Foreign-Born Residents and the Optimal Provision of Public Goods: An Application of Lindahl Pricing and Tiebout Sorting.

This paper examines immigration as it relates to two well-known public finance models of optimal public goods provision: Lindahl pricing and the Tiebout model. As the major function of local governments is the provision of public goods, this paper suggests that local-level voter participation by immigrants could improve preference revelation in Lindahl's model and reinforce Tiebout sorting between jurisdictions. Furthermore, the increased use of vouchers provided to students, native and foreign born alike, increases direct preference revelation concerning the specific public good of education. By using long-standing public finance models, this paper shows that policy ideas of the Left, increased voice (access to the voting booth), and the Right, increased freedom of exit (access to school vouchers), have the theoretical benefit of increasing public good optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]