Premium
CONSTITUENCY PREFERENCE AND POLICE CONSOLIDATION: THE CASE OF WEST HOLLYWOOD
Author(s) -
FINNEY MILES
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
contemporary economic policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.454
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1465-7287
pISSN - 1074-3529
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-7287.1999.tb00678.x
Subject(s) - referendum , consolidation (business) , empirical research , economics , hollywood , preference , public economics , economies of scale , political science , law , finance , microeconomics , philosophy , epistemology , microbiology and biotechnology , politics , biology
This study estimates the determinants of voter behavior in a local referendum on contracting for municipal police services. Recent empirical research has found that police services are produced under decreasing returns to scale. The electorate in West Hollywood, California decided in 1992 to maintain its police contractual agreement with the larger county police department. This paper finds that economic costs/benefits were significant determinants of the voters' decisions, suggesting that the electorate's expectations on the relative costs of the alternative police regimes contradict the efficiency implications of recent empirical research. ( JEL H31, H77)