Evaluating Effectiveness in Public Provision of Infrastructure and Equipment: The Case of Spanish Municipalities

Concernabout local government ability to provide public services inan effective way is increasing in Spain as these functions arebeing decentralized from the central to regional governments.The goal of this research is to provide state and local officialswith a decision making tool that allows evaluation of the quantityand quality of the public services--infrastructure and equipment--thatthey are responsible for offering. We characterize performanceamong similar administrative observations, e.g. municipalities,by defining effectiveness improvement strategies--basedon selective funds allocation--that identify and rank thosesectors and variables that present provision deficits and requireprior attention. In order to evaluate provision at the municipalitylevel we define an additive effectiveness measure making useof Data Envelopment Analysis techniques which are enhanced toaccount for the presence of standards. The statistical data arefrom the Spanish Local Infrastructure and Equipment Survey. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001