From our May 2015 issue: Macro-Level Determinants of Local Government Interaction How Metropolitan Regions in the United States Compare

Macro-Level Determinants of Local Government Interaction

How Metropolitan Regions in the United States Compare

1. Rebecca Hendrick1
2. Yu Shi1

1. ¹University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

1. Rebecca Hendrick, Department of Public Administration, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago, 412 S. Peoria St., Chicago, IL 60607, USA. Email: hendrick@uic.edu

Abstract

Empirical and theoretical research on government competition and collaboration identifies several important macro-level characteristics that can affect these forms of interaction between local governments within the same large jurisdiction. These characteristics are fragmentation of governments, fiscal dispersion of governments, sorting of population by governments, and decentralized fiscal responsibility between state and local governments. This study presents indices to measure these characteristics and examines how metropolitan regions in the United States with populations greater than one million are distributed on these indices. The study also examines how these regions compare on conditions that are likely to motivate sales tax competition between municipal governments.

• fragmentation
 
• local government
 
• metropolitan regions
 
• macro-level conditions
• state–local r
• • http://uar.sagepub.com/content/51/3/414.abstract
  • http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/09/07/is-local-government-fragmentation-good-or-bad-for-cities-these-indices-will-help-inform-the-debate/