ABSTRACT
Students of public choice have long been fascinated with what has come to be known as the Tiebout model of local public expenditure. The central feature of this model, we may recall, is the ability of a household to select as a place of residence in a metropolitan area the community offering the mix of public services and tax price that best suits the household's tastes and budget. The appeal of this conception of residential choice lies in the possibility that such "shopping" among local governments will result in an efficient allocation of resources to the provision of local public goods. This is especially important since the possibility of free ridership was thought to make the honest revelation of preferences for these goods otherwise unobtainable.
