The experience of Olongapo City in managing economic distress due to the loss of its economic anchor, the Subic Bay Naval Base, offers a rich lesson in local governance on how critical it is to plan ahead. The risk of a severe downturn, primarily due to economic dependency, can be successfully...

The scope of the paper is to discuss the role of good governance in improving responsiveness of local government to the needs of the selected target markets (investors, tourists, students). The criteria of good governance and governance indicators are analysed with regard of their applicability...

States merge small and medium sized municipalities to achieve economies of scale. Little is known to which extent mergers of large local governments reduce expenditures. I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of county-sized administrations in Germany (districts) on...

The present work looks at the relationship between institutional structure and economic performance at the regional level. The work focuses on one particular aspect, the number of municipalities in a given region (municipal fragmentation) and the impact on regional development measured as GDP...

In this paper, we estimate the efficiency of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana, and investigate the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of local public goods and services delivery by MMDAs. Using data from composite budgets of all 216 MMDAs, we...

In this paper we examine how Finnish municipalities' expenditures depend on the share of citizens with foreign background out of the total population. Empirical analyses make use of Finnish panel data from 295 municipalities and 202 migrant nationalities for the period 1987- 2018. It turns out...

Public health systems that are capable of disease surveillance and action to prevent and manage outbreaks require trustworthy community-embedded public health workers who are empowered to undertake their tasks as professionals. Economic theory on incentives and norms of agents tasked with...