A Test for Efficiency in the Supply of Public Goods

Ted Bergstrom, University of California, Santa Barbara
Judith Roberts, Long Beach State
Daniel Rubinfeld, UC Berkeley
Perry Shapiro , UCSB

Abstract

This paper conducts an empirical test of whether local governments spend more or less than a Pareto optimal amount on local public goods. Our procedure is to check whether the Samuelson first order conditions ) for efficient provision of public goods are satisfied.