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Bernardino Benito is a professor of public sector accounting at the University of Murcia in Spain. He has more than 40 publications in national and international books and journals to his credit. He also has directed research programs related to the public sector, especially to the economy, effi ciency, and effectiveness of the different services in this sector. He is a member of the team that established the basic guidelines for accounting reform in the European Union.

This article, investigates efficiency in the municipal sector of the Region of Murcia (Spain). With that aim, data of 31 municipalities (69% of the response rate) have been collected. Services analysed are: police, culture, sports, green areas, refuse collection and water supply. Ratios of efficiency have been related to other control variables, such as economic level, size of the municipality, decentralization, political sign and financial situation. A weak positive relation between economic level and efficiency arises. Some weak evidence also exists that public management of refuse collection is more efficient than private. In water supply, public management by means of a company controlled by the local government is clearly more efficient than private. It also seems that the higher the tax burden, the greater the efficiency in providing services.

From an international perspective, a relationship between public sector transparency and better economic and social outcomes is something that is increasingly acknowledged. In terms of lack of transparency in budget reports both bureaucratic model and fi scal illusion theory have been argued as explanations. To assess transparency in budget practices we analyse to what extent a sample of 41 countries are meeting OECD requirements according to its Best Practices for Budget Transparency document (OBP). We fi nd an average OBP fulfi lment of 56.4 per cent. Transparency is negatively correlated with corruption and positively correlated with economic development. Countries receiving external fi nancial and technical support meet fewer OBP recommendations than countries not receiving it. Considering the political framework, both progressive and conservative governments reach similar transparency levels. OECD members do not signifi cantly fulfi l more OBP suggestions than non-members. In respect of 4 variables: transparency, corruption, democracy and development, four clusters of countries arise: top-performing, low transparency-developed, low transparency-developing and worst-performing.Transparency sounds like a fi scal virtue, though its sudden elevation to prime virtue should not necessarily be taken at face value. research design and methodology and then a section that describes, practice by practice, to what extent countries are implementing OBP recommendations. There follows an examination of relationships among variables, and a discussion of the groups stemming from cluster analysis. We end on a section that summarizes conclusions, presents limitations and proposes further research.

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