Structural reforms during the greek economic adjustment programme: the amalgamation of municipalities

Massimiliano Ferraresi (), Maurizio Conti, Nikolaos Benos, Stelios Karagiannis and Michail Papazoglou
Additional contact information
Massimiliano Ferraresi: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy
Nikolaos Benos: University of Ioannina, Greece

Working papers from Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica

Abstract: Amalgamation reforms have been extensively implemented in several countries as policy instruments to improve local government service provision and reduce costs based on scale economies. However, their effectiveness has proved ambiguous in practice. We investigate the impact of a substantial large-scale amalgamation that took place in Greek municipalities in 2010, and its effect on per-capita current costs and investments. Using data for the 2005-2018 period, we find very weak evidence of the reform on current costs, while the amalgamation of municipalities is associated with a significant decrease in per capita investment around 31%. This effect is robust, persistent, and associated with a substantial decline in GDP per capita of about 13% over the sample period.

JEL-codes: H72 H77 R51 R53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.siepweb.it/siep/wp/wp-content/uploads/2 ... _Ferraresi-et-al.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ipu:wpaper:109

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica Corso Strada Nuova 65 27100 Pavia Italia.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Monica Bozzano ().