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Municipality Size and Local Public Services: Do Economies of Scale Exist ? Cover

Municipality Size and Local Public Services: Do Economies of Scale Exist ?

Open Access
|Mar 2015

Abstract

Economies of scale are a standard topic in economic theory, frequently applied, for example, in the analysis of monopolies. They exist when a firm optimising its production costs while facing some fixed costs enjoys lower per-unit production costs as the production increases. Similarly to other production units municipalities have to be large enough to minimise average costs. We analysed the local public services in 205 municipalities with extended powers in the Czech Republic for the first time in this context, using regression analysis, a correlation diagram of local public services and statistical analysis. The paper examines this issue using data from 2008 to 2012. Our analysis showed that economies of scale cannot be clearly identified for local services in municipalities with extended powers in the Czech Republic and that the size of a municipality is not a key factor influencing the provision of local services.

Language: English
Page range: 151 - 171
Published on: Mar 4, 2015
Published by: NISPAcee
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2015 Jana Soukopová, Juraj Nemec, Lenka Matějová, Michal Struk, published by NISPAcee
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.