An Environmental Risk index to Evaluate Pesticide Programs in Crop Budgets

A.E. Res. 85-1

Does Local Government Size Matter? Privatization and Hybrid Systems of Local Service Delivery

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Is Private Production of Public Services Cheaper than Public Production? A meta-regression analysis of solid waste and water services

Privatization of local government services is assumed to deliver cost savings but empirical evidence for this from around the world is mixed. We conduct a meta-regression analysis of all econometric studies examining privatization for water distribution and solid waste collection services and find no systematic support for lower costs with private production. Differences in study results are explained by differences in time-period of the analyses, service characteristics, and policy environment. We do not find a genuine empirical effect of cost savings resulting from private production. The results suggest that to ensure cost savings, more attention be given to the cost characteristics of the service, the transaction costs involved, and the policy environment stimulating competition, rather than to the debate over public versus private delivery of these services.Privatization, contracting-out, costs, local governments, meta-regression analysis.

Cities and Sustainability: Polycentric Action and Multilevel Governance

Polycentric theory, as applied to sustainability policy adoption, contends that municipalities will act independently to provide public services that protect the environment. Our multilevel regression analysis of survey responses from 1,497 municipalities across the United States challenges that notion. We find that internal drivers of municipal action are insufficient. Lower policy adoption is explained by capacity constraints. More policymaking occurs in states with a multilevel governance framework supportive of local sustainability action. Contrary to Fischel’s homevoter hypothesis, we find large cities and rural areas show higher levels of adoption than suburbs (possibly due to free riding within a metropolitan region)

Does public ownership of utilities matter for local government water policies?

What differentiates local governments that implement water policies on equity and the environment? Analyzing a 2015 survey of 1,897 U.S. municipalities, we find municipalities that own their water utilities more likely have policies to protect low-income residents from disconnection and to implement water resource management. Respondents from 8% of municipalities report protecting residents from disconnection. State economic regulation of publicly owned utilities and Democrat-majority municipal governments are positively associated with policies protecting low-income households from shutoffs but bear no association with resource management. Public ownership of utilities and state economic regulation may play a role in meeting water policy goals

Factors Explaining Inter-municipal Cooperation in Service Delivery: A Meta-Regression Analysis [WP]

Inter-municipal cooperation is an important public service delivery reform, whose drivers move beyond simple concerns with costs and economic efficiency, to policy issues related to governance structure and spatial context. We conduct a meta-regression analysis based on the existing multivariate empirical literature to explore what factors explain divergence in results in the existing empirical studies. We find strong evidence that fiscal constraints, spatial, and organizational factors are significant drivers of cooperation. Our meta regressions do not yield results to explain divergence in results on community wealth, economies of scale or racial homogeneity. More studies on these factors are needed to understand how these factors might affect cooperation. Future theoretical and empirical research should give more attention to spatial and organizational factors to develop a better understanding of factors driving cooperation and how they differ across local government structures and regions

Inter-municipal cooperation and costs: Expectations and evidence

Austerity and fiscal crisis make the search for cost saving reforms in local government more critical. While cost savings from privatization have frequently proven ephemeral, inter-municipal cooperation has been a relatively understudied reform. We analyze the literature on cost savings under cooperation and find savings are dependent on (1) the cost structure of public services, particularly those related to scale and density economies and externalities, (2) the structure of local government (size, metropolitan location, powers granted by the nation or regional state), and 3) the governance framework at the local/regional scale where cooperation varies from informal to formal. European studies give more emphasis to cost savings, while US studies focus on coordination concerns arising from the higher degree of devolution in the US local government system

Multilevel Governance: Framing the Integration of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Policymaking

Scholars embrace multilevel governance as an analytical framework for complex problems, such as climate change or water pollution. However, the elements needed to comprehensively operationalize multilevel governance remain undefined in the literature. This paper describes the five necessary ingredients to a multilevel framework: sanctioning and coordinating authority, provision of capacity, knowledge co-production, framing of co-benefits, and inclusion of civil society. The framework’s analytical utility is illustrated through two contrasting case examples – watershed management in the U.S. and air quality management in China. The framework balances local and central actors, which can promote a more effective governance regime

Sustainability and Disaster Planning: What are the Connections?

In this paper, we examine the connections between resiliency and sustainability by asking: can disaster planning lead to more sustainability actions? In a survey we conducted of 1,899 cities, towns, and counties across the United States in 2015, we found that disaster plans are three times more common than sustainability plans. Our regression models find both types of plans lead to sustainability action as does regional collaboration across the rural-urban interface. However, we find that hazard mitigation planning may be done without including sustainability staff, citizens, and other officials. After controlling for motivations, capacity, and cooperation, we find rural communities are more likely to have sustainability plans than suburbs, though their level of sustainability action is lower due to capacity constraints. Our models of multilevel governance find local motivations balance sustainability’s concept of environment, economic development, and social equity – and are more important drivers of action than grassroots or higher level government funding and policy. This bodes well in a context where federal government leadership on sustainability is absent