When local governments are small and fragmented, promoting inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) among them has been increasingly seen as a tool to improve the management of public services by reaping economies of scale and scope. Yet, the empirical evidence on the impacts of IMC on local governments’ efficiency is scarce and inconclusive. In this paper we investigate the experience of Italy’s municipal unions (Unioni di comuni). We develop an index of technical efficiency by means of Robust Data Envelopment Analysis. We then exploit Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design and Nearest-Neighbour Matching estimators to explore whether Municipal unions have any impacts on the administrative efficiency of member municipalities. We do not find any significant effect.

中文翻译：

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强强联手？评估城市间合作对意大利小城市效率的因果影响

当地方政府规模小且分散时，促进它们之间的城市间合作 (IMC) 越来越被视为通过获得规模经济和范围经济来改善公共服务管理的工具。然而，关于 IMC 对地方政府效率影响的经验证据很少且没有定论。在本文中，我们调查了意大利市政工会 (Unioni di comuni) 的经验。我们通过稳健的数据包络分析来制定技术效率指标。然后，我们利用模糊回归不连续性设计和最近邻匹配估计器来探讨市政工会是否对成员市政当局的行政效率有任何影响。我们没有发现任何显着的影响。