Publication details

DOES MUNICIPAL SIZE IMPACT MUNICIPAL PERFORMANCE?

Authors

NEMEC Juraj MATĚJOVÁ Lenka SOUKOPOVÁ Jana KLIMOVSKÝ Daniel

Year of publication 2018
Type Article in Proceedings
Conference Proceedings of the 1st International Conference Fiscal Dialog 2017
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Economics and Administration

Citation
Web https://fidi.cz/_files/200000186-e9f88eaf75/Proceedings%20FIDI%202017.pdf
Keywords local self-government; fragmentation; economies of scale; optimum size
Description This paper has two goals. The first one (literature review part) is to summarise the arguments for and against a fragmented territorial structure on the local level. The second one (analytical part) is to assess the reality of the existence of “economies of scale” on the level of local selfgovernments - to examine whether local government expenditures increase or decrease with population size on the base of the Czech data. The results from the literature review indicate that the territorial fragmentation has many supporters and detractors, however, the results from all existing analyses are inconclusive. The decision on the size of the municipality seems to be also more a political issue than an economic one. The results of the analysis seem to confirm two core facts, established by most previ­ous studies – the cost curves have different shapes for different local services and functions, with different minimums and the fact that not all local public services and functions can be connected with economies of scale. However, the fact that cost curves are “inconclusive” does not mean that the existence of many too small municipalities (like in the Czech Republic) should not be somehow reflected

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