A Fresh Look at Municipal Consolidation in Australia

by

“Data revealed little evidence of consistent economies of scale from consolidation, however both case studies and interviews indicated that consolidation generated economies of scope and what may be termed ‘strategic capacity’.

While it was not possible to disaggregate the data for particular sizes of local authority, enhancement of strategic capacity was more obvious through processes of consolidation in larger ones and less so in smaller, more remote ones.”

This article draws from a major research project examining the impact of various forms of municipal consolidation in Australia and New Zealand. Its wide-ranging research involved studies of 15 cases of different forms of consolidation, including amalgamation, together with a series of interviews with senior practitioners from the local government sector.

Published in Local Government Studies | C. Aulich | 2014 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Fresh-Look-at-Municipal-Consolidation-in-Aulich-Sansom/bc35a26041114becb9e52641c75d14a1c95b4ca2

Related posts:

  1. Structural Reform: Municipal Mergers “Structural reorganization using municipal mergers is a common form of local government reform. This chapter examines both the theoretical literature and associated empirical work on council consolidation. After briefly discussing the magnitude of amalgamation across the world, this chapter considers...
  2. Municipal consolidation and local government behavior: evidence from Japanese voting data on merger referenda “Municipalities that could enjoy large economies of scale from consolidation prefer consolidation, while large and small municipalities are likely to merge. Moreover, municipalities receiving large unconditional grants from the central government are unlikely to merge.” The empirical literature investigating the...
  3. The evidence on the existence of economies of scale in local government units “This does not imply that more extensive amalgamation is not warranted, but it demands that other arguments justifying municipal amalgamation should be presented.” The purpose of this paper is to empirically verify if the possible existence of scale economies actually...
  4. Internalization of externalities and local government consolidation: empirical evidence from Japan “It is found that residents of the municipalities that can internalize a large amount of public goods spillovers through municipal consolidation tend to favor consolidation. This result supports the theoretical inference that spillovers in local public goods affect utility gains...
  5. Economies of Scale in Municipal Administration. Empirical Analyses of Municipal Mergers “In an exploratory application for four municipal mergers, we find no evidence for increasing economies of scale. Compared to the level prior to the mergers, average current expenditure for the municipal administration increased more than in a control group of...
  6. Scale Economies And Police Department Consolidation: Evidence From Los Angeles “Empirical analysis here rejects the hypothesis that police output is produced under increasing returns, which would be an efficiency explanation for the large degree of consolidation found within the county.” This paper tests for scale economies for police departments operating...
  7. Did the Big Stick Work? An Empirical Assessment of Scale Economies and the Queensland Forced Amalgamation Program “In 2007, the Queensland Government imposed forced amalgamation with the number of local authorities falling from 157 to just 73 councils. Amalgamation was based inter alia on the assumption that increased economies of scale would generate savings. This paper empirically...
  8. Examining the relationship between municipal consolidation and cost reduction: an instrumental variable approach “Because consolidation seems to increase per capita expenditure in the absence of the effect of this long-term declining trend, incorporating this trend into estimation is crucial in cost-efficiency analysis of consolidation. It is also shown that conventional panel data regressions...
  9. Evaluating municipal mergers’ effects : A review of amalgamation studies in the Netherlands “Many European countries have gone through processes of amalgamation of municipalities that have fundamentally changed the face of local governance. The question how to assess outcomes of amalgamations has remained under-explored. In this paper, we review the collection of evaluation...
  10. A Reassessment of City/County Consolidation: Economic Development Impacts “Over the past two decades, a large body of literature has examined the fiscal consequences of city/ county consolidation. Much of this research suggests that consolidation results in expansions in local budgets and in the scope and quality of municipal...