Do mergers of large local governments reduce expenditures? – Evidence from Germany using the synthetic control method

Roesel, Felix

doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2017.10.002

Cited by 77 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Thus, county mergers do not affect lists of independent candidates. The results for Saxony-Anhalt entirely reproduce findings by Roesel (2017) for the neighboring state of Saxony that also merged counties: Voter turnout decrease, right-wing populists benefit, and vote shares for independent non-partisan candidates are not affected. Therefore, even against the background that most mergers in Saxony-Anhalt were somewhat voluntary and accepted by local councils, voters seem to protest against larger jurisdictions.…”

Section: Political Effectssupporting

confidence: 75%

Merging County Administrations – Cross-National Evidence of Fiscal and Political Effects

Blesse

Roesel

2018

SSRN Journal

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp18031.pdf Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schungs arbei ten des ZEW. Die Bei trä ge lie gen in allei ni ger Ver ant wor tung der Auto ren und stel len nicht not wen di ger wei se die Mei nung des ZEW dar. Terms of use: Documents inDis cus si on Papers are inten ded to make results of ZEW research prompt ly avai la ble to other eco no mists in order to encou ra ge dis cus si on and sug gesti ons for revi si ons. The aut hors are sole ly respon si ble for the con tents which do not neces sa ri ly repre sent the opi ni on of the ZEW. Accepted for publication in Local Government StudiesAbstract While many central governments amalgamate municipalities, mergers of larger county administrations are rare and hardly explored. In this paper, we assess both fiscal and political effects of county mergers in two different institutional settings: counties act autonomously as upperlevel local governments (Germany), or counties being decentralised branches of the state government (Austria). We apply difference-in-differences estimations to county merger reforms in each country. In both cases, some counties were amalgamated while others remain untouched.Austrian counties (Bezirke) and German counties (Landkreise) widely differ in terms of autonomy and institutions, but our results are strikingly similar. In both cases, we neither find evidence for cost savings nor for staff reductions. Instead, voter turnout consistently decreases in merged counties, and right-wing populists seem to gain additional support. We conclude that political costs clearly outweigh fiscal null benefits of county merger reforms -independent of the underlying institutional setting.

show abstract

Section: Political Effectssupporting

confidence: 75%

Merging County Administrations – Cross-National Evidence of Fiscal and Political Effects

Blesse

Roesel

2018

SSRN Journal

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On the contrary, Moisio and Uusitalo () find that Finnish municipalities’ spending was higher in the merged municipalities, even 10 years after amalgamation. Roesel () applies a synthetic control method to state‐level aggregates of German districts, finding that mergers of large local governments do not reduce per capita total expenditures and specific per capita expenditures in categories such as social care, education, or administration. Finally, Allers and Geertsema (), using data on Dutch municipalities, find no significant effect of amalgamation on aggregate spending, on taxation and on the level of public services.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does intermunicipal cooperation promote efficiency gains? Evidence from Italian municipal unions

Ferraresi

Migali

Rizzo

2018

Journal of Regional Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Intermunicipal cooperation is a common way to provide local public services, exploit economies of scale, and internalize externalities.However, little is known about possible efficiency gains. We test their existence in terms of local public expenditures reductions, by investigating the Italian experience of municipal unions. We adopt quasiexperimental methodologies using administrative data on municipalities in the Emilia Romagna region. We find that being in a municipal union reduces the total per capita current expenditures by around 5 percent, without affecting the level of local public services. The effect is robust, persistent, and increasing up to six years after entrance.

show abstract

“…Dragnet-controls were very suitable to do so because they stand for law-and-order policies. In a similar vein, populist rightwing parties enjoyed electoral success in rural areas and benefitted from mergers of large local governments in Saxony (Roesel 2017). Many voters in rural areas believe that established parties disregard rural compared to urban areas, and consequently, support populist (rightwing) parties.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dragnet-Controls and Government Ideology

Potrafke

2019

Defence and Peace Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In many European countries established leftwing and rightwing parties have been threatened by policy convergence and, in turn, new populist parties that offer more polarized platforms. I investigate whether government ideology influences dragnet-controlscontrols of persons conducted by the police without having any suspicion that the controlled person committed a crime. They took effect after the Schengen Agreement in 1995. I propose dragnet-controls to be a prime example of ideology-induced policies implemented by established parties. Dragnet-controls confine citizens' liberties, but may help to detect criminals. Using data from the 16 German states over the period 1995-2017, I show that rightwing governments have been active in implementing dragnet-controls and leftwing governments have denied dragnetcontrols since the mid 1990s. When evaluating how government/party ideology influences individual policies, previous econometric studies ignored initiatives in parliament. My study also considers initiatives in parliament. I conjecture that, since 2015, the rightwing CDU has used initiatives to introduce/extend dragnet-controls to also deal with the upcoming threat of rightwing populism. Future research should examine policy-differences between the established parties regarding more finegrained policy measures also in other European countries.

show abstract

Do mergers of large local governments reduce expenditures? – Evidence from Germany using the synthetic control method

Cited by 77 publications

References 39 publications

Merging County Administrations – Cross-National Evidence of Fiscal and Political Effects

Merging County Administrations – Cross-National Evidence of Fiscal and Political Effects

Does intermunicipal cooperation promote efficiency gains? Evidence from Italian municipal unions

Dragnet-Controls and Government Ideology

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About