Competition reduces rent extraction in private-sector firms. In this article, we empirically assess whether it similarly disciplines politicians by evaluating local-level governments' performance in Flanders. The results indicate that <italic>electoral</italic> competition -- measured via the number of parties...

In this article, we investigate the cost efficiency of German local governments in the state of Baden-Württemberg in 2004 using a stochastic frontier approach. Besides being the first study on German data, we add two elements to the literature. First, we provide a comparative perspective,...