Paying the piper: A critical examination of ACIL Allen’s (2016) An Economic Assessment of Recasting Council Boundaries in South Australia

Brian Dollery () and Joseph Drew

Economic Analysis and Policy, 2017, vol. 54, issue C, 74-82

Abstract: Contemporary public policymaking relies on commissioned work from for-profit consulting companies as a prime source of policy advice. The scholarly literature on the ‘externalisation’ of policy advice has questioned the analytical rigour of such externalised advice. An embryonic literature on policy externalisation in Australian local government has demonstrated that serious flaws exist in numerous consultant reports. In an effort to contribute to this nascent body of empirical scholarship, this paper critically examines ACIL Allen’s (2016) An Economic Assessment of Recasting Council Boundaries in South Australia which prescribes the wholesale amalgamation of South Australian local councils. We show that ACIL Allen (2016) is seriously flawed and its policy prescriptions should thus be treated with caution.

Keywords: Amalgamation; Consultant reports; Local government; South Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592616302351
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecanpo:v:54:y:2017:i:c:p:74-82

DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2017.02.003

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Analysis and Policy is currently edited by Clevo Wilson

More articles in Economic Analysis and Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().