Mayors' perceptions on local government reforms and decentralization in Spain

Decentralization and Local Government Performance

This paper is taken from a study financed by a grant from the World Bank Research Committee. The full report should be available from mid-1998.

Self-Serving Mayors and Local Government Consolidations in Hokkaido

This paper investigates local government consolidations with a focus on public choice aspects in the decision-making. Politicians could lose future payoffs if their locality merges with a larger counterpart, and they may sabotage the merger process. The analysis with data from 3,212 Japanese municipalities reveals that a long-serving mayor would present an obstacle to consolidation.

Cities in American Federalism: Evidence on State-Local Government Conflict from a Survey of Mayors

Previous scholarship on American federalism has largely focused on the national government’s increasingly conflictual relationship with the states. While some studies have explored the rise of mandates at the state level, there has been comparatively less attention on state-local relationships. Using a new survey of mayors, we explore variations in local government attitudes towards their state...

Local Government Reforms In Pakistan : Context , Content And Causes

Do Public Sector Reforms Get Rusty? Local Privatization in Spain

Recent evidence on the savings from private production of local public services has become increasingly ambiguous. Here we specify and estimate a model to explain municipal costs for solid waste collection. As we find no effect of the mode of production on costs, we put forward two hypotheses. First, progressive concentration and decreases in bidding competition may come to outweigh gains from ...