The efficiency of public expenditures on basic services: The case of South African municipalities
Hammed Adedeji Amusa and
David Fadiran
South African Journal of Economics, 2024, vol. 92, issue 2, 183-213
Abstract:
This paper examines the efficiency of service delivery across 213 local and metropolitan municipalities in South Africa, focusing on four critical areas: electricity, water, sewerage and waste removal. Utilising a order‐ m partial frontier efficiency analysis (PFEA), the study calculates output‐oriented efficiency scores for each municipality, incorporating adjustments for service quality based on an ‘infrastructure quality‐index’. Our empirical findings indicate marked variations in efficiency, with electricity services exhibiting the highest efficiency rate at 35%, while waste removal lags behind at 22%. Additionally, municipalities centred around small urban towns are found to be more efficient, challenging the widely held view that larger municipalities are better equipped for efficient service delivery. The analysis offers empirical insights into local government performance in South Africa, underscoring the need for targeted policy interventions to address efficiency gaps. These results not only inform fiscal and administrative decentralisation strategies but also set the groundwork for future research exploring the underlying factors affecting municipal efficiency.
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12377
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:bla:sajeco:v:92:y:2024:i:2:p:183-213
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-2280
Access Statistics for this article
South African Journal of Economics is currently edited by Philip A. Black
More articles in South African Journal of Economics from Economic Society of South Africa Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().