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...

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...