Is there strength in unity? Some preliminary evidence on inter-municipal cooperation in Italy

Stefano Manestra, Giovanna Messina () and Anna Peta ()
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Anna Peta: Bank of Italy

No 452, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: This paper focuses on municipal unions, the most structured form of inter-municipal cooperation in Italy. Using information from multiple sources, we have built up an administrative database covering more than 500 municipal unions over the period 1998-2015. By cross-checking the information on the municipalities participating in each union with the figures from their financial statements, we have been able to follow the trend in their expenditure both before and after joining the union, acknowledging that time is needed for the effects of the cooperation to manifest themselves. We have replicated this analysis for single municipal functions in order to detect potential heterogeneity in the resulting economies of scale. The results show that belonging to a union has led to a reduction in expenditure only for some municipal functions (such as general administration, local police, roads and traffic) and over a certain time period. The main contribution of our work is that we have studied the effects of inter-municipal cooperation from a temporal perspective largely unexplored in previous studies of the Italian case.

Keywords: Municipal Unions; public expenditure; economies of scale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H50 H70 H72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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