Resumen de Factors Explaining Inter-municipal Cooperation in Service Delivery: A Meta-Regression Analysis
Germà Bel i Queralt, Mildred E. Warner
Inter-municipal cooperation is an important public service delivery reform. As with privatization, the drivers of inter-municipal cooperation are aimed at improving efficiency, gaining economies of scale and overcoming fiscal constraints. With the increase in cooperation, we see an increase in studies of the phenomenon and a focus on the role of professional management, challenges of monitoring and transactions costs of cooperation, and differences in take up of the reform across municipality size and geographic location. In this paper we provide a meta-regression analysis based on the existing multivariate empirical literature to explore what factors explain divergence in results in the existing empirical works. We find fiscal constraints, spatial and organizational factors and economies of scale are significant drivers of cooperation. Fiscal constraints lead to more cooperation, as do economies of scale, spatial location in a metropolitan region and presence of a professional manager. Divergence in results across models is explained by sample size, whether small municipalities are included, whether studies are conducted in the US, and whether studies employ logistic regression techniques. Insufficient number and homogeneity of studies prevent meta-regression analysis of politics, racial heterogeneity or transaction costs and these obstacles could be fruitful arenas for future research.
