Three Essays in Public Economics

Local public services often must compete for funding from their providing governments. Public libraries have also had to endure the rise of large bookstores offering similar services. This may have motivated libraries to behave in a more cost efficient manner. Alternatively, monitoring of libraries may have decreased as patrons shift from library use to bookstore use, increasing inefficiency. In the final chapter of this dissertation a stochastic cost frontier and the determinants of cost inefficiency are estimated using a one-step maximum likelihood technique. The results suggest that libraries operate at roughly 44% greater costs than is efficient. Inefficiency is found to be largely due to the size of the population served, the source of funding, and improper staffing ratios. Private sector competition was found to slightly increase library cost inefficiency, consistent with a decrease in monitoring.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Hemmeter, Jeffrey Andrew

Contributors dc:contributor

• Powers, Elizabeth T.

• Economics, General

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3130933

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/85541