Is cooperation cost reducing? An analysis of public–public partnerships and inter-municipal cooperation in Brazilian local government

Hugo Consciência Silvestre, Rc Marques (), Brian Dollery () and Aldenísio Moraes Correia

Local Government Studies, 2020, vol. 46, issue 1, 68-90

Abstract: In local government systems worldwide, financial pressures have obliged local authorities to focus on cost-efficient methods for providing local services, including inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships. However, in comparison with municipal mergers, privatisation and other approaches to the problem, the cost impact of the cooperative provision has not yet been thoroughly examined empirically. Moreover, available empirical research has largely concentrated on waste disposal in developed countries. The present paper seeks to contribute to the empirical literature on inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships by comparing their impact on costs with ‘stand-alone’ provision in a range of non-waste local services. In contrast to the bulk of existing studies, our analysis takes place in a developing country context by examining Brazilian local government over the period 2013/15. We found that – on the whole – cooperative provision is less expensive than the ‘stand-alone’ provision for the services studied. Our results can be explained by the size and composition of the population, together with the politics for cooperation.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2019.1615462 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:flgsxx:v:46:y:2020:i:1:p:68-90

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/flgs20

DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2019.1615462

Access Statistics for this article

Local Government Studies is currently edited by Helen Hancock

More articles in Local Government Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().