This paper measures effects of in local government hierarchies on local public sector size. This sector shrinks if decentralization encourages competition among governments. It expands if decentralization sacrifices scale economies. In a sample of 3,022 counties, larger county governments reduce competition and increase aggregate local public sector size, relative to aggregate county income. More cities and towns increase competition and reduce its size. More special and school districts sacrifice scale economies and increase it. Two recent articles have attempted to identify the effects of in state and local government on the size of the state and local public sector. Wallace Oates (1985) finds no important effects. Michael Nelson (1987) finds modest evidence that increased competition among government units reduces the size of the public sector. This article demonstrates that the effects of are important and complex. Decentralization which encourages competition reduces the size of the local public sector. Decentralization which discourages scale economies increases it.

Empirical models of local government unionization reveal substantial reductions in union membership due to right-to-work laws. Free riders, rather than underlying antiunion sentiments, are probably responsible because the unionization models include better measures of sentiments than right-to-work laws. Furthermore, these laws reduce the probability that bargaining unions form by more than they reduce the probability that nonbargaining associations form in three of five local government functions. These results also confirm the importance of free riders because union security clauses that prohibit free riders in states without right-to-work laws exist only in collective-bargaining contracts.

This article examines the responses of black and white workers to their employer's relocation from downtown Detroit to suburban Dearborn. Estimates of move and quit probabilities demonstrate that white employees whose commutes lengthened because of the relocation were more likely to move, but no more likely to quit, than white employees whose commute shortened. Black employees whose commutes lengthened were more likely to both move and quit in the wake of the relocation. In effect, the restrictions on black residential choice imposed by segregation forced approximately 11.3% of black workers to quit in the wake of the relocation.

This paper explores the effects of peers, friends, family, IQ, and academic performance, observed in the last year of high school, on earnings at ages 35 and 53. All significantly affect earnings at both ages. The effects of IQ are much smaller than asserted in, for example, The Bell Curve, and badly overstated in the absence of controls for family, wider context, or academic performance. Aspirations appear to be very important. Socialization and role models may be as well, but not ability spillovers. Feasible increases in academic performance and education can compensate for the effects of many cognitive and contextual deficits.