Bureaucracy, publicness and local government expenditures revisited: Comment

Summary and conclusions

The empirical literature on the publicness of local government services has observed no significant degree of publicness. It is difficult to reconcile these findings with Wyckoff's conclusion that bureaucrats prefer pure public goods. Wyckoff's solution is to suggest that bureaucracy has little effect on operating (non-capital) expenditure decisions. This solution, however, conflicts with the empirical findings of numerous local expenditure and wage studies based on bureau supply models. But there is no need to consider this evidence because we have shown that Wyckoff's cost assumptions imply that a median voter regime will also operate at a maximum attainable degree of publicness. Hence, we must either reject Wyckoff's assumptions or conclude that the nature of the services demanded from local government is such that the maximum attainable degree of publicness is close to no publicness at all. In any case, Wyckoff's conclusions are not supported within the context of his own assumptions.