The temporal dependence of public policy evaluation: the case of local government amalgamation

Dana McQuestin, Joseph Drew and Hirokuni Iiboshi

Local Government Studies, 2023, vol. 49, issue 5, 953-974

Abstract: Amalgamation has been a cornerstone of many local government reform programmes internationally. However, there has been a lack of consensus in the academic literature surrounding the outcomes associated with amalgamation. One potential explanation for this is the difference in the length of time over which the evaluation takes place. In order to determine if the impacts of boundary reform are indeed temporally dependent on nature, we collected and analysed a 17-year panel of empirical data from a large-scale amalgamation programme in 2008. Our results indicate that the outcomes arising from the program do indeed display variation over time, with initial savings being negated by increased costs in the medium-term and ultimately an insignificant impact over the long term. The public policy implications and recommendations suggested by our analysis have important implications for the design and evaluation of future local government boundary reform programmes.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2022.2039128 (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:49:y:2023:i:5:p:953-974

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

DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2022.2039128

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 ().