Municipal amalgamation reforms have been advocated as ways to improve efficiency,
reduce costs, and enhance capacity in local government service provision. Research on the …

Many OECD countries have amalgamated their municipalities during the last couple of
decades. For decisions concerning future territorial rescaling, it is crucial to augment the …

Local government policy intervention, especially by means of structural reform, requires a
detailed knowledge of the scale and scope characteristics of the local government services …

Advocates of amalgamation typically claim that substantial scale economies flow from
municipal mergers, which generate larger local government entities by population size. We …

Municipal mergers remain an important instrument of local government policy in numerous
countries, including Australia, despite some concerns surrounding its efficacy. We consider …

While the bulk of the empirical evidence shows that municipal mergers do not improve the
performance of local authorities, Australian policy‐makers nonetheless continue to impose …

Debate over municipal amalgamations in Australian continues to dominate local
government reform agendas, with the putative need to achieve economies of scale and …

Controversy surrounds local government reform, particularly efforts directed at reducing the
number of local authorities to secure economies of scale. We examine whether economies …

Structural reform through municipal mergers is ubiquitous across the developed world and
Australian local government is no exception. Advocates of council consolidation, including …

Structural reform through forced mergers has been a dominant feature of Australian local
government for decades. Advocates of compulsory consolidation contend that larger …