A B S T R AC TThis study deals with the problem of breakdown in out-of-home placements for Danish teenagers. How often are these placements prematurely terminated against the requests and intentions of the child welfare authorities? Which factors seem to increase and decrease placement breakdown? The sample consists of 225 youths and 367 placements during the years 2004-2008. Among the 225 youths, 44% experienced a breakdown, and 33% of the 367 placements ended with a breakdown. A large proportion of the placement breakdowns (20%) occurred before 4 months, and within the first year, 62% of the placement breakdowns had taken place. Replacements took place in 61% of all placement breakdowns. The analysis showed that type of placement and number of youth at the same placement had significant association to placement breakdown, but variables based on the social worker's clinical assessment showed no association to breakdown. However, while the logistic regression model was significant, it explained only 6% of the variance. Earlier studies have indicated that breakdown is a substantial problem of child welfare in several other western countries, Denmark is no exception. These corresponding breakdown rates point out that no child welfare system yet have found a method to reduce breakdown substantially.

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In the Ph.D. thesis, I assess the effects of local and regional government amalgamations on the most often mentioned issues addressed in comprehensive consolidation reforms, including local public sector efficiency, the quality of local democracy and local private-sector employment. I exploit a large-scale structural reform in Denmark in 2007 that substantially reshaped the boundaries of local and regional jurisdictions and unique register and survey panel data. The Ph.D. thesis includes four self-contained research articles.In research article 1: Kommunalreformens og sanktionslovgivningens betydning for den geografiske centralisering af kommunernes administration og service, I assess the spatial redistribution of local public funds, including the employment in local government administration, childcare, primary school and eldercare until six years after the reform. I further assess how the relative power of the mayor, the financial executive committee, and the municipal managers condition the location decision. The results suggest that the local government consolidations resulted in a spatial centralisation of the local public administration. However, it had no or modest effects on the locations of the core public services, given the relative political power of the mayor, the financial executive committee, and the municipal managers. RESEARCH PAPERS AND THEIR PUB-LICATION STATUS Research articlesThis thesis comprises of four self-contained research articles together with this summary report. The four research article are listed below:Research article 1: Høst, A.K. (2018). "Kommunalreformens og sanktionslovgivningens betydning for den geografiske centralisering af kommunernes administration og service". Politik og Økonomi, 91(4): 50-63Research article 2: Høst, A.K. (2021). "Jurisdiction size and local government administrative expenditures -Quasi-experimental evidence on the effect of spatial centralization, and labor input".