This paper examines the performance of US municipal governments over 1997-2012, and hence prior to, during and following the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Fully nonparametric methods are employed to estimate technical efficiencies of cities utilizing recently developed statistical results. The results strongly suggest non-convexity of the local governments' production set, calling into question the results of previous studies examining municipal efficiency that do not allow for non-convexity. We find strong evidence that production sets for municipal governments are different across time and across regions of the USA. Overall, we find that municipalities in the Midwest and South on average out-performed those in the Northeast and West in terms of both efficiency and productivity, and both before and after the financial crisis.

中文翻译：

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对美国市政当局的表现进行基准评估。

本文研究了1997-2012年以及因此在2007-2008年金融危机之前，之中和之后的美国市政政府的绩效。完全采用非参数方法来利用最近开发的统计结果估算城市的技术效率。该结果强烈暗示了地方政府生产集的不凸性，这使先前研究市政效率的研究结果令人怀疑，这些研究不允许出现不凸性。我们发现有力的证据表明，在不同的时间和地区之间，市政府的生产方式是不同的。总体而言，我们发现中西部和南部城市在效率和生产力方面以及金融危机前后均优于东北和西部城市。