The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of electoral timing on municipal public cultural spending. We use a panel sample of all municipalities from the Spanish Region of Murcia for 1995–2008. Our results reveal that mayors adopt an opportunistic behavior, increasing cultural spending in...

This paper analyzes the causes of legal political rent extraction by using a direct measure of it, namely, local top politicians’ wages. In particular, we investigate whether local politicians’ incentives to extract rents by setting their own wages are influenced by the degree of political...

This article, investigates efficiency in the municipal sector of the Region of Murcia (Spain). With that aim, data of 31 municipalities (69% of the response rate) have been collected. Services analysed are: police, culture, sports, green areas, refuse collection and water supply. Ratios of...