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Organizational economics: applications to metropolitan governance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2010

ELINOR OSTROM
ELINOR OSTROM*
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington, and Arizona State University, Tempe, United States
*
*Email: [email protected].
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Abstract:

This comment relates to Richard Posner (2010), the lead article for this issue. Posner applies ‘the principles of organization economics’ to the study of diverse types of organizations. His study comparing the FBI to other types of police organization is important and compatible with the study of urban policing in American metropolitan areas. Many policy prescriptions are based on an inadequate understanding of the diversity of urban public good production functions and a lumping together of every type of police service. A brief review of research related to the concept of polycentricity as related to urban services in metropolitan areas is provided as a way of further illustrating Posner's concern that finer distinctions need to be made in the way scholars analyze organizational economics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 109 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2010

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