IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mul/je8794/doi10.1429-92122y2018i3p297-326.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Council Size, Government Spending and Efficiency. Evidence from a Quasi-experimental Design for Italian Municipalities

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Alberto De Benedetto

Abstract

We analyze the effect of council size on municipal expenditures by using a rich data set providing information on Italian municipal budgets over the period 2001-2007. The Italian law establishing that council size is a step function of population size allows us to estimate the effect of council size by implementing a Sharp Regression Discontinuity Design. We find a negative relationship between local government size, as measured by total expenditures per capita, and the council size, after controlling for the share of employees within local government apparatus, for the quality of public goods provided and for the degree of civicness: increasing the number of members within the council leads to a greater ability to control bureaucrats and consequently to a higher level of productivity in the public administration. Similar results are found when we consider expenditures that are more directly under control of bureaucrats, namely current expenditures per capita. Finally, increasing the number of legislators positively affects the level of efficiency/productivity of municipalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Alberto De Benedetto, 2018. "Council Size, Government Spending and Efficiency. Evidence from a Quasi-experimental Design for Italian Municipalities," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 297-326.
    • Handle: RePEc:mul:je8794:doi:10.1429/92122:y:2018:i:3:p:297-326
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1429/92122
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1429/92122
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

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

    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:mul:je8794:doi:10.1429/92122:y:2018:i:3:p:297-326. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rivisteweb.it/ .

    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.