Does jurisdictional fragmentation cause sprawl?
利用芬兰市政合并作为准实验，分析行政辖区碎片化对新建建筑位置的影响，发现合并后小城市的新建筑更靠近新行政中心约2公里，效应在8年后显现。
Abstract We analyze jurisdictional fragmentation and sprawl utilizing municipal mergers as a quasi-experiment. We use Finnish population-wide register data with precise location information and compare the location of new buildings (and their residents) in the actual mergers to the location of new buildings in a control group of hypothetical mergers constructed from the pre-merger municipality map. We find that, in the smaller municipalities of a given merger new buildings were built about 10 per cent or 2 km closer to the new administrative center. These effects materialize after two municipal council terms (8 years) and are driven by mergers resembling functional urban areas.