Abolizione delle province e riallocazione delle spese: il caso della Lombardia

The law 56/2014 (the so-called Delrio law), endorsed by the Lombardy region with the regional law 19/2015, defines the core spending functions that must remain in the hands of provinces. The remaining non-core functions will be, according to the law, managed by the regions. In this paper we identify the core functions by comparing those of the actual provincial budget to those defined by the Delrio law. We then propose to quantify the possible savings by comparing per capita expenditures (remained to provinces) of demographically similar provinces. In particular, we compare per capita expenditures of Lombardy provinces with per capita average expenditure of Italian provinces belonging to the respective population class. In addition, the work, identifies efficient management areas of non-core functions that the law 56/2014 delegates to regions.