Keywords

JEL Classifications

Tiebout was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, took his BA from Wesleyan University in 1950, and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1957. After holding appointments at Northwestern (1954–8) and the University of California at Los Angeles (1958–62), he became professor of economics and business administration at the University of Washington at Seattle in 1962. He died on 16 January 1968. By far his most important work was his ‘Pure Theory of Local Public Expenditure’, which appeared in the October number of the Journal of Political Economy for 1956, from which is derived the so-called Tiebout hypothesis, which is the subject of a separate article in this Dictionary. However, his work on problems in regional and urban economics was more extensive than this one theoretical article on the local provision of public goods might suggest.

For example, in the volume of the Journal of Political Economy that carried his essay on public goods, there also appeared a paper which examined the effects of export growth on the pattern of regional economic development. This analysis represents an attempt to apply a Keynesian model of income determination to regional development. Tiebout argued that exports are only one of a number of sources that act to determine the growth of regional income, and through what appears to be the first application of the foreign-trade multiplier to regional analysis he attempts to reach conclusions as to the relative significance of regional exports vis-à-vis regional demand as a source of income generation. Principal among these is that export-led regional growth is likely to be most effective when the regional base is small.

This paper was followed by work on the construction and use of regional and inter-regional input-output models (1957), which itself produced empirical investigations into the regional distribution of economic activity in the American states of California (1963) and of Washington (1969). The results of these studies were still appearing after Tiebout’s early death – especially to be noted in this regard is his inter-regional input-output model of the linkages between the economies of Washington and California (1970). Add to this his work on the regional impact of the federal government’s dispensation of its defence and space budgets (1964), and it becomes fairly clear that to record Tiebout’s name solely in regard to his contribution to the pure theory of public goods would be to present a rather one-sided picture of his scientific interests.

Selected Works

  • 1956a. A pure theory of local public expenditures. Journal of Political Economy 64: 416–424.

  • 1956b. Exports and regional economic growth. Journal of Political Economy 64: 160–164.

  • 1957. Regional and inter-regional input–output models: An appraisal. Southern Economic Journal 24: 140–147.

  • 1960a. Community income multipliers: A population growth model. Journal of Regional Science 2: 75–84.

  • 1960b. Economies of scale and metropolitan governments. Review of Economics and Statistics 42: 442–444.

  • 1963. (With W.L. Hansen.) An intersectoral flows analysis of the Californian economy. Review of Economics and Statistics 45: 409–418.

  • 1964. (With R.S. Peterson.) Measuring the impact of regional defence-space expenditures. Review of Economics and Statistics 46: 421–428.

  • 1969. An empirical regional input-output model: The state of Washington. Review of Economics and Statistics 51: 334–340.

  • 1970. Inter-regional input-output: An empirical California–Washington model. Journal of Regional Science 10: 133–152.