Complaints and Geographic Mobility as Responses to Dissatisfaction with Public Services

Complaints and geographic mobility--that is, "voice: and "exit"--are potential responses to "dissatisfaction" in the market for publicly provided municipal services, as in other markets. We find that reported dissatisfaction with public services can be used to predict both. Furthermore, complaining and mobility appear to be complementary, rather than competitive, responses to dissatisfaction. One implication of our findings that stated dissatisfaction has behavioral consequences is that the vast bodies of survey data on satisfaction have information content that has been underappreciated in economics research.