Local Decentralization and the Quality of Public Services in Europe
| Autor: | Oriol Roca-Sagalés, Andreas P. Kyriacou |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Government spending
medicine.medical_specialty Sociology and Political Science Public economics Public health media_common.quotation_subject 05 social sciences General Social Sciences 050109 social psychology Decentralization Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Social protection 0502 economics and business Developmental and Educational Psychology medicine Revenue 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Public service Quality (business) Business 050207 economics Autonomy media_common |
| Zdroj: | Social Indicators Research. 145:755-776 |
| ISSN: | 1573-0921 0303-8300 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11205-019-02113-z |
| Popis: | Most work studying the impact of fiscal decentralization on the provision of public services has measured the latter by way of quantitative output indicators (for example, years of schooling or mortality rates) and the former based on aggregate decentralization indicators reflecting sub-central government spending or revenue as a percentage of total spending or revenue. In this article, we reconsider the link between fiscal decentralization and public service provision based on perception-based measures of the quality of public services as well as decentralization measures that disaggregate spending according to expenditure functions. Specifically, we examine the impact of decentralizing spending in the areas of education, health and social protection down to local (municipal) governments, on perceptions concerning the quality of public services, across a panel of 30 European countries over the period 1996–2015. We find that decentralizing education and social protection spending improves the perceived quality of public services while decentralizing health expenditure undermines quality. Our empirical results are robust to the introduction of a range of potentially important covariates including measures that reflect on the degree of autonomy enjoyed by local authorities. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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