Administrative scale economies in local government: An empirical analysis of Sabah municipalities, 2000 to 2009

Siew King Ting, Brian Dollery () and Rene Villano
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Siew King Ting: Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia
Rene Villano: University of New England, Australia

Urban Studies, 2014, vol. 51, issue 13, 2899-2915

Abstract: Municipal corporate centres not only perform multiple administrative functions, including supervision, monitoring and budgeting of the overall operation of local government, but also absorb significant resources. From a public policy perspective, it is thus important to determine whether administrative scale economies exist. Adopting an econometric approach, this paper investigates administrative scale effects and the determinants of administrative intensity at the corporate level for 22 local authorities in the Malaysian state of Sabah from 2000 to 2009. Our results indicate that there is an inverted U-shaped scale effect for staff size on administrative intensity in the small urban sample, while own-source revenue is the most important factor in determining administrative intensity in all local authorities and big urban samples. Several policy recommendations are proposed.

Keywords: administrative intensity; fixed effects; local government; scale economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:51:y:2014:i:13:p:2899-2915

DOI: 10.1177/0042098013512873

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