Local government cooperation at work: a control function approach
利用法国布列塔尼地区1056个市镇的面板数据，采用控制函数方法分析自愿联盟形成，发现市镇合作提供公共物品的决策受邻居行为影响，模仿动机强于政治结盟动机。
We analyse voluntary coalition formation using a unique panel data for 1056 municipalities in the French region of Brittany between 1995 and 2002. We use a control function approach to develop a binary discrete choice model with spatial interactions. We find that a municipality's decision to cooperate over the provision of local public goods depends on the decisions made by its neighbours. In particular, the probability of cooperating with neighbouring municipalities is higher if the latter already provide joint local public goods. This suggests that functional cooperation is likely to emerge due to a mimicking motivation and is poorly motivated by political alignment. The results are in line with the recent applied spatial economics literature but are derived for a discrete choice model setting.