Charles Tiebout

Charles Mills Tiebout (1924–1968) was an economist and geographer most known for his development of the Tiebout model, which suggested that there were actually non-political solutions to the free rider problem in local governance.

Tiebout earned recognition in the area of local government and fiscal federalism with his widely cited paper “A pure theory of local expenditures”. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1950, and received a PhD in economics in University of Michigan in 1957. He was Professor of Economics and Geography at the University of Washington and served as President of the Western Regional Science Association. He died suddenly on January 16, 1968, at age 43.

Tiebout is frequently associated with the concept of foot voting, that is, physically moving to another jurisdiction where policies are closer to one's ideologies, instead of voting to change a government or its policies. The annual Charles M. Tiebout Prize in Regional Science is awarded by the Western Regional Science Association in his honor.

Major publications