Vertical Grants and Local Public Efficiency: The Inference-disturbing Effect of Fiscal Equalization

Abstract

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Local government efficiency: reviewing determinants and setting new trends

“…Recently, in the last decade, new dimensions have been included such as geographical or natural factors, such as the coastline or mountainous zone (Boetti et al., 2012; Da Cruz and Marques, 2014; D'Inverno et al., 2018). In addition, there has been a greater proliferation of studies focusing on financial variables such as transfers or grants (Fogarty and Mugera, 2013; Nikolov and Hrovatin, 2013; Ashworth et al., 2014; Doumpos and Cohen, 2014; Pérez‐López et al., 2015; Arcelus et al., 2015) and debt or financial liabilities (Benito et al., 2010; Bönisch et al., 2011; Bischoff et al., 2013; Cordero et al., 2017), all of which can be explained by the need to improve the financial sustainability of public accounts in a post‐crisis scenario.…”