Brian Dollery
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 321782 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Brian Dollery |
| NOMBRES | Brian |
| APELLIDO | Dollery |
| FIRMA | DOLLERY B |
| AFILIACIONES | University of New England |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2760-865X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 148 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 516 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 148 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1988 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Tackling Social Isolation Amongst Older People Through Local Co-Production
Demographic aging is an international trend. A negative consequence of aging has been the emergence of social isolation amongst the elderly. We examine Japanese cases of local co-production ensuring the wellbeing of the elderly. In a Kanagawa Prefecture case study, we consider how large-scale co-production involving municipalities collaborating with commissioned welfare volunteers, local community groups and businesses have tackled social isolati…
Running Hot Spring Onsen and Local Co-delivery
Similar to many other developed nations, contemporary Japanese regional and rural local governments face a range of problems including decreasing local populations, rising constraints on income and the associated difficulties in maintaining local community facilities. A growing body of literature has considered the local Japanese co-production policies adopted to meet these challenges. We seek to contribute to this literature by examining the loc…
Navigating the Covid-19 crisis
Extensive research has examined municipal resilience to external shocks; however, quantitative assessments of financial resilience based on performance remain limited. This paper addresses this gap by analysing financial sustainability in Victorian local governments across three phases: pre-crisis (2017/18–2018/19), the COVID-19 pandemic (2019/20–2020/21), and recovery (2021/22–2022/23). Using bias-corrected Data Envelopment Analysis, we find tha…
Administrative Economies of Scale in the Malaysian States
There is ongoing concern over administrative performanceamong the different Malaysian states. Using panel data econometric approach, this paper investigates administrative scale effects and the determinants of administrative intensity in the thirteen states and three federal territories in Malaysia over the period 2005 to 2020. Our results indicate that both production labor inputs and population jointly have a scale effect on administrative inte…
Administrative Intensity and Financial Sustainability
However, to date no attempt has been made to investigate the impact of administrative intensity on financial sustainability in the university sector.To address this gap in the literature, this paper examines the impact of administrative intensity on financial sustainability in Australian universities over the period 2009/10 to 2018/19.Our findings show that administrative intensity significantly affects the financial sustainability of Australian …
Revisiting Religion and BMI
Regulatory dark matter
This paper examines the ‘regulatory dark matter’ (RDM) concept in the Australian regulatory environment, focusing on the influence of unofficial rules, soft law, and quasi‐regulatory mechanisms on policy outcomes and compliance behaviour. Employing a document analysis approach, the study examines real‐world examples, including the suspension of Best Practice Industry Conditions in Queensland government construction projects, systemic failures in …
The missing economies of density and south Australian local government efficiency
Fiscal outcomes arising from amalgamation
Local government amalgamations are often prosecuted on the basis of expected efficiencies centred on capturing economies of scale. However, these economies are far from certain or straightforward. This paper draws on the extant literature to first develop a comprehensive picture of the complexity of the fiscal outcomes associated with amalgamation. We then take advantage of an eight-year panel of data and a serendipitous natural experiment to bet…
An institutional and transaction cost analysis for the efficiency of water service in Brazilian local government consortia
In this paper, we seek to break new ground by empirically investigating the relationship between cooperating entities, local government institutions and transaction costs and its effect on cost efficiency for water services through consortia in Brazilian local government. Drawing on an institutional and transaction cost framework, our results show that the institutional arrangements employed in water service provision have had a significant effec…
An empirical analysis of the impact of administrative intensity on the operational efficiency of the Victoria state local government system in Australia
While a voluminous empirical literature has investigated municipal efficiency, much less attention has focused on the impact of administrative intensity on municipal performance. In this paper we seek to contribute to the empirical literature by examining the relationship between operational efficiency and administrative intensity in the Victorian local government system over the period 2014/15 to 2018/19 using a second stage bootstrapping Data E…
Local Water Utility Reform
In common with local government systems in other developed countries, Japanese local government confronts numerous acute problems, including the ongoing sustainability of its local waterworks. Municipally-owned Japanese water utilities face a host of difficulties, including falling demand for water, decreased revenue, expensive infrastructure renewal and a shortage of skilled staff, which are compounded by the relatively small size of water utili…
The Crown land accounting dilemma in New South Wales local government
Purpose The paper addresses the question of whether Crown land managed by local authorities in the New South Wales (NSW) local government system should be recognised as assets on municipal balance sheets. Design/methodology/approach The paper provides a synoptic review of the literature on accounting for public goods assets followed by a critical analysis of the official requirements of the NSW government on the recognition of Crown land. Finding…
Administrative scale economies in public organisations
A voluminous empirical literature has examined scale economies in public organisations, particularly in local government. By contrast, little effort has been directed at the empirical investigation of economies of scale in higher education administration, including in Australian universities. To address this gap in the empirical literature, this paper examines administrative scale economies and task density in Australian public universities for t…
Administrative intensity and financial sustainability
A substantial empirical literature has examined the relationships between organizational characteristics and performance across the public sector, including the determinants of financial sustainability in local government. However, with the exception of one 2020 source, no attempt has been made to investigate the impact of administrative intensity on municipal financial sustainability. To address this gap in the empirical literature, this article…
Administrative intensity in local government
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 syste…
Local factors sustaining co-production
In an era of austerity, co-production involving local government and community groups has taken on much greater significance worldwide, including in Japanese local government. However, the nature of local co-production differs widely across Japan, ranging from bona fide cooperation between municipalities and voluntary groups to de facto outsourcing of local government functions in pursuit of cost savings. This paper seeks to add to the scholarly …
Measuring what matters in local government
This paper focuses on “measuring what matters” in local government and presents a new evaluation model called Municipality Sustainability Index (MSI) based on the integration of a municipality’s financial performance with community sustainability and governance. Using Multi-criteria Decision Analysis methodology (MCDA), we develop an additive evaluation model which aggregates 25 indicators across four dimensions of performance to assess local gov…
Identifying interactions between size effects in New South Wales local government
Size effects such as economies of scale and economies of scope can be utilised to achieve cost savings in local government systems. Numerous municipal reform policies in Australia and elsewhere have historically been premised on size effects. In this paper, we investigate whether an interaction effect exists between scale economies and scope economies in New South Wales local government using a 2011 sample of local councils. We estimate the effec…
Australian Government failure and the VET FEE-Help loan programme
Purpose In an effort to boost participation in vocational education and training (VET), in 2009, the Australian Government launched its VET FEE-HELP income-contingent loan programme for VET students. The programme was terminated in 2016 following numerous failed attempts to arrest its escalating costs and improve its performance. In an effort to shed light on the failure of the VET FEE-HELP programme, in this paper, the authors offer estimates of…
Municipal Responses to Covid-19
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the New South Wales (NSW) government ordered the closure of all municipal libraries in order to limit the impact of the contagion. As a result, 372 public libraries in NSW ceased operation on the 23rd March 2020. While the closure of public libraries will undoubtedly contribute to restricting the spread of the coronavirus, given the pivotal role played by municipal libraries in local communities, as well as t…
Did amalgamation make local government more fit for the future
Local government amalgamations, mostly aimed at improving financial sustainability, remain a strongly contested public policy option. Proponents of amalgamation tend to emphasise the advantages of scale and plan around population size targets. By contrast, some scholars note the importance of understanding the needs and tastes of residents for local public services and stress the dangers of amalgamation dominated by population size considerations…
Addressing loneliness and social isolation amongst elderly people through local co‐production in Japan
In common with many other societies with ageing populations, loneliness and social isolation have become a significant problem in contemporary Japan. The financial burden associated with an ageing population, together with ongoing fiscal austerity, has severely constrained the ability of local authorities to address the problem. As a result, policymakers have sought cost‐effective methods of tackling the problem, including local co‐production wit…
Administrative intensity and local resident satisfaction in Victorian local government
A voluminous empirical literature has focused on organizational characteristics and their relationship to organizational performance in the public sector, including municipal efficiency. However, as yet no effort has been made to examine the impact of administrative intensity on the effectiveness of local authorities, as measured by local resident satisfaction surveys. To address this gap in the literature, this article investigates the effect of…
The impact of rate capping on local government expenditure
In common with higher tiers of government worldwide, Australian state governments often adopt highly interventionist ‘one-size-fits-all’ policies aimed at improving local government efficiency and performance. In this article, we employ recent expenditure data to investigate empirically the short-term impacts of rate capping on municipal expenditure in the Australian state of Victoria and to explore whether it had differential effects on spending…
The Debate that Had to Happen But Never Did
The past few decades have witnessed a significant transformation in the composition of Australian local government service provision away from its traditional narrow emphasis on ‘services to property’ towards a broader ‘services to people’ approach. This process has occurred by default in an ad hoc incremental manner with virtually no debate on the changing role of local councils, unlike the New Zealand experience where a similar transition in se…
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 examines pre- and post-amalgamation (2006/07 and 2009/10) for scale economies. For the 2006/07 data, evidence of economies of scale was found for councils with populations up to 9…
The political determination of intergovernmental grants in Australia
Social Capital and Local Government Capacity
Local authorities vary considerably in their capacity for governance. The dimensions of this capacity can only be developed by drawing on local stocks of social capital. The seminal theories of social capital tend to conceive it as a community resource that is built up through a long tradition of civic engagement. We take issue with the laissez–faire implications of these theories, highlighting ways in which local governments can positively contr…
Measuring Efficiency in Local Government
Data envelopment analysis is used to measure the technical and scale efficiency of the domestic waste management function in 103 New South Wales local governments. After allowance is made for nondiscretionary environmental factors that may affect the provision of these local public services, such as congestion and the inability to operate machinery in densely populated urban areas, comparison of efficiency across geographic/demographic criteria i…
Is cooperation cost reducing? An analysis of public–public partnerships and inter-municipal cooperation in Brazilian local government
In local government systems worldwide, financial pressures have obliged local authorities to focus on cost-efficient methods for providing local services, including inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships. However, in comparison with municipal mergers, privatisation and other approaches to the problem, the cost impact of the cooperative provision has not yet been thoroughly examined empirically. Moreover, available empirical res…
Local government failure
Funding of local government systems in Australia has been falling relative to other tiers of government for the past 30 years with various adverse consequences, especially the decline of local government infrastructure. This paper seeks to explain this phenomenon by drawing on two relatively new theoretical strands in the political economy literature; the Australian theory of local government failure and the Wittman model of democratic efficiency…
One Size Does Not Fit All
The analysis of Australian local government reform almost invariably focuses on systemic changes that can be wrought by the application of various policy instruments, like the structural reform of the scale of local councils or changes to the enabling legislation governing local government. Scholars typically use this approach and differentiate the efficacy of reform measures according to classifications of council by generic type. While this app…
A Cautionary Tale
Contemporary Australian public policy has come to rely increasingly on technical reports produced by commercial consultants in contrast to the traditional approach, which employed disinterested public servants to generate the specialist information required to inform decision makers. This approach is fraught with problems, not least the fact that ‘hired guns’ have strong incentives to create the ‘answers’ sought by their employers. By way of a ‘c…
Economies of Scale and Local Government Expenditure
Controversy surrounds structural reform in local government, especially efforts aimed at involuntarily reducing the number of local authorities to secure scale economies. We examined whether scale economies exist in local government outlays by analyzing the expenditure of 152 New South Wales councils. Initially, council expenditure is characterized by scale economies. However, given the correlation between population and population density, it is…
Government Failure, Social Capital and the Appropriateness of the New Zealand Model for Public Sector Reform in Developing Countries
Humanitarian co-production in local government
Given ongoing financial stringency, co-production in local government systems worldwide has attracted increasing attention in the literature. Disaster relief volunteering represents an important form of local co-production in which local authorities, community groups and volunteers work collaboratively at addressing the many humanitarian needs that arise following natural disasters. For disaster relief co-production to be successful, the comparat…
An empirical survey of frontier efficiency measurement techniques in local government
Local government in advanced economies is undergoing a period of rapid reform aimed at enhancing its efficiency and effectiveness. Accordingly, the definition, measurement and improvement of organisational performance is crucial. Despite the importance of efficiency measurement in local government it is only relatively recently that econometric and mathematical frontier techniques have been applied to local public services. This paper attempts to…
Autonomous Policy Leadership
This article attempts to make a contribution to the literature which reflects a growing interest in the conditions underlying radical policy reform. It advances a concept of autonomous policy leaders who can be distinguished from vote‐buying politicians by their passionate commitment to "make a difference" by advancing a particular policy quest, with particular reference being made to the way such leadership was exercised by Roger Douglas, New Ze…
Federal Expenditure and Fiscal Illusion
Despite the fact that there are strong a priori grounds for presuming that the intergovernmental grants characteristic of fiscal federalism in Australia may generate fiscal illusion, no empirical effort has been directed at this line of inquiry. The present article seeks to go some way toward remedying this deficiency by evaluating the flypaper variant of the fiscal illusion hypothesis using a time-series analysis of Australian Commonwealth expen…
Population size or population density? An empirical examination of scale economies in South Australian local government, 2015/16
Advocates of amalgamation typically claim that substantial scale economies flow from municipal mergers, which generate larger local government entities by population size. We examined whether economies of scale exist in council outlays by analysing the expenditure of 68 South Australian local government areas using data from the 2015/16 financial year. However, given the correlation between population size and population density it is important t…
Does Size Still Matter? An Empirical Analysis of the Effectiveness of Victorian Local Authorities
Efficiency approaches to the question of whether population size matters to optimal local government have proved largely inconclusive. However, recent exploratory empirical work employing an effectiveness approach – as proxied by citizen satisfaction survey data – offers a promising way forward. The present paper seeks to build upon an earlier cross-sectional analysis of Victorian local government by employing longitudinal data over a three-year …
Community consultation in public policy
Community consultation is widely employed in contemporary Australia as a means of improving the formulation and implementation of public policy. However, little is known about the optimal expenditure of effort required for any given consultation. This article develops a rational choice model of community consultation that seeks to encapsulate the major elements involved in optimising consultation effort. The framework is particularly useful for u…
Shared Services in Australian Local Government
Widespread enthusiasm amongst Australian policy elites for structural reform in local government has evaporated as disappointing outcomes of council amalgamation programs became evident. As a consequence, emphasis has now shifted towards shared serviced models as a means of enhancing service provision and reducing costs. However, a disturbing feature of the current debate on shared services has been the absence of a well‐articulated economic and …
Good to share? The pecuniary implications of moving to shared service production for local government services
Shared services are often lauded as an efficacious means of reducing municipal expenditure and thereby improving waning financial sustainability. However, most of the extant theoretical and empirical work only considers costs and benefits at the level of the specific service in question and, hence, fails to capture many of the wider benefits and costs that might accrue to local governments. In this article we first build a schema to illustrate th…
No Aladdin’s Cave in New South Wales? Local Government Amalgamation, Scale Economies, and Data Envelopment Analysis Specification
Local government structural reform programs are often based on the purported benefits of increased scale. We examine this question in relation to the proposed amalgamation program for New South Wales (NSW) by the NSW Independent Local Government Review Panel using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We find evidence that a significant proportion of municipalities scheduled for amalgamation already exceed optimal scale and that the great majority of …
The Price of Democracy? Political Representation Structure and Per Capita Expenditure in Victorian Local Government
Local government systems across the world face acute and ongoing fiscal challenges. In Australia, the regulatory response has focused squarely on council consolidation. This has, unfortunately, meant that comparatively little attention has been paid to alternate, less disruptive methods for enhancing municipal sustainability. One such possibility lies in modifying the structure of local political representation. We conduct a number of estimations…
Can't Get No Satisfaction? The Association Between Community Satisfaction and Population Size for Victoria
Traditionally, the problem of determining the optimal size in local government has been empirically assessed by estimating the relationship between population size and the costs of services (usually measured in terms of per capita expenditure). These studies, however, have proved largely inconclusive. In comparison, an empirical analysis based on the relationship between the size of government and community satisfaction offers a potentially fruit…
Would Bigger Councils Yield Scale Economies in the Greater Perth Metropolitan Region? A Critique of the Metropolitan Local Government Review for Perth Local Government
Forced amalgamation is a ubiquitous feature of Australian local government reform – compulsory council consolidation programs have occurred in all states and territories, with the sole exception of Western Australia. However, the Final Report of the Metropolitan Local Government – released in October 2012 – called for a reduction of about 60 per cent of the local authorities in the Greater Perth metropolitan area. The Western Australian Governmen…
A Normative Model for Local Government De-Amalgamation in Australia
Ongoing local community dissatisfaction in some newly amalgamated local government areas resulting from the 2007 Queensland forced amalgamation program has raised the prospect of de-merger in that state. One catalyst has been the Opposition's commitment to de-amalgamation should it acquire government. Apart from some descriptive discussion of actual de-amalgamation episodes, almost no prescriptive analysis exists on the optimal form any de-merger…
Apartheid and the case for sanctions
The Triumph of Marxist Approaches in South African Sodal and Labour History
Martin Murray provides an excellent synoptic survey of recent trends in South African historiography in which he claims that the twin perspective Marxist approach has replaced the liberal orthodoxy as the dominant paradigm. It is argued that Murray's survey is deficient in at least three ways. Firstly, the implicatiom; of the divisions between "social historians" and "structuralists" are not sufficiently explored. Secondly, the contentious period…
The Triumph of Marxist Approaches in South African Social and Labour History
What Is This Thing Called Economic Rationalism
The economic consequences of economists
Economic Theory and Policy Analysis
Traditionally public policy analysis has been able to employ the conceptual framework offered by the theory of market failure in order to evaluate the efficiency of market outcomes. However, until fairly recently, no corresponding analytical structure existed which could facilitate the examination of the efficiency and equity characteristics of government or non‐market outcomes. Quite apart from public choice theory, an embryonic normative theory…
Unemployment Benefits and Unemployment in Australia, 1950–89
Although the incidence of unemployment in Australia is well established, the causes of unemployment remain controversial. Various putative causes for unemployment exist, including the unemployment benefits system. The present study sought to estimate the impact of the generosity of Australian unemployment benefits on the measured unemployment rate of three recipient groups, single adult males over 21, married males, and married males with two chi…
Federal Expenditure and Fiscal Illusion
Despite the fact that there are strong a priori grounds for presuming that the intergovernmental grants characteristic of fiscal federalism in Australia may generate fiscal illusion, no empirical effort has been directed at this line of inquiry. The present article seeks to go some way toward remedying this deficiency by evaluating the flypaper variant of the fiscal illusion hypothesis using a time-series analysis of Australian Commonwealth expen…
Towards a theory of public sector organisational performance
Economic growth and political stability in South Africa
(1996). Economic growth and political stability in South Africa: Possible Australian policy initiatives. Australian Journal of International Affairs: Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 189-197
The Privatisation of GIO Australia
The privatisation of GIO Australia took place amidst acrimonious public debate on the merits of selling this government trading enterprise. Yet the innovative methods employed in the privatisation process represented a landmark in contemporary Australian economic history, With the passage of time and the attendant flow of information, it is now possible to assess the outcome of the privatisation of GIO Australia. Without considering the wider phi…
Modelling Bureaucracy
A substantial literature exists on the economic analysis of bureaucracy, which includes formal models of bureaucratic behaviour by Niskanen (1971) and Dunleavy (1991). This article develops hypotheses from those models about changes in size of bureaux over time and tests them against data on the Australian federal budget sector in 1982–83 and 1991–92. The models predict that bureaucrats usually will be able to influence the size or structure of t…
Winners and Losers in the Australian Public Service in the 1980s
An Evaluation of Leadership as a Response to Agency Failure in the Public Sector
An alternative to contractual solutions to agency problems is suggested in the literature on leadership in which leaders are often claimed to be able to steer historical processes in the direction they intend through the distinctive influence they have on the intrinsic motivation of their followers. We evaluate Casson’s (1991) agency–theoretic model of leadership as ‘moral manipulation’ which under certain conditions can be exercised at lower age…
Using Budget Constraints to Illustrate Poverty Traps
Although much is known about the incidence of unemployment in Australia over the recent past, the causes of unemployment remain controversial. Various explanations have been advanced, some of which focus on the unemployment benefits system. The present study examines the problem of high effective marginal tax rates faced by young social security recipients wishing to engage in part‐time employment, and the resultant emergence of so‐called ‘povert…
A Cautionary Note on Environmental Economics
Environmental questions have become a permanent feature of the political landscape in contemporary Australia and now play a significant role in election campaigns at both state and federal levels. Indeed, one of the most significant policy debates in the 1996 Federal election focussed on the environmental policy proposed by the Liberal/National Party coalition, which sought to fund a host of environmental programs from the proceeds of a part priv…
Autonomous Policy Leadership
This article attempts to make a contribution to the literature which reflects a growing interest in the conditions underlying radical policy reform. It advances a concept of autonomous policy leaders who can be distinguished from vote‐buying politicians by their passionate commitment to "make a difference" by advancing a particular policy quest, with particular reference being made to the way such leadership was exercised by Roger Douglas, New Ze…
A Note on The Empirical Analysis of Wagner’s Law
Measuring the Transaction sector in the Australian economy, 1911–1991
Following Wallis and North’s pioneering attempt to estimate the size of transaction costs in the United States over the period 1870 to 1970, we seek to augment this seminal study by applying their methodology to the Australian economy for the period 1911 to 1991. Broadly speaking, our results support the Wallis and North finding with comparable magnitudes and growth rates in both the private and public transaction sectors
Funding local government in australia
Funding local government in australia
Australian fiscal federalism possesses a greater degree of vertical imbalance than comparable federations elsewhere due to a concentration of revenue-raising powers at the level of the Commonwealth government and a concentration of expenditure functions at the state and local government levels. Efforts to deal with this problem have focused on intergovernmental grants. While substantial literature exists on the financial nexus between the Commonw…
The political determination of intergovernmental grants in Australia
Market Failure, Government Failure, Leadership and Public Policy
Economics and Leadership Theory
The phenomenon of leadership has been the subject of a considerable body of literature in the humanities and certain branches of the social sciences. Traditions of inquiry into leadership have been particularly prominent in philosophy, politics, anthropology, psychology, sociology and history. Moreover, insights from all these traditions have been integrated into studies of management and organizational behaviour that have been of both an academi…
Fiscal illusion and the Australian local government grants process
Political science (127 obras) · Economics (113 obras) · Public Administration (97 obras) · Public Administration (82 obras) · Local government (81 obras) · Government (linguistics (78 obras) · Business (66 obras) · Sociology (60 obras) · Law (58 obras) · Law (51 obras)