Abstract

Little scholarly research has paid attention to the collective impact of contracting out on local financial condition. Contracting out can enhance a fiscal state by allowing local officials for more buying power with lower service costs as well as less long-term liabilities. Beyond prior research on the effect of contracting in a service, this research offers evidence that higher levels of contracting out spending improve local financial condition regarding budget solvency and long-run solvency. However, external suppliers can deteriorate financial condition. The findings show that the improvement of budget solvency does not materialize at a certain level of contracting out spending, but this is not the case for long-run solvency. The expectation of financial condition improvement may rely on the degree to which practitioners deliver public services through contracting out. Thus, local officials may want to decide levels of contracting out services strategically.

摘要

很少有学术研究关注外包对地方财政状况的集体影响。外包可以让地方官员以更低的服务成本和更少的长期负债获得更多的购买力，从而改善财政状况。除了先前关于承包服务的影响的研究之外，这项研究还提供了证据，表明更高水平的承包支出可以改善地方在预算偿付能力和长期偿付能力方面的财务状况。然而，外部供应商可能会恶化财务状况。研究结果表明，预算偿付能力的改善不会在一定程度的支出外包时实现，但长期偿付能力并非如此。对财务状况改善的预期可能取决于从业者通过外包提供公共服务的程度。因此，地方官员可能希望战略性地决定外包服务的水平。