In this paper the role of grants-in-aid in the Finnish municipal sector will be studied. Bearing in mind that there are important dynamic interrelationships between the taxing, spending decisions and grants-in-aid policy, an econometric analysis of the municipalities' expenditures using panel...

This paper examines the Granger-causality between total expenditures, own source revenues, grants received from state and long term loans for 12 subgroups of Finnish municipalities. Two panel data sets that cover the years 1985-1992 and 1993-1999 are used in order to compare the effect of change...

Empirical evidence on economies of scale in healthcare is mostly based on the cost effects of hospital mergers. In contrast to earlier studies, this paper approaches the economies of scale issue by analysing the break-ups of municipal health centre federations. We use the...