IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ekd/002836/283600056.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cost Efficiency of Finnish Municipalities in Basic Service Provision 1994-2002

Author

Listed:
  • Heikki Loikkanen
  • Ilkka Susiluoton

Abstract

Cost efficiency of basic welfare service provision in 353 Finnish municipalities in 1994-2002 is investigated. In a basically two tier public sector (central government and municipalities) the municipal sector has a central role in the Finnish economy as a provider of welfare services. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a non-parametric linear programming method is employed, calculating a best practise total cost frontier for the decision making units, and comparing the various DMUs with this frontier. The outputs consist of up to ten volume indicators of services in health, social and educational sector. As the combined input, total real production costs of these services is used. According to the results efficiency differences were considerable between the municipalities, and a small group of a peripheral municipalities scored clearly below the others. Also annual changes in cost efficiency were estimated. As a second stage, differences in the DEA cost efficiency scores were explained with statistical models. Here the explanatory variables included structural and demographic indicators of municipalities, their location and measures of political power at local level. According to the results several of these variables had an expected effect on cost efficiency.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Heikki Loikkanen & Ilkka Susiluoton, 2000. "Cost Efficiency of Finnish Municipalities in Basic Service Provision 1994-2002," Regional and Urban Modeling 283600056, EcoMod.
  • Handle: RePEc:ekd:002836:283600056
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecomod.net/sites/default/files/document-conference/ecomod2006-rum/1151.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baumol, William J, 1972. "Macroeconomics of Unbalanced Growth: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 150-150, March.
    2. Kirjavainen, Tanja & Loikkanent, Heikki A., 1998. "Efficiency differences of finnish senior secondary schools: An application of DEA and Tobit analysis," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 377-394, October.
    3. De Borger, Bruno & Kerstens, Kristiaan, 1996. "Cost efficiency of Belgian local governments: A comparative analysis of FDH, DEA, and econometric approaches," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 145-170, April.
    4. Maria Teresa Balaguer-Coll & Diego Prior-Jiménez & José Manuel Vela-Bargues, 2002. "Efficiency and Quality in Local Government Management. The case of Spanish Local Authotities," Working Papers 0202, Departament Empresa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, revised Feb 2002.
    5. Fried, Harold O. & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Shelton S. (ed.), 1993. "The Measurement of Productive Efficiency: Techniques and Applications," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195072181.
    6. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    7. Balaguer-Coll, Maria Teresa & Prior, Diego & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2007. "On the determinants of local government performance: A two-stage nonparametric approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 425-451, February.
    8. De Borger, B & Kerstens, K. & Moesen, W. & Vanneste, J., 1994. "Explaining Differences in Productive Efficiency: An Application to Belgian Municipalities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 80(3-4), pages 339-358, September.
    9. R. Allen & A. Athanassopoulos & R.G. Dyson & E. Thanassoulis, 1997. "Weights restrictions and value judgements in Data Envelopment Analysis: Evolution, development and future directions," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 73(0), pages 13-34, October.
    10. Järviö, Maija-Liisa & Luoma, Kalevi, 2000. "Productivity Changes in Finnish Health Centres: A Malmquist Index Approach," Discussion Papers 218, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    11. Seiford, Lawrence M. & Thrall, Robert M., 1990. "Recent developments in DEA : The mathematical programming approach to frontier analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 7-38.
    12. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
    13. Loikkanen, Heikki A. & Susiluoto, Ilkka, 2002. "An evaluation of economic efficiency of finnish regions by DEA and Tobit models," ERSA conference papers ersa02p237, European Regional Science Association.
    14. Francisco Pedraja-Chaparro & Javier Salinas-Jimenez & Peter Smith, 1997. "On the Role of Weight Restrictions in Data Envelopment Analysis," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 215-230, May.
    15. T Joro & E-J Viitala, 2004. "Weight-restricted DEA in action: from expert opinions to mathematical models," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 55(8), pages 814-821, August.
    16. António Afonso & Sónia Fernandes, 2003. "Efficiency of Local Government Spending: Evidence for the Lisbon Region," Working Papers Department of Economics 2003/09, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    17. Kirjavainen, Tanja & Loikkanen, Heikki A., 1995. "School Resources and Student Achievement: Evidence from Finnish Senior Secondary Schools," Discussion Papers 91, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Heikki A. Loikkanen & Ilkka Susiluoto, 2004. "Cost Efficiency of Finnish Municipalities 1994-2002. An Application of DEA and Tobit methods," ERSA conference papers ersa04p283, European Regional Science Association.
    2. D'Inverno, Giovanna & Carosi, Laura & Ravagli, Letizia, 2018. "Global public spending efficiency in Tuscan municipalities," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 102-113.
    3. Cuadrado-Ballesteros, Beatriz & García-Sánchez, Isabel-María & Prado-Lorenzo, José-Manuel, 2013. "Effect of modes of public services delivery on the efficiency of local governments: A two-stage approach," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 23-35.
    4. Finn Førsund, 2013. "Weight restrictions in DEA: misplaced emphasis?," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 271-283, December.
    5. António Afonso & Sónia Fernandes, 2005. "Assessing and Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Local Government: Evidence for Portuguese Municipalities," Working Papers Department of Economics 2005/19, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    6. Andrew Worthington & Brian Dollery, 2000. "Efficiency Measurement in the Local Public Sector: Econometric and Mathematical Programming Frontier Techniques," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 078, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
    7. Afonso, António & Fernandes, Sónia, 2008. "Assessing and explaining the relative efficiency of local government," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1946-1979, October.
    8. Caitlin T. O’Loughlin & Paul W. Wilson, 2021. "Benchmarking the performance of US Municipalities," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(6), pages 2665-2700, June.
    9. Nikolaos Oikonomou & Yannis Tountas & Argiris Mariolis & Kyriakos Souliotis & Kostas Athanasakis & John Kyriopoulos, 2016. "Measuring the efficiency of the Greek rural primary health care using a restricted DEA model; the case of southern and western Greece," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 313-325, December.
    10. Geys, Benny & Moesen, Wim, 2008. "Measuring local government technical (in)efficiency: An application and comparison of FDH, DEA and econometric approaches," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2008-21, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    11. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2015. "Efficiency of the banking system in Vietnam under financial liberalization," OSF Preprints qsf6d, Center for Open Science.
    12. 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.
    13. Luis R. Murillo‐Zamorano, 2004. "Economic Efficiency and Frontier Techniques," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 33-77, February.
    14. lo Storto, Corrado, 2020. "Performance evaluation of social service provision in Italian major municipalities using Network Data Envelopment Analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    15. Miguel A. García-Cestona & Jordi Surroca, "undated". "Eficiencia en Organizaciones Orientadas a los Interesados: Las Cajas de Ahorro Espanolas," Studies on the Spanish Economy 146, FEDEA.
    16. da Cruz, Nuno Ferreira & Marques, Rui Cunha, 2014. "Revisiting the determinants of local government performance," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 91-103.
    17. J. Cummins & Hongmin Zi, 1998. "Comparison of Frontier Efficiency Methods: An Application to the U.S. Life Insurance Industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 131-152, October.
    18. Philippe K. Widmer & Peter Zweifel, 2008. "Public Good Provision in a Federalist Country: Tiebout Competition, Fiscal Equalization, and Incentives for Efficiency in Switzerland," SOI - Working Papers 0804, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich, revised Dec 2010.
    19. António Afonso & Ana Venâncio, 2020. "Local territorial reform and regional spending efficiency," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(6), pages 888-910, November.
    20. 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.

    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:ekd:002836:283600056. 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: Theresa Leary (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecomoea.html .

    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.