IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/regstd/v49y2015i9p1469-1480.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Cost-Efficiency of Service Delivery in Small Municipalities

Author

Listed:
  • Francisco J. Arcelus
  • Pablo Arocena
  • Ferm�n Cabas�s
  • Pedro Pascual

Abstract

Arcelus F. J., Arocena P., Cabas�s F. and Pascual P . On the cost-efficiency of service delivery in small municipalities, Regional Studies . This paper analyses the determinants of the efficiency of local government spending. To that effect, a stochastic cost frontier is estimated on a sample of 260 small municipalities from Navarre, a region located in northern Spain. The results suggest that the cost-efficiency in the provision of municipal services increases with (1) the level of pooling or joint provision of services among municipalities; (2) the saliency of local taxes, as compared with regional grants, in its operating budget; (3) the presence of external public comptrollers; and (4) the magnitude of the municipality's accumulated past investment in infrastructures.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco J. Arcelus & Pablo Arocena & Ferm�n Cabas�s & Pedro Pascual, 2015. "On the Cost-Efficiency of Service Delivery in Small Municipalities," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(9), pages 1469-1480, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:regstd:v:49:y:2015:i:9:p:1469-1480
    DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2013.837872
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00343404.2013.837872
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00343404.2013.837872?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. Lorenzo Boetti & Massimiliano Piacenza & Gilberto Turati, 2012. "Decentralization and Local Governments' Performance: How Does Fiscal Autonomy Affect Spending Efficiency?," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 68(3), pages 269-302, September.
    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. D’Inverno, Giovanna & De Witte, Kristof, 2020. "Service level provision in municipalities: A flexible directional distance composite indicator," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(3), pages 1129-1141.
    2. Tommaso Agasisti & Francesco Porcelli, 2019. "Local governments’ efficiency and its heterogeneity – empirical evidence from a Stochastic Frontier Analysis of Italian municipalities 2010-2015," Working papers 81, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    3. Titl, Vitezslav & De Witte, Kristof & Geys, Benny, 2021. "Political donations, public procurement and government efficiency," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    4. Fusco, Elisa & Allegrini, Veronica, 2020. "The role of spatial interdependence in local government cost efficiency: An application to waste Italian sector," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    5. Isabel Narbón-Perpiñá & Maria Teresa Balaguer-Coll & Diego Prior & Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2021. "Searching for the optimal territorial structure: the case of Spanish provincial councils," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(4), pages 645-664, April.
    6. Arocena, Pablo & Cabasés, Fermín & Pascual, Pedro, 2022. "A centralized directional distance model for efficient and horizontally equitable grants allocation to local governments," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    7. Giampaolo Arachi & Debora Assisi & Berardino Cesi & Michele G. Giuranno & Felice Russo, 2022. "Inter-municipal Cooperation in Public Procurement," CEIS Research Paper 548, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 19 Dec 2022.
    8. Isabel Narbón-Perpiñá & Kristof De Witte, 2016. "Local governments’ efficiency: A systematic literature review – Part I," Working Papers 2016/20, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    9. Viktorija ipilova & Inta Ostrovska & Ludmila Aleksejeva & Elita Jermolajeva & Dmitrijs Olehnovics, 2017. "A Review of the Literature on Smart Development: Lessons for Small Municipalities," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(1), pages 460-469.
    10. Francesco Aiello & Graziella Bonanno & Luigi Capristo, 2017. "Explaining Differences In Efficiency: The Case Of Local Government Literature," Working Papers 201704, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    11. Francesco Aiello & Graziella Bonanno, 2019. "Explaining Differences In Efficiency: A Meta‐Study On Local Government Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 999-1027, July.
    12. Maria Basílio & Clara Pires & Carlos Borralho & José Pires Reis, 2020. "Local government efficiency: is there anything new after Troika’s intervention in Portugal?," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(2), pages 309-332, June.

    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. Dalle Nogare, Chiara & Kauder, Björn, 2017. "Term limits for mayors and intergovernmental grants: Evidence from Italian cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-11.
    2. Simona Ferraro & Tommaso Agasisti & Francesco Porcelli & Mara Soncin, 2021. "Local governments’ efficiency and educational results: empirical evidence from Italian primary schools," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(35), pages 4017-4039, July.
    3. Emma Galli & Ilde Rizzo & Carla Scaglioni, 2018. "Transparency and Performance in the Italian Large Municipalities," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2018(2-3), pages 5-25.
    4. Fengqin Qin, 2022. "Fiscal Expenditure Structure, Vertical Fiscal Imbalance and Environmental Pollution," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-21, July.
    5. Isabel Narbón-Perpiñá & Maria Teresa Balaguer-Coll & Marko Petrović & Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2020. "Which estimator to measure local governments’ cost efficiency? The case of Spanish municipalities," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 51-82, March.
    6. Resce, Giuliano, 2022. "The impact of political and non-political officials on the financial management of local governments," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 943-962.
    7. Fiorenza Venturini, 2018. "The Unintended Composition Effect of the Subnational Government Fiscal Rules: The Case of Italian Municipalities," Working papers 70, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    8. Marco Alberto De Benedetto & Sergio Destefanis & Luigi Guadalupi, 2019. "Electoral Reform and Public Sector Efficiency. Some Evidence From Italian Municipalities," Working Papers 3_237, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche, Università degli Studi di Salerno.
    9. Jose M. Cordero & Cristina Polo & Nickolaos G. Tzeremes, 2020. "Evaluating the efficiency of municipalities in the presence of unobserved heterogeneity," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 377-390, June.
    10. Kortelainen, Mika & Lapointe, Simon, 2019. "Inefficiencies in the Financing of Finnish County Governments - Lessons from the Literature on Fiscal Federalism," Research Reports 188, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    11. Henry Aray & Janeth Pacheco-Delgado, 2022. "Fiscal Decentralization and the Allocation of Public Spending of Subnational Governments. The Case of Ecuador," ThE Papers 22/01, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    12. David Cantarero & Patricio Perez, 2012. "Decentralization and regional government size in Spain," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 11(3), pages 211-237, December.
    13. Resce, Giuliano, 2022. "Political and Non-Political Officials in Local Government," Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers esdp22079, University of Molise, Department of Economics.
    14. Agnese Sacchi & Simone Salotti, 2017. "The influence of decentralized taxes and intergovernmental grants on local spending volatility," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(4), pages 507-522, April.
    15. Di Liddo Giuseppe & Longobardi Ernesto & Porcelli Francesco, 2019. "Fiscal Imbalances and Fiscal Effort of Local Governments," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 19(3), pages 1-7, July.
    16. Cheick Camara, 2023. "Gender Budgeting and Health Spending Efficiency in Indian States: A Staggered Difference-in-Differences Analysis," CERDI Working papers hal-04294262, HAL.
    17. Tommaso Agasisti & Antonio Dal Bianco & Massimo Griffini, 2016. "The public sector efficiency in Italy: The case of Lombardy municipalities in the provision of the essential public services," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(1), pages 59-84.
    18. Isabel Narbón-Perpiñá & Kristof De Witte, 2016. "Local governments’ efficiency: A systematic literature review – Part I," Working Papers 2016/20, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    19. Isaac Otoo & Michael Danquah, 2021. "Fiscal decentralization and efficiency of public services delivery by local governments in Ghana," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 33(3), pages 411-425, September.
    20. Plaček, Michal & Valentinov, Vladislav & del Campo, Cristina & Vaceková, Gabriela & Ochrana, František & Šumpíková, Markéta, 2021. "Stewardship and administrative capacity in green public procurement in the Czech Republic: Evidence from a large-N survey," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 33.

    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:regstd:v:49:y:2015:i:9:p:1469-1480. 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/CRES20 .

    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.