ABSTRACT

This paper brings an empirical assessment of economies of scale in local government units in Croatia. Using cross-section OLS models, we found statistically significant U-shaped relationship between local per capita expenditures and population size, while controlling for various demographic, socio-economic and institutional factors. The choice of control variables in the paper is based on the existing empirical literature but also includes factors capturing the specificities of Croatian economy and local government institutional setup. Using estimated regression coefficients we calculated the optimal size of local units and showed that population size is below optimal in 72% of cities and 76% of municipalities (based on median results).

摘要

本文对克罗地亚地方政府单位的规模经济进行了实证评估。使用横截面 OLS 模型，我们发现当地人均支出与人口规模之间存在统计学上显着的 U 型关系，同时控制了各种人口、社会经济和制度因素。本文中控制变量的选择基于现有的实证文献，但也包括捕捉克罗地亚经济和地方政府制度设置的特殊性的因素。使用估计的回归系数，我们计算了当地单位的最佳规模，并显示 72% 的城市和 76% 的直辖市的人口规模低于最佳水平（基于中值结果）。