Digital Commons Network^™

We investigate the classic question of how the provision of a local publicly-provided good--air quality--varies with the degree of decentralization of policymaking. Exploiting exogenous variation in the natural topography of the United States to instrument for the number of local government jurisdictions in a metropolitan area, we show that areas with more jurisdictions have significantly lower air quality, and significantly higher concentrations of the toxic air pollutants most closely associated with cancer and non-cancer health risks. Moreover, we estimate that this increase in pollution lowers housing values by at least 3%. By contrast, local drinking water quality--a publicly-provided good not …