This paper investigates whether national evaluation of decentralised government performance tends, by lessening local information spill-overs, to reduce the scope for local performance comparisons and consequently to lower the extent of spatial auto-correlation among local government...

Based on outcomes for residents and qualitative studies, it is widely thought that public services meet the needs of residents less well in deprived areas, and that this is due to both the demands placed on services being greater and the services themselves being of a lower quality. This paper...

The use of formulae has become widespread in recent years across most developed countries. In the UK, a conservative estimate is that annually £150 billion of public service expenditure is distributed using formulae, in services such as health care, local government, social security and higher...

A high level of public services in housing, transport, education and health care is essential for liveability in urban centres, as shown in this report, with the help of European data for large cities. Inhabitants of larger cities, where the housing market is heavily commercialised in terms of...

This paper investigates whether national evaluation of decentralised government performance tends, by lessening local information spill-overs, to reduce the scope for local performance comparisons and consequently to lower the extent of spatial auto-correlation among local government...

Based on a unique measure of performance of English local governments in the provision of public services (Comprehensive Performance Assessment, CPA), this paper develops a simple analytical framework that fully encompasses the institutional features of the British system of local government...

This paper investigates the impact of tax and public service performance on English local government popularity by using data on local property taxes, service performance ratings and local election results after the introduction of a system of evaluation of local government performance...