Marek Pieniążek (p)

Monitoring is crucial for maintain appropriate quality and availability of public services. Data are useful for the local government, which provides services for residents as well as entrepreneurs who make decisions about the location of economic activity.
Central Statistical Office of Poland participates in a project in which the aim is to develop a monitoring system of public services. The work is effect of cooperation between official statistics representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration and experts from associations of local government. The system will collect data i.a. on the quantity, quality and costs of services such as property management, public transport and road construction, environmental protection and waste disposal, construction, cadastre and administration. It is also planned to collect data on social services.
In the paper will be presented the concept of the system, its components and methods for determining indicators.

Guido De Blasio (p), Ilaria De Angelis, Lucia Rizzica

We analyse the relationship between large extraordinary transfers of public funds from a centralized authority to a local administration and the insurgence of white collar crimes in that same area. To this purpose, we exploit information on the disbursements of EU funds and link it to a unique dataset of crimes committed in Italy over the same period of time. Specically, we focus on the municipalities of the South of Italy, the largest recipients of EU funds, and on the disbursements made under the 2007-2013 EU programming period. Our estimates suggest that a 1% increase in EU disbursements is correlated with a 0.04% increase in the number of white collar crimes in the same year. We provide evidence that this correlation is likely to reflect a causal link going from EU funds to corruption.

Isabel Narbón Perpiñá (p), Iván Arribas, María Teresa Balaguer Coll, Emili Tortosa Ausina

The evaluation of local governments’ efficiency along with its determinants has attracted much scholarly interest in the field of public administration (Narbón Perpiñá and De Witte, 2016). Municipalities face different environmental conditions in terms of social, demographic, economic, political, financial, geographical and institutional, among others. Therefore, as efficiency may be affected not only by inadequate management but also by these external or environmental factors beyond the control of local managers, performance analysis should control for this heterogeneity (Balaguer-Coll et al., 2007), since some municipalities may be unable to achieve the “best-practice” due to their relative harsh environment (Afonso and Fernandes, 2008). Indeed, efficiency estimations which do not account for the effect of the operational environment have only a limited value (De Witte and Kortelainen, 2013).
In this paper we analyse the determinants of local governments cost efficiency in Spanish municipalities for the period 2009–2013. To this end, we carry out a two stage analysis in which local governments’ cost efficiency is first evaluated via non-parametric methodologies. In a second stage, we include a set of environmental variables which are classified in three different categories: financial, political and sociodemographic and economic variables. Our selection of determinants is based on previous literature, the availability of data and the institutional framework of local governments in Spain. In contrast to previous initiatives, this second stage explicitly takes into account the differing levels of efficiency, since the effect of the environmental variables in local governments might not be generalisable. To this end, we consider quantile regression techniques in the presence of endogenous regressors. This procedure provides a more complete view than classical procedures used in previous literature (such as Tobit censored regression model or OLS) since it takes into account the effect of the explanatory variables on the (central and non-central) location of the distribution of the response variable while it allows to control for possible endogeneity issues.

Frederic Wallet (p), Leila Kebir

The concept of common good appears to be « re »emerging today in the context of territorial development. Focused on artefact and more urban kind of resources, it seems to allow taking into account contemporary issues related to sustainability, resource management at urban scale in particular (local energy systems, biodiversity, public spaces, community gardening, etc.). It also seems that it allows new hybrid forms of resources management. Situated somewhere between public and or private management, they appear to be more collective and community based.
Founded on the analysis of French and European terriorial initiatives on common goods, this paper questions and mobilizes existing economic approaches (such as Elinor Ostrom’s grid) to propose an analytical framework helping to identify the opportunities (re-appropriation of the territory by inhabitants, creation of resource, improvement of life quality, cost saving for public authorities, etc.), difficulties and risks in the construction and governance of these common goods (risks such as exclusion processes, club creation, economic sustainability of the initiatives, etc.). It also aims to identify the embeddedness of these goods at local level, and thus to understand their contribution to territorial development.