Administrative intensity in local government: Do administrative scale economies exist in New South Wales local government?

Title
Administrative intensity in local government: Do administrative scale economies exist in New South Wales local government?
Publication Date
2022
Author(s)
Yarram, Subba Reddy
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9209-3499
Email: syarram@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:syarram
Tran, Carolyn-Thi Thanh Dung
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5798-0543
Email: ttran43@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:ttran43
Edward Dollery, Brian
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc
Place of publication
United States of America
DOI
10.1111/polp.12467
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/62553
Abstract

A vast empirical literature has investigated economies of scale in local service provision, especially in water and waste management. By contrast, the question of scale economies in local government administration has attracted much less attention, especially in Australian local government. To address this gap in the Australian empirical literature, we investigated administrative scale economies in the New South Wales (NSW) local government system for rural, regional, and urban local authorities over the period2014/15 to 2017/18. We find that total municipal population and municipal staff exhibit a U-shaped relationship with the total administration costs of urban councils in NSW. However, we find no economies of scale for administrative intensity in rural and regional councils in NSW.

Link
Citation
Politics & Policy, v.50, p. 562-579
ISSN
1747-1346
1555-5623
Start page
562
End page
579
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International

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