A radical reform improved the government of towns and cities in Italy at the start of the 1990’s. Mayors were elected by citizens; they appointed their own executives and received «guides and checks» from Councils. That model had nevertheless already started to worsen at the end of the...

We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) efficiency scores to show that clustering municipalities into encompassing regional clusters improves spending efficiency of single stand- alone municipalities. We propose a new geographic aggregation based on municipalities-to- municipalities commuting...

2011 saw China overtaken by alarming financial fallout from the 2008 economic stimulus package to counter the global financial crisis. This paper shows how the decision to rely on local governments to fund the bulk of the package imposed serious strains on the banking system and reversed a...

The importance and the purpose of local governments is to satisfy and fulfill the general social needs of their citizens. In order to complete this ‘mission’ any local government is supposed to employ capable and competent professionals who would do their jobs efficiently and...

This paper focuses on the changing interaction between Taiwanese entrepreneurs and local Chinese governments. Through the analysis of this changing process, it can be seen that Taiwanese businesses are a special “asset” of Chinese governments. The main argument of this paper is that both...

El objetivo de la investigación fue conocer el funcionamiento de las Unidades de Gestión Educativa Local (UGEL) y ubicar los principales obstáculos que estas enfrentan para asumir una adecuada gestión de la educación en sus jurisdicciones. El supuesto fundamental de la misma es que los...

Tanzania is currently implementing a local government reform aimed at improving public service delivery. An important component of the reform is to increase the fiscal autonomy of local authorities. This policy is encouraged and partly initiated by the donor community. The purpose of this...

There is already a body of literature on local government management and control, financial accounting and reporting in (Coombs et al., 1999). Most of these researchers have addressed the issue of the usefulness of financial reporting by municipalities in the context of large countries such as...

This study deals with the central government grant allocation problem under conditions of asymmetric information. Using a simple model, we examine herein the optimal design of random audit and incentive mechanisms to encourage the grantee (the local government authority) to report truthfully on...