Good to share? The pecuniary implications of moving to shared service production for local government services

Bibliographic Data

ID10389727
AuthorsJoseph Drew (0000-0003-3579-5758, Institute for Public Policy and Governance University of Technology Sydney Ultimo New South Wales Australia, corresponding author), Dana Mcquestin (0000-0002-0137-0260, Institute for Public Policy and Governance University of Technology Sydney Ultimo New South Wales Australia), Brian Dollery (0000-0003-2760-865X, University of New England), Brian E Dollery (School of Economics University of New England Armidale New South Wales Australia)
Year2018
Volume97
Issue1
Pages132-146
Publication date2018-11-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePublic Administration (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-3298 • E-ISSN: 1467-9299
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/padm.12575
OpenAlexW2903433820
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited14

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 the benefits and costs of moving from separate to collaborative production at the level of individual local authorities. We then test two hypotheses drawn from the schema against a five‐year panel of expenditure data. We find evidence of increased expenditure in the order of 8 per cent that prima facie runs counter to the objectives of many municipal managers engaged with shared services. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for cooperative ventures between local authorities

Business · Economics · Extant taxon · Local government · Microeconomics · Municipal services · Political science · Prima facie · Production (economics · Public economics · Schema (genetic algorithms · Service (business · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Marketing · Public Administration · Sharing Economy and Platforms · Taxation and Compliance Studies