IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/pubmmg/v34y2014i4p281-288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of metropolitan amalgamations in Sydney on municipal financial sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph Drew
  • Brian Dollery

Abstract

The Australian Independent Local Government Review Panel recently proposed amalgamating the majority of New South Wales (NSW) local councils in the Greater Sydney metropolitan region in order to increase municipal population size with the aim of engineering a more financially sustainable system. However, no attempt was made to determine whether there is a statistically significant association between larger population size and improved financial sustainability ratios, nor whether the proposed merged local authorities will be more financially viable. This paper addresses these critical omissions. The empirical analysis reported indicates that the proposed amalgamations will not secure enhanced financial sustainability in Greater Sydney local government.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph Drew & Brian Dollery, 2014. "The impact of metropolitan amalgamations in Sydney on municipal financial sustainability," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 281-288, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:pubmmg:v:34:y:2014:i:4:p:281-288
    DOI: 10.1080/09540962.2014.920201
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09540962.2014.920201
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09540962.2014.920201?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brian E. Dollery & Joseph Garcea & Edward C. LeSage Jr (ed.), 2008. "Local Government Reform," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12592, December.
    2. Brian E. Dollery & Lorenzo Robotti (ed.), 2008. "The Theory and Practice of Local Government Reform," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12719, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joseph Drew & Brian Dollery, 2016. "A Factor Analytic Assessment of Financial Sustainability: The Case of New South Wales Local Government," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 26(2), pages 132-140, June.
    2. Joseph Drew & Brian Dollery, 2015. "Inconsistent Depreciation Practice and Public Policymaking: Local Government Reform in New South Wales," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 25(1), pages 28-37, March.
    3. Peter Abelson, 2016. "The Optimal Size of Local Government, with Special Reference to New South Wales," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 23(1), pages 31-46.
    4. Joseph Drew & Brian Dollery, 2015. "Debate: Rejoinder to Sansom (2015)," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(6), pages 395-396, November.
    5. Alinska Agnieszka & Kosztowniak Aneta & Wajda Marcin, 2021. "Liabilities of Local Government Units in Poland: Identification and Analysis of Diversification Factors," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(2B), pages 113-134.
    6. Dollery, Brian & Drew, Joseph, 2017. "Paying the piper: A critical examination of ACIL Allen’s (2016) An Economic Assessment of Recasting Council Boundaries in South Australia," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 74-82.
    7. Guyot, Alexis & Doumpos, Michael & Zopounidis, Constantin, 2016. "A novel multi-attribute benchmarking approach for assessing the financial performance of local governments: Empirical evidence from FranceAuthor-Name: Galariotis, Emilios," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(1), pages 301-317.
    8. Serena Santis, 2020. "The Demographic and Economic Determinants of Financial Sustainability: An Analysis of Italian Local Governments," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-16, September.
    9. Joseph Drew, 2018. "Playing for keeps: local government distortion of depreciation accruals in response to high-stakes public policy-making," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(1), pages 57-64, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Bartolini, 2015. "Municipal fragmentation and economic performance in OECD TL2 regions," ERSA conference papers ersa15p607, European Regional Science Association.
    2. Brian Dollery & Michael Kortt & Bligh Grant, 2013. "Options for rationalizing local government structure: a policy agenda," Chapters, in: Santiago Lago-Peñas & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), The Challenge of Local Government Size, chapter 10, pages 242-262, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Bernard Dafflon, 2012. "Voluntary amalgamation of local governments: the Swiss debate in the European context," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1204, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    4. Banaszewska, Monika & Bischoff, Ivo & Bode, Eva & Chodakowska, Aneta, 2022. "Does inter-municipal cooperation help improve local economic performance? – Evidence from Poland," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    5. Benoît Le Maux & Kristýna Dostálová & Fabio Padovano, 2020. "Ideology or voters? A quasi-experimental test of why left-wing governments spend more," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 17-48, January.
    6. Fabio FIORILLO, 2011. "A model on interests representation and;accountability in small local governments," Working Papers 356, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    7. Giovanna Di Ielsi & Fabio Fiorillo & Francesco Porcelli, 2022. "Le unioni di comuni in Italia: modelli di gestione associata a confronto (The Italian "unioni di comuni": A comparison among different management models of intermunicipal cooperation)," Moneta e Credito, Economia civile, vol. 75(297), pages 11-40.
    8. Dollery, B.E., 2021. "A critical appraisal of the Western Australian local government review panel’s recommendations," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 434-438.
    9. Mark Callanan & Ronan Murphy & Aodh Quinlivan, 2014. "The Risks of Intuition: Size, Costs and Economies of Scale in Local Government," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 45(3), pages 371-403.
    10. Rhys Andrews, 2015. "Vertical consolidation and financial sustainability: evidence from English local government," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(6), pages 1518-1545, December.
    11. Joseph Drew & Brian Dollery, 2014. "Separation anxiety: an empirical evaluation of the Australian Sunshine Coast Regional Council de-amalgamation," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 213-220, May.
    12. Juan Luis Gómez-Reino & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2013. "An international perspective on the determinants of local government fragmentation," Chapters, in: Santiago Lago-Peñas & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), The Challenge of Local Government Size, chapter 2, pages 8-54, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Rhys Andrews & Steven Van de Walle, 2013. "New Public Management and Citizens' Perceptions of Local Service Efficiency, Responsiveness, Equity and Effectiveness," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(5), pages 762-783, June.
    14. Bernard Dafflon, 2013. "Voluntary amalgamation of local governments: the Swiss debate in the European context," Chapters, in: Santiago Lago-Peñas & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), The Challenge of Local Government Size, chapter 8, pages 189-220, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Sabrina Iommi & Donatella Marinari, 2016. "Frammentazione comunale e spesa pubblica: una proposta di aggregazione sui sistemi locali del lavoro," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(1), pages 107-136.
    16. Hanes, Niklas, 2003. "Empirical Studies in Local Public Finance: Spillovers, Amalgamations, and Tactical Redistribution," Umeå Economic Studies 604, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    17. Jean-Michel Josselin & Fabio Padovano & Yvon Rocaboy, 2013. "Grant legislation vs. political factors as determinants of soft budget spending behaviors. Comparison between Italian and French regions," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 10(3), pages 317-354, December.
    18. Benoît Le Maux & Kristýna Dostálová & Fabio Padovano, 2017. "Ideology or Voters? A Quasi-Experimental Test of Why Left-Wing Governments Spend More," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2017-05-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    19. Juan Luis Gómez-Reino & Santiago Lago-Peñas & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2021. "Evidence on economies of scale in local public service provision: a meta-analysis," Working Papers. Collection A: Public economics, governance and decentralization 2103, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    20. Aurélien Bargain & Christophe Maurel, 2017. "L'instrumentation de gestion au service de la mutualisation de services publics communaux : quels enjeux pour quels effets ?," Post-Print hal-01907611, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:pubmmg:v:34:y:2014:i:4:p:281-288. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RPMM20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.