Size and school district consolidation: Do opposites attract?

Municipalities sometimes retain separate police departments and park services while cooperating in public schooling services with neighboring municipalities. The theoretical model of Ellingsen (Journal of Public Economics, 68, 251-68, 1998) predicts that: (1) under Tiebout sorting, larger size differences make big municipalities more likely to consolidate with small ones, but small municipalities less likely to consolidate with big ones; (2) municipalities never excessively consolidate. The current study examines 298 pairs of municipalities that could consolidate schooling. The decision-making process of the larger and smaller member of each pair is examined separately. The Poirier bivariate probit results are consistent with Ellingsen's predictions but contradict previous empirical findings.