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On the Demand and Supply of Local Public Goods: a Quasi-Experimental Approach

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On the Demand and Supply of Local Public Goods: a Quasi-Experimental Approach THESE DE DOCTORAT DE L'UNIVERSITE DE RENNES 1 COMUE UNIVERSITE BRETAGNE LOIRE ECOLE DOCTORALE N° 597 Sciences Economiques et sciences De Gestion Spécialité : Sciences Economiques Par Kristýna DOSTÁLOVÁ On the demand and supply of local public goods: a quasi-experimental approach Thèse présentée et soutenue à Rennes, le 31 janvier 2019 Unité de recherche : Centre de Recherche en Economie et Management (CREM) – UMR CNRS 6211 Rapporteurs avant soutenance : Composition du Jury : Etienne Farvaque Professeur des Universités Isabelle Cadoret Professeure des Universités Université de Lille Université de Rennes 1 Sonia Paty Professeure des Universités Etienne Farvaque Professeur des Universités Université de Lyon 2 Université de Lille Sonia Paty Professeure des Universités Université de Lyon 2 Benoît Le Maux Maître de Conférences, HDR Directeur de thèse Université de Rennes 1 Invité(s) Antti Moisio Chargé d’Etudes Economiques Co-directeur de thèse OCDE, Paris This PhD thesis should not be reported as representing the views of University of Rennes 1. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the university. L’Université de Rennes 1 n’entend donner aucune approbation ni improbation aux opinions émises dans cette thèse. Ces opinions doivent être considérées comme propres à leur auteur. Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis supervisor Professor Benoît Le Maux, who really is to blame for persuading me to take up this work and persevere until the very end. Without planting his initial suggestion at the end of my master’s degree in Rennes, his guidance, encouragement and continuous support, the thesis literally would not be here. I deeply appreciate the time and effort invested in me and my work. I am also grateful to my thesis co-supervisor Antti Moisio, for welcoming me in Helsinki, his aid in collecting the data and his insider input on the Finnish local public sector. I am glad and honored that Isabelle Cadoret, Professor at University of Rennes 1, Etienne Farvaque, Professor at University of Lille, and Sonia Paty, Professor at University of Lyon 2, accepted to review the thesis and participate in the jury. My sincere thanks also goes to Professor Fabio Padovano, whom I never expected to work with when I first met him as my lecturer years prior, for agreeing to co-author, with my thesis supervisor and I, the article based on my first chapter. Furthermore, I thank Professors Jean-Michel Josselin and Yvon Rocaboy at University of Rennes 1 for their input on the benchmarking methodology. My daily life as a student and lecturer would have been next to impossible without the aid of the administrative faculty staff, in particular Anne L’Azou, Cécile Madoulet and Françoise Mazzoleni, and the financial support provided by the CREM that also gave me the opportunity to travel and participate in the scientific life outside the university. I thank my fellow PhD students and co-workers for keeping me company and allowing me to learn from their experience, and my students for putting up with my teaching and providing distraction when research seemed pointless and endless. Finally, last but by no means least, I would like to thank my family back in the Czech Republic, for their support and for getting by without me in the meantime, even though it made them distinctly unhappy at times. Résumé général Traditionnellement, l’existence du secteur public s’explique par le rôle prédominant du gouvernement dans la fourniture des biens et services publics et la correction des défaillances de marché. Néanmoins, tout comme les marchés peuvent échouer à fournir certains biens et services d’une manière optimale, l’intervention du gouvernement peut elle-même générer des inefficiences (government failures en anglais). C’est l’objet principale de l’économie publique d’analyser ces défaillances. Cette branche de l’économie contemporaine vise à appliquer la théorie microéconomique aux domaines du secteur public, notamment en se concentrant sur les questions d’efficience économique (assurer une allocation optimale des ressources) et celles d’équité (assurer une juste répartition des ressources). Une branche associée à cette discipline est celle de l’économie politique qui se concentre plus particulièrement sur les aspects institutionnels de la science politique, comme le rôle des syst‘emes électoraux, celui des représentants élus, de la bureaucratie, etc. La méthodologie est en soit similaire, cependant elle mêle à la fois science politique et outils microéconomique dans le but de mieux appréhender le fonctionnement du secteur public dans son ensemble, en analysant à la fois le côté de la demande de biens et services publics mais aussi celui de l’offre. Cette approche est celle utilisée dans cette thèse de doctorat. viii RÉSUMÉ GÉNÉRAL De manière analogue aux ressources et acteurs du secteur privé, le secteur public fonctionne avec des budgets permettant de fournir des biens et services aux citoyens. La manière dont ces budgets sont utilisés, c’est-à-dire distribués et dépensés, est à proprement parler le fruit d’une interaction entre offre et demande de biens et services publics. Dans les démocraties représentatives, la demande (les consommateurs des biens et services) est représentée par les citoyens. L’offre (les producteurs, les fournisseurs des biens et services) est quant à elle représentée par les gouvernements élus. L’objectif de cette thèse de doctorat est de mieux appréhender les déterminants de la fourniture de biens et services publics locaux et d’évaluer l’adéquation entre l’offre de service public et la demande des citoyens. D’un point de vue théorique, les modèles analysant la demande de service public, tel le modèle de l’électeur médian ou l’hypothèse de Meltzer et Richard, démontrent que les caractéristiques de l’électorat ainsi que ses préférences sont les principaux déterminants de la fourniture de service public. Les modèles analysant l’offre de service public concluent au contraire que c’est la composition du gouvernement (nombre de partis, idéologie des élus) qui joue un rôle décisif. Cette recherche a pour objet de faire le lien entre ces deux types de théories, à travers une série d’essais empirique utilisant une approche quasi-expérimentale et se basant sur une analyse du secteur public local français et finlandais. Revue de la littérature La littérature en économie politique est riche de modèles expliquant la taille et la croissance du secteur public dans les démocraties directes et représentatives. Pour une revue exhaustive de la littérature, le lecteur peut par exemple se référer à l’ouvrage de Mueller (2003) et celui de Persson et Tabellini (2000). Parmi les modèles de demande les plus fréquemment cités, on trouve notamment le théorème de l’électeur médian. L’idée est que la politique préférée par un électeur décisif (se trouvant au milieu de la distribution des électeurs et tournant ainsi les décisions publiques à son avantage) serait celle adoptée par un gouvernement souhaitant se faire RÉSUMÉ GÉNÉRAL ix réélire. S’appuyant sur ce modèle, l’hypothèse de Meltzer et Richard construit ainsi un cadre simple mais pertinent pour expliquer la taille du secteur public. La manière dont les revenus sont distribués dans une économie déterminerait les préférences des électeurs en matière de redistribution. L’électeur au revenu médian serait alors décisif dans le choix de la politique redistributive. Les modèles analysant l’offre de service public concluent au contraire que c’est la composition du gouvernement (nombre de partis, idéologie des élus, etc.) qui joue un rôle décisif. Parmi les facteurs fréquemment cités et analysés se trouvent les effets dits « partisans », c’est-à-dire résultant de l’idéologie du parti au pouvoir, amenant les politiciens à suivre un programme qui leur est propre et pouvant s’écarter des souhaits des citoyens considérés dans leur ensemble. Un autre facteur fréquemment analysé est celui de la concurrence politique telle que mesurée par exemple par le nombre de partis en compétition dans un régime politique donné. Comme pour le secteur privé, une concurrence plus intense serait mieux à même de réduire les défaillances du gouvernement, et empêcherait celui-ci de se comporter de manière monopolistique, exploitant son pouvoir et mettant en place des politiques dépensières, comportements dit de « Léviathan ». Toutefois, les modèles basés sur l’hypothèse dite de « gouvernement faible », ou Weak Gouvernement Hypothesis en anglais, mettent en garde contre une fragmentation politique trop aiguë : la présence d’un trop grand nombre de sujets politiques (élus, partis) peut également générer une augmentation des dépenses publiques, des déficits et un accroissement de la dette. C’est sur les théories mentionnées ci-dessus que porte les analyses empiriques présentées dans cette thèse de doctorat. Afin de clarifier celles-ci, la littérature est présentée de manière plus détaillée ci-après. Les modèles de demande La clef de voute des modèles de demande est le théorème de l’électeur médian. Celui-ci établit que, si tous les électeurs ont des préférences unimodales sur un espace politique unidimensionnel (tel le niveau des dépenses publiques), alors l’alternative médiane sera un x RÉSUMÉ GÉNÉRAL vainqueur de Condorcet. En d’autres termes, le candidat proposant l’alternative médiane dans son programme sera garanti d’obtenir une majorité de voix. Les candidats politiques auront donc une incitation à proposer cette même alternative dans leur programme,
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