Bigger Is Better

Reducing the Cost of Local Administration by Increasing Jurisdiction Size in Ontario, Canada, 1995–2010

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6405032
AutoresTimothy W Cobban (London, Ontario, Canada), Timothy Cobban (autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen55
Número2
Páginas462-500
Fecha de publicación2019-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaUrban Affairs Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1078-0874 • E-ISSN: 1552-8332
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1078087417719324
OpenAlexW2738971139
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas18
Referencias citadas49

In recent decades, the belief that larger municipalities can better capture economies of scale led to compulsory amalgamations in several countries. This article examines such a program of compulsory amalgamations in Ontario, Canada, during the late 1990s and early 2000s. By exogenously deciding on a course of municipal restructuring, and leaving a large comparison group of nonamalgamated municipalities within the same institutional framework, the Ontario reforms created a quasi-experiment on the importance of scale for local government. Using a difference-in-differences methodological approach, this article exploits the quasi-experimental setting of the Ontario reforms to examine the causal effect of jurisdiction size on the cost of local administration. The main empirical finding in this article is that increasing local jurisdiction size reduces the cost of local administration. The results provide the most convincing evidence to date that economies of scale exist in local administration and can be captured through consolidation

Administration (probate law · Business · Consolidation (business · Difference in differences · Economics · Economies of scale · Geography · Jurisdiction · Local government · Microeconomics · Political science · Public economics · Restructuring · Scale (ratio · Law · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Political Systems and Governance · Public Administration · Finance