This paper analyzes the relationship between intermunicipal cooperation and efficiency of public service provision. The organizational arrangements, including self-provision, joint pro-vision or contracting, affect politicians’ and bureaucrats’ incentives as well as internal transaction...

This contribution studies the determinants of intermunicipal cooperation for small Hessian municipalities. Existing contributions have highlighted the role of cooperation demand factors, for example fiscal stress or demographic factors, on the one hand, and transaction cost issues on the other....

Performance budgeting schemes in the public sector have to operate with imperfect performance measures. We argue that these imperfections lead to wasteful fund-seeking (window dressing and lobbying) by the administrative units that produce public services. We develop a game-theoretical model to...

Performance budgeting schemes in the public sector have to operate with imperfect performance measures. We argue that these imperfections generate incentives for the potential recipients of performance-based funds to use up resources in socially wasteful influence activities. We develop a...

This contribution studies the determinants of intermunicipal cooperation for small Hessian municipalities. Existing contributions have highlighted the role of cooperation demand factors, for example fiscal stress or demographic factors, on the one hand, and transaction cost issues on the other....

The paper addresses the welfare implications of conditional grants in the presence of inefficiencies in regional production. While conditional grants may set incentives for regions to reduce inefficiencies, resources are wasted in the process of grant-seeking. We provide a theoretical model to...