Representative versus Direct Democracy: A Tiebout Test of Relative Performance: Comment

In a recent paper, Santerre (1986) set out to investigate the overall relative performance between representative and direct forms of local government by studying how the alternative forms of municipal governance capitalize on the average per acre price of land within a Tiebout world. His hypothesis is that voters prefer to locate in a direct democracy, opposed to a representative democracy because of more voter control. Operating on these preferences, voters drive property values higher within the jurisdiction governed by direct democracy.