On the Cost-Efficiency of Service Delivery in Small Municipalities

Francisco J. Arcelus, Pablo Arocena, Ferm�n Cabas�s and Pedro Pascual

Regional Studies, 2015, vol. 49, issue 9, 1469-1480

Abstract: Arcelus F. J., Arocena P., Cabas�s F. and Pascual P . On the cost-efficiency of service delivery in small municipalities, Regional Studies . This paper analyses the determinants of the efficiency of local government spending. To that effect, a stochastic cost frontier is estimated on a sample of 260 small municipalities from Navarre, a region located in northern Spain. The results suggest that the cost-efficiency in the provision of municipal services increases with (1) the level of pooling or joint provision of services among municipalities; (2) the saliency of local taxes, as compared with regional grants, in its operating budget; (3) the presence of external public comptrollers; and (4) the magnitude of the municipality's accumulated past investment in infrastructures.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00343404.2013.837872 (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:regstd:v:49:y:2015:i:9:p:1469-1480

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CRES20

DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2013.837872

Access Statistics for this article

Regional Studies is currently edited by Ivan Turok

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