A Pandemonium of Confusions: Kay and Marsh on Tiebout

In a recent issue of this journal Adrian Kay and Alex Marsh consider the literature on Charles Tiebout's model as an example of the 'public choice research programme'. 1 They argue that the evidence suggests Tiebout has been falsified in favour of other models of residential mobility. They suggest that the fact there is so much literature on Tiebout shows that formal methodology does not allow models to be falsified but protects them, and imply that therefore the Tiebout model has no lessons for local public goods provision. Their entire article is suffused with confusions about almost every aspect of the topic that they discuss, and these confusions interweave and overlap in self-supporting pandemonium. In this short comment I try to bring some clarity and sense to the issue of what the Tiebout model predicts and how well those predictions are supported.