Are local public services better delivered in more autonomous regions? Evidence from European regions using a dose-response approach

Andrea Filippetti () and Giovanni Cerulli

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Does regional autonomy lead to better local public services? We investigate this issue using measures of public service performance and autonomy at the region level in 171 European regions. We introduce a novel dose-response approach which identifies the pattern of the effect of regional autonomy on the performance of public services. The relationship between the level of regional autonomy and the provision of local public services exhibits a u-shape: both low and high autonomy lead to better local public services. This speaks against the presence of one optimal level of autonomy and policy recommendations based on the view that more decentralisation is always desirable. It shows that different institutional settings can be economically viable and efficient.

Keywords: decentralization; dose-response approach; European regions; quality of institutions; Quality of local public services; regional autonomy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H70 P48 R10 R50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2018-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in Papers in Regional Science, 1, August, 2018, 97(3), pp. 801-826. ISSN: 1056-8190

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/100770/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: Are local public services better delivered in more autonomous regions? Evidence from European regions using a dose‐response approach (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:100770

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