The performance of local government in the execution of public works

This paper aims at analysing the procurement of public works paying attention to the level of government involved. Such an issue has not received so far attention in the literature on fiscal federalism nor in the public works procurement literature. We focus the attention upon the execution stage of public works: indeed, their efficient provision and their capability to deliver the planned benefits are severely affected by the problems arising at the execution stage because of the incompleteness of the underlying contract. The main result is that local governments seem to be less efficient in the management of the execution process, suffering from longer delays than central government. This phenomenon is more severe for small municipalities and when the contract is mainly financed with external resources.public procurement; local government; soft budget

Determinants of Heritage Authorities’ Performance: An exploratory study with DEA bootstrapping approach

Government regulation plays a significant role in the field of heritage conservation. Namely, regulation is aimed at controlling the stock of heritage, restricting or modifying the activities of public as well as private actors. Surprisingly, the literature has neither extensively investigated the performance of the heritage authorities involved in the implementation of conservation policies nor its determinants. In this paper we address this issue, from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective, using Sicily as a case study. More precisely, we analyze the determinants of the differences in the efficiency levels of conservation activity of the nine Sicilian heritage authorities over the period 1993-2005. Economic and managerial variables are used to distinguish non-discretionary from discretionary causes. The results show that the efficiency scores seem to be only affected by economic factors whereas the managerial variables do not affect the performance of heritage authorities.Heritage regulation, cultural policy, efficiency analysis.

Economics of cultural tourism: issues and perspectives

[LINK]https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10824-017-9300-6.pdf[/LINK]The special issue aims at exploring, with an economic perspective, the interconnections between cultural participation, in all its expressions, and tourism organization and patterns with the purpose of understanding economic effects, emerging trends and policy implications. The expanding notion of the cultural consumption of tourists makes the definition of cultural tourism increasingly elusive. Empirical investigations of the relationships between cultural participation and cultural heritage and tourism offer interesting hints in many directions. This introduction briefly overviews the premise of this special issue, the literature and the several perspectives taken by the included articles. Aside from their cultural topics—general, intangible or temporary—these essays all tackle some important economic dimensions of tourism. We encourage cultural economists to invest more in these fascinating areas as more than just intellectual tourists

Transparency, quality of institutions and performance in the Italian Municipalities

In this paper, we aim at evaluating from an economic perspective the recent Italian legislation on transparency to investigate whether the potentialities of transparency as a tool to improve performance and integrity are fully exploited. We first construct a synthetic indicator (CTI) consisting of two sub-indicators, CTI Integrity and CTI Performance, which are able to describe in numerical terms the overall degree of transparency of Italian public administrations as well as the two different aspects of the public activity’s transparency. Then, using as a sample of Italian municipalities, we address the question whether there is a relation between the fulfillment of transparency obligations and both the institutional quality and the performance of the public administration activity. Our preliminary results suggest that our transparency indicators show a satisfactory correlation with widely used measures of the quality of institutions as well as with the official data on municipalities public spending performance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How 'one-size-fits-all' public works contract does it better? An assessment of infrastructure provision in Italy

Public infrastructure procurement is crucial as a prerequisite for public and private investments and for economic and social capital growth. However, low performance in execution severely hinders infrastructure provision and benefits delivery. One of the most sensitive phases in public infrastructure procurement is the design because of the strategic relationship that it potentially creates between procurers and contractors in the execution stage, affecting the costs and the duration of the contract. In this paper, using recent developments in non-parametric frontiers and propensity score matching, we evaluate the performance in the execution of public works in Italy. The analysis provides robust evidence of significant improvement of performance where procurers opt for a design and build contracts, which lead to lower transaction costs, allowing contractors to better accommodate the project in the execution. Our findings bear considerable policy implications

Are less public funds bad? New strategies for cultural operators

Harsh public budget constraints which reduce the public funding available to cultural operators, are likely to impose radical changes in their strategies. However, this “bad news” may give cultural operators the chance to re-think their mission in line with the new set of incentives they face: they might try to exploit new market opportunities, enlarging the scope of their cultural production as well as incorporating other non market-oriented objectives. These strategies range from an additional supply of a specific type of cultural product (live artistic performances, visual arts exhibitions, etc.) to the supply of a larger variety of cultural products and services, including artistic educational activities for social inclusion. Along these lines they can also take advantage of the opportunity in order to make their business more profitable as well as to generate positive externalities which can be appreciated by a larger part of the local community and favour the social cohesion

The performance of local government in the execution of public works

This paper aims at analysing the procurement of public works paying attention to the level of government involved. Such an issue has not received so far attention in the literature on fiscal federalism nor in the public works procurement literature. We focus the attention upon the execution stage of public works: indeed, their efficient provision and their capability to deliver the planned benefits are severely affected by the problems arising at the execution stage because of the incompleteness of the underlying contract. The main result is that local governments seem to be less efficient in the management of the execution process, suffering from longer delays than central government. This phenomenon is more severe for small municipalities and when the contract is mainly financed with external resources

The performance of local government in the execution of public works

This paper aims at analysing the procurement of public works paying attention to the level of government involved. Such an issue has not received so far attention in the literature on fiscal federalism nor in the public works procurement literature. We focus the attention upon the execution stage of public works: indeed, their efficient provision and their capability to deliver the planned benefits are severely affected by the problems arising at the execution stage because of the incompleteness of the underlying contract. The main result is that local governments seem to be less efficient in the management of the execution process, suffering from longer delays than central government. This phenomenon is more severe for small municipalities and when the contract is mainly financed with external resources

Are less public funds bad? New strategies for cultural operators

Harsh public budget constraints which reduce the public funding available to cultural operators, are likely to impose radical changes in their strategies. However, this “bad news” may give cultural operators the chance to re-think their mission in line with the new set of incentives they face: they might try to exploit new market opportunities, enlarging the scope of their cultural production as well as incorporating other non market-oriented objectives. These strategies range from an additional supply of a specific type of cultural product (live artistic performances, visual arts exhibitions, etc.) to the supply of a larger variety of cultural products and services, including artistic educational activities for social inclusion. Along these lines they can also take advantage of the opportunity in order to make their business more profitable as well as to generate positive externalities which can be appreciated by a larger part of the local community and favour the social cohesion