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...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has become an established tool in comparative analyses of efficiency strategies in both the public and the private sector. The aim of this paper is to present and apply a newly developed, adjusted DEA model – emerging from a blend of a Distance Friction...

Die räumlichen Ungleichheiten in Deutschland und ihre politischen Auswirkungen haben die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit wieder verstärkt auf die Gleichwertigkeit der Lebensverhältnisse gelenkt. Nachdem in den letzten Jahrzehnten der „Aufbau Ost“ ein zentraler Schwerpunkt war, öffnet sich...

India has made great progress in reaching its ambitious goal to scale up renewable energy capacity to 175 GW in 2022. Solar power plays a central part in achieving this goal and installations of utility scale power have seen a dramatic increase in the last few years. Rooftop solar, however, is...

The consequences of ageing populations for federal and state fiscal policies are, due to the research efforts of the last two decades, well known. However, it is rather less well known how the municipal level is affected. Therefore, by using a modification of the sustainability definition...

The consequences of ageing populations for federal and state fiscal policies are, due to the research efforts of the last two decades, well known. However, it is rather less well known how the municipal level is affected. Therefore, by using a modification of the sustainability definition...

Municipal fiscal distress experienced by cities such as Detroit, Michigan; San Bernardino,California; and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has generated an impressive body of work by researchers seeking to understand underlying factors in an effort to prevent future distress. Recent research has been...

In the wake of the Great Recession, steep declines in state and local government expenditures and employment were a large and persistent source of economic weakness. The business cycle was also characterized by large increases and decreases in household debt. We estimate the extent to which...

Cities across Canada should consider new and innovative approaches to financing their share of infrastructure spending, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “Tapping the Land: Tax Increment Financing of Infrastructure,” author Adam Found shows how cities could use tax increment...