Does urbanization mean bigger governments?
This paper proposes urbanization as a determinant of government size. As people move to cities, their demand for a more de ned set of regulations, but also for basic health, education, and income standards rises. Our theoretical framework determines how the regional distribution of the population a...
- Autores:
-
Jetter, Michael
Parmeter, Christopher F
- Tipo de recurso:
- Fecha de publicación:
- 2013
- Institución:
- Universidad EAFIT
- Repositorio:
- Repositorio EAFIT
- Idioma:
- eng
- OAI Identifier:
- oai:repository.eafit.edu.co:10784/744
- Acceso en línea:
- http://hdl.handle.net/10784/744
- Palabra clave:
- Government Size
Urbanization
Population Concentration
- Rights
- License
- Acceso abierto
| Summary: | This paper proposes urbanization as a determinant of government size. As people move to cities, their demand for a more de ned set of regulations, but also for basic health, education, and income standards rises. Our theoretical framework determines how the regional distribution of the population a ects government size. We test this theory on panel data of 175 countries from 1960 to 2010 and two state-level samples from Colombia and Germany. Results demonstrate a strong positive e ect from urbanization on government spending, with a 1 percent increase in the amount of urban citizens leading to a 0.2 percent rise in public expenditure. Our ndings indicate that public sectors may become more important as worldwide urbanization is progressing. This result underlines why government e ectiveness and the quality of public goods provision will be even more important in the future. |
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