Quasimarket Failure

The efficiency of “quasimarkets” — decentralized public goods provision subjected to Tiebout competition — is a staple of public choice conventional wisdom. Yet in the 1990s a countermovement in political economy called “neoconsolidationism” began to challenge this wisdom. The neoconsolidationists use the logic of government failure central to public choice economics to argue that quasimarkets fail and that jurisdictional consolidation is a superior way to supply public goods and services in metropolitan areas. Public choice scholars have largely ignored the neoconsolidationists’ challenge. This paper brings that challenge to public choice scholars’ attention with the hope of encouraging responses. It also offers some preliminary thoughts about the directions such responses might take.