metropolitan government has focused on the provision of public goods. Although efficient production of services is of great importance, the consequences of metropolitan government for economic development have remained unexplored. The authors assess the development impacts of city-county consolidation by examining the attraction of manufacturing and retail/service firms for nine consolidated governments from 1950 to 1993. The annual growth in manufacturing, retail, and service establishments in the county before the merger is compared to the record afterward. No support emerges for the idea that consolidation enhances economic development.

A Reassessment of City/County Consolidation: Economic Development Impacts

OVER THE PAST two decades, a large body of literature has examined the fiscal consequences of city/ county consolidation. Much of this research suggests that consolidation results in expansions in local budgets and in the scope and quality of municipal services (Erie, Kirlin, and Rabinovitz 1972; Benton and Gamble 1984; Seamon and Feiock 1995). Recent studies suggest that consolidation also benefits local economic development efforts (Owen 1992; Rusk 1993; Savitch and Vogel 1995). Unlike these public-sector tax and expenditure effects, the impact of consolidation on overall local economic conditions has not been subjected to systematic empirical tests. This research note begins to fill this lacuna by building on Benton and Gamble’s analysis (1984) of the effect of consolidation on taxes and expenditures in Jacksonville, Florida. We employ a similar design, but also include private-sector growth and use a Box-Tiao time-series model (Box and Tiao 1975), together with more contemporary data to identify the overall economic development effects of a city/county merger.

City Size and Political Participation in Local Government Reassessing the Contingent Effects of Residential Location Decisions Within Urban Regions

J. Eric Oliver’s finding that city size influences the political participation of residents has been challenged by studies suggesting that differences in population density within cities and how the population is distributed across cities within regions may moderate any negative effects of city size. We analyze these propositions of contingent effects by examining self-reported participation activities from a random sample of residents from the state of Michigan in the summer of 2005. Our findings confirm the importance of the conditional effects of population density on the relationship between city size and political participation. The support provided by our analysis for the other contingent factors is more mixed.

City-County Government and Promises of Economic Development: A Tale of Two Cities

The prevailing opinion in Louisville is that its central city, like many American cities, is terminally ill. People have moved to the suburbs and retail stores have located into the malls. All this has left the city with fewer people and fewer shops. But is the city really worse off? A great many claims about Louisvilles imminent death are made by politicians anxious about a shrinking electoral base, by businesses concerned about declining investments and by newspapers worried about lost circulation. “Fragmented” Louisville is invidiously compared to the consolidated urban county of Lexington-Fayette especially on the population count. Since 1970 Louisville has lost 25 percent of its residents and today is down to 269,000 people. During the same period Lexington-Fayette registered a 108 percent gain and it holds 225,000 residents. Louisvilles haunting fear is that Lexington Fayette will overtake it during the early part of the next century (Savitch and Vogel 1999,4).

The Costs of Cooperation What the Research Tells Us about Managing the Risks of Service Collaborations in the U.S.

Service collaborations often must confront risks arising from problems of coordination, division, and defection. U.S. scholars have focused on understanding the efficacy of three general strategies to reducing these risks. First, the use of adaptive and restrictive contracts to reduce the risks from service characteristics has received a lot of attention. Second, scholars have studied how the use of different institutional arrangements reduces the risks of collaborative service provision. Third, attention has been devoted to understanding how the social networks of administrators and elected officials mitigate risk in sharing services. This article concludes with suggestions for future research on this topic.

What Should We Do? Public Attitudes about How Local Government Officials Should Confront Fiscal Stress

Abstract Despite strong scholarly interest in the topic of fiscal stress, little attention has been paid to understanding how the general public thinks local governments should respond to situations where declining revenues endanger service levels. This study reports findings from a survey of 660 residents undertaken between November 2006 and January 2007 in the US state of Michigan to examine their support for eight potential strategies to cope with fiscal stress in five different local government services. We find that the public has a surprisingly nuanced perspective about these strategies and on their use for different services. Our findings may provide local policymakers with some insights about how to respond to fiscal stress.

The Costs of Cooperation What Research Tells Us about Managing the Risks of Service Collaborations in the United States

Service collaborations often must confront risks arising from problems of coordination, division, and defection. U.S. scholars have focused on understanding the efficacy of three general strategies to reducing these risks. First, the use of adaptive and restrictive contracts to reduce the risks from service characteristics has received a lot of attention. Second, scholars have studied how the use of different institutional arrangements reduces the risks of collaborative service provision. Third, attention has been devoted to understanding how the social networks of administrators and elected officials mitigate risk in sharing services. This article concludes with suggestions for future research on this topic.

An Exploration of Collaboration Risk in Joint Ventures: Perceptions of Risk by Local Economic Development Officials

This study explores the nature of “collaboration” risk in joint ventures and the factors that affect local development officials’ perceptions of these risks. Extant research on barriers to joint venture formation clearly indicates an important role for collaboration risk, but a systematic examination of the factors shaping local officials’ perceptions of this risk is lacking. The authors propose that their perceptions of the region’s norms regarding interlocal collaboration, the structure of the communication networks they have created with other local officials, and differences in the racial composition of their own cities are important factors shaping their perceptions of collaboration risk. The findings provide researchers with a basis for understanding the dimensions of collaboration risk in joint ventures and highlight the importance of the regional climate of cooperation among municipal leaders in shaping these perceptions. The two measures capturing the environment for collaboration in the region had the strongest link to the respondents’ perception of collaboration risk on joint ventures for economic development.

The Costs of Cooperation

Service collaborations often must confront risks arising from problems of coordination, division, and defection. U.S. scholars have focused on understanding the efficacy of three general strategies to reducing these risks. First, the use of adaptive and restrictive contracts to reduce the risks from service characteristics has received a lot of attention. Second, scholars have studied how the use of different institutional arrangements reduces the risks of collaborative service provision. Third, attention has been devoted to understanding how the social networks of administrators and elected officials mitigate risk in sharing services. This article concludes with suggestions for future research on this topic.