By Chris Carter

Chris Stoddard’s article on the Tiebout model was a great summary of the theory because it touched on some of the most important concepts of the theory. He was able to introduce the concept of foot voting and some of the assumptions used by Tiebout to be able to come up with his economic theory on local expenditures.

Foot voting was lightly discussed in Chris Stoddard’s article. By definition, foot voting is the ‘tendency of people to vote with their feet,’ meaning people choose where they want to be located or where they want to live based on the favorable conditions and response of that place to their financial and physical needs. If for example, a farmer wants to plant corn and not strawberries, he would vote with his feet and look for the most appropriate place to grow his corn. He can and must make that choice if he wants his crops and his livelihood to be fruitful. Foot voting can greatly affect local expenditures since this can determine if the people choosing your locality are choosing it for their own personal gratification , greatly increasing local expenditure or because they can contribute to that locality through their trade.

In line with foot voting, basic assumptions were also used by Tiebout to be able to come up with his economic theories on local expenditure. One such assumption is mobile consumers. Based on this assumption, consumers are free to chose where they live and that moving has no cost or only has minimal cost. This assumption makes Tiebout’s model work because it removes the limitation of not being able to foot vote. There is also the assumption that there are a lot of communities to choose from. This assumption truly makes the theory even more plausible since people can definitely use foot voting to their advantage and find the perfect community for themselves. In addition, another assumption that Tiebout employs is the assumption that goods do not spillover from one community to the next. This means excess goods and services from one community do not transfer over to the other communities around. The assumption here is that people cannot hope to have additional resources given to them from other communities. If a community is lacking in its goods and services, the only effective way to address it is to lessen free riders in the community, people who are not beneficial to the efficiency of the thriving community, and to be able to improve its output on goods and services rather than asking from other local government systems.

Foot Voting and these assumptions are things that Chris Stoddard, in his article was able to discuss. These concepts help shape the economic model used by Tiebout to explain local expenditures. While these assumptions cannot be observed in the real world, it offers a model on how things would look like if local governments acted like free markets. It showed that economics would solve the basic problems for local expenditure at the local government level.

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