Economías de escala, densidad y alcance en la provisión pública de infraestructura básica municipal

Municipalities manage their budgets in a complex national, regional, and local legal framework while being under the cross-pressure between of citizens claiming for better public goods and higher-level Administrations requiring higher allocative efficiency in public spending. The legal framework determines the scheme of intergovernmental finance based on well specified cooperation programs for the provision of basic infrastructure that result in different stocks of local infrastructures. We estímate translog cost functions to quantify economies of scale, density and scope in the provision of infrastructure dealing with water supply, sewerage and cleansing of residual waters, paving and lighting. We find that these economies are present to a large degree due to the existing rural structure, characterized by a suboptimal municipal size. This carries an excess cost in the provision of infrastructure in terms of the existing infrastructure stock and the amount of intergovernmental finance. Taking Castilla y Leonas the geographical reference, we estimate infrastructure stocks relying on the Local Infrastructure and Equipment Survey while developing a new price database based on best practice engineering approaches.