This paper analyzes the relationship between government efficiency—an important dimension of quality of government—and economic growth at the municipal level in 1,820 Spanish municipalities during the period 2008–2015. At this level of disaggregation, the literature is virtually nonexistent due to severe data constraints. The efficiency of local government provides an accurate indicator of how good local authorities are in managing their budget. This variable is expected to be highly correlated with other more traditional quality of government indicators, such as corruption. After computing our measure, we then use it in a growth regression framework. We find a dominant positive effect of government efficiency on income per capita growth, which is robust to a wide variety of scenarios. Our findings also suggest that increases in local government quality are particularly rewarding for the poorest municipalities.

中文翻译：

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市政层面的政府质量和经济增长：来自西班牙的证据

本文分析了 2008 年至 2015 年期间 1,820 个西班牙城市的政府效率（政府质量的一个重要方面）与市级经济增长之间的关系。在这种分类水平上，由于严重的数据限制，文献几乎不存在。地方政府的效率为地方当局管理预算的能力提供了一个准确的指标。预计该变量将与其他更传统的政府指标（例如腐败）高度相关。在计算出我们的度量之后，我们将其用于增长回归框架。我们发现政府效率对人均收入增长具有显着的正向影响，这种影响在多种情况下都很稳健。