Local governments' efficiency: a systematic literature review—part II

Abstract

The efficient management of the available resources in local governments has been a topic of high interest in the field of public sector. We provide an extensive and comprehensive review of the existing literature on local governments' efficiency from a global point of view, covering all articles from 1990 to August 2016. This paper is the second of two. It covers the aspects related to local governments' efficiency measurement along with its determinants, that is, taking into account the effect of environmental variables over efficiency. First, we describe which techniques have been used to incorporate environmental variables in the context of local governments. Second, we provide a classification for the determinants used and summarize their impact on efficiency. Finally, we discuss some operative directions and considerations for further research in the field.

Explaining Differences in Efficiency: A Meta‐study on Local Government Literature

“…Thirdly, we (a) manually consulted the principal field journals ( Journal of Productivity Analysis , European Journal of Operational Research , Local Government Studies , Cities , Omega, Journal of Urban Economics ); (b) explored additional databases, such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN); (c) verified that we had not overlooked efficiency studies by scanning the references of the qualitative surveys published by da Cruz and Marques (), Narbón‐Perpiñá and De Witte (; ) and Worthington and Dollery (). The third round of the search yielded 20 additional studies.…”

“…As Glass (, p. 3) states, MRA ‘connotes a rigorous alternative to the casual, narrative discussions of research studies which typify our attempt to make sense of the rapidly expanding research literature’. Importantly, by using external information on specific observable country variables for the time and the location that primary papers refer, we provide additional information on how the socio‐environmental conditions – for example, institutions and the development level – impact on the variability of efficiency in local government (Boetti et al ., ; Monkam, ; Asatryan and De Witte, ; Narbón‐Perpiñá and De Witte, ; ).…”

Analyzing the Efficiency of County Road Production – Evidence from Eastern German Counties

“…The efficiency analysis does not clearly identify the source of inefficiencies. Therefore, many studies that conduct efficiency analyses are also concerned with the determinants of local governments’ performance (see Narbón‐Perpiñá and de Witte, ). Local governments face different conditions that are beyond the control of political decision‐makers but nonetheless affect the efficiency scores.…”

“…Such conditions may be socioeconomic (such as the population density or composition) or geographical (such as the climate). To examine the nexus between these conditions and the efficiency of road production, a second‐stage analysis is often conducted (see Narbón‐Perpiñá and de Witte, ) . However, this type of analysis cannot be applied here because of the small sample size.…”

Local governments' efficiency: a systematic literature review—part I

“…This paper is the first of two. In this paper, we focus on the basic aspects of local governments' efficiency measurement, while in the companion paper (Narbón‐Perpiñá and De Witte, ) we take into account the incorporation of environmental variables in the efficiency estimation. More specifically, this paper contributes to the literature in three major aspects.…”