Welfare analysis of the number and locations of local public facilities

We develop a model with a finite number of households and congestible local public goods where the level of provision, the number of facilities and their locations are all endogenously determined. We prove that an equal-treatment identical-provision second-best optimum exists, where all households are required to reach the same utility level, the provision of local public good is required to be the same at all facilities, and all facilities must serve the same number of consumers. Such an optimal public facility configuration may be concentrated (single site) or dispersed (multiple sites), depending on congestability, commuting cost and household preference parameters. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.