In recent decades, the belief that larger municipalities can better capture economies of scale
led to compulsory amalgamations in several countries. This article examines such a …

Two prevailing theories explain citizen satisfaction with public services from different levels
and sizes of government. Reform theory argues that citizens derive the most satisfaction …

While a significant body of literature exists on local government efficiency, much less is
known about its effectiveness, especially financial performance and resident satisfaction. To …

While structural reform by means of municipal mergers has been employed in many different
countries, council consolidation has been especially marked in Australian and Japanese …

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 …

A voluminous empirical literature has focused on organizational characteristics and their
relationship to organizational performance in the public sector, including municipal …

Although a voluminous empirical literature has examined local government efficiency, much
less attention has focused on municipal effectiveness and almost no effort has been directed …

Structural reform of local government through forced municipal mergers has occurred in a
number of countries, including Australia, with mixed success. We argue that shared services …

A vast empirical literature has investigated economies of scale in local service provision,
especially in water and waste management. By contrast, the question of scale economies in …

IMPACT The authors found that financial indicators significantly affect resident satisfaction.
This suggests that council managers can improve resident satisfaction by effectively …