Administrative scale economies in local government: An empirical analysis of Sabah municipalities, 2000 to 2009

Title
Administrative scale economies in local government: An empirical analysis of Sabah municipalities, 2000 to 2009
Publication Date
2014
Author(s)
Ting, Siew King
Dollery, Brian E
Villano, Renato
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2581-6623
Email: rvillan2@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:rvillan2
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Sage Publications Ltd
Place of publication
United Kingdom
DOI
10.1177/0042098013512873
UNE publication id
une:16128
Abstract
Municipal corporate centres not only perform multiple administrative functions, including supervision, monitoring and budgeting of the overall operation of local government, but also absorb significant resources. From a public policy perspective, it is thus important to determine whether administrative scale economies exist. Adopting an econometric approach, this paper investigates administrative scale effects and the determinants of administrative intensity at the corporate level for 22 local authorities in the Malaysian state of Sabah from 2000 to 2009. Our results indicate that there is an inverted U-shaped scale effect for staff size on administrative intensity in the small urban sample, while own-source revenue is the most important factor in determining administrative intensity in all local authorities and big urban samples. Several policy recommendations are proposed.
Link
Citation
Urban Studies, 51(13), p. 2899-2915
ISSN
1360-063X
0042-0980
Start page
2899
End page
2915

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