We analyse free-riding behaviour of Finnish municipalities prior to voluntary municipal mergers. The merger process creates a temporary common pool problem, because of a delay from the initial decision to the actual merger during which municipalities stay autonomous. Using a...

In the past decades many European countries implemented numerical fiscal rules in order to strengthen fiscal discipline on all levels of government. This development was intensified by the financial crisis in 2008. Although plenty of research points to the discipline-enhancing effect of these...

In this article, we quantitatively analyze changes in the size distribution of municipal jurisdictions in Japan by using their rank-size distribution to capture the change. In Japan, the central government sometimes enacts large-scale municipal mergers, aimed at the creating of municipalities of...

This study aims at analyzing the impacts of administrative problems resulting from the two level form of urban government whose framework is outlined in the Law for Metropolitan Municipalities, over the notion of integrated planning. It is suggested that it would be impossible to mention a...

The popularity and growth of Internet usage and Internet enabled devices have changed the people life style and ways of communications. Mobile Internet usage increases year by year and have created prosperous Internet access market by myriad Internet service providers (ISPs). Mobile Internet...

Scotland is engaged in a lively and on-going debate on greater fiscal autonomy and independence, which is politically controversial, especially in respect of tax-varying powers. The Scottish Parliament has the power to make a balanced-budget adjustment in public expenditure by varying the basic...