000			01518nam a2200145 4500
999			_c510186 _d510186
008			190802b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100			_aCobban, Timothy W. _97711
245			_aBigger is better: reducing the cost of local administration by increasing jurisdiction size in Ontario, Canada, 1995-2010
260			_c2019
300			_ap.462-500.
520			_aIn recent decades, the belief that larger municipalities can better capture economies of scale led to compulsory amalgamations in several countries. This article examines such a program of compulsory amalgamations in Ontario, Canada, during the late 1990s and early 2000s. By exogenously deciding on a course of municipal restructuring, and leaving a large comparison group of nonamalgamated municipalities within the same institutional framework, the Ontario reforms created a quasi-experiment on the importance of scale for local government. Using a difference-in-differences methodological approach, this article exploits the quasi-experimental setting of the Ontario reforms to examine the causal effect of jurisdiction size on the cost of local administration. The main empirical finding in this article is that increasing local jurisdiction size reduces the cost of local administration. The results provide the most convincing evidence to date that economies of scale exist in local administration and can be captured through consolidation. - Reproduced.
773			_aUrban Affairs Review
906			_aLocal government - Canada
942			_2ddc _cAR