Local territorial reform and regional spending efficiency

Antonio Afonso and Ana Venâncio ()

No 2019/71, Working Papers REM from ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa

Abstract: We investigate the effect of a local territorial reform, which reduced the number of parishes, on municipality spending efficiency in the period 2011-2016. We build a composite output indicator and use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compute efficiency scores, which we then analyze through a second stage regression with socio-demographic, economic factors and the reform. We find efficiency gains for around 10% of municipalities overall. In Alentejo and in Centro, more than 50% of the municipalities improved efficiency. The second stage results show that the reform did not improve local spending efficiency in Mainland Portugal, particularly in the Norte region.

Keywords: public spending efficiency; local government; data envelopment analysis (DEA); local organizational reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 H72 R50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-eur and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Local territorial reform and regional spending efficiency (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ise:remwps:wp0712019

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