[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea10/60991.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Service Delivery in Rural Municipalities: Privatize, Cooperate, or Go It Alone?

Author

Listed:
  • Halstead, John M.
  • Mohr, Robert D.
  • Deller, Steven C.
Abstract
Choices in production and contracting arrangements for a wide range of services were studied using data from approximately 1,000 small, mostly rural municipalities from Illinois, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Results suggest the use of both for-profit contractors and cooperative agreements with other governments correlate negatively with population. Small municipalities are less likely to use competitive bidding processes, compare costs between production options, or report that privatization produces savings. Median income, rural geography, and ideology show statistically-significant associations with contracting choices. Respondents generally consider themselves ―satisfied‖ with services provided by contract, although satisfaction levels are lower than those associated with self-provision. Satisfaction associated with services provided by other governments is lower than satisfaction with services provided by private contractors, suggesting no tradeoff in service quality directly attributable to ―for-profit‖ contractors.

Suggested Citation

  • Halstead, John M. & Mohr, Robert D. & Deller, Steven C., 2010. "Service Delivery in Rural Municipalities: Privatize, Cooperate, or Go It Alone?," 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado 60991, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea10:60991
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.60991
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/60991/files/aaea10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.60991?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 1997. "Privatization in the United States," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(3), pages 447-471, Autumn.
    2. Steven Brent Lackey & David Freshwater & Anil Rupasingha, 2002. "Factors Influencing Local Government Cooperation in Rural Areas: Evidence from the Tennessee Valley," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 16(2), pages 138-154, May.
    3. Steven C. Deller, 1998. "Local Government Structure, Devolution, and Privatization," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 20(1), pages 135-154.
    4. Deller, Steven C. & Hinds, David G. & Hinman, Donald L., 2001. "Local Public Services in Wisconsin: Alternatives for Municipalities with a Focus on Privatization," Staff Paper Series 441, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    5. Germa Bel & Xavier Fageda, 2008. "Reforming the local public sector: economics and politics in privatization of water and solid waste," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 45-65.
    6. Yolanda Kodrzycki, 1994. "Privatization of local public services: lessons for New England," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue May, pages 31-46.
    7. Donald F. Kettl, 1997. "The global revolution in public management: Driving themes, missing links," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 446-462.
    8. Hood, Christopher, 1995. "The "new public management" in the 1980s: Variations on a theme," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(2-3), pages 93-109.
    9. Peter Boettke, 2008. "Maximizing behavior & market forces: the microfoundations of spontaneous order theorizing in Gordon Tullock’s contributions to Smithian political economy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 3-10, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John Halstead & Peter Girard, 2005. "Privatization and Cooperative Management in the Provision of Public Services in the Rural United States," ERSA conference papers ersa05p30, European Regional Science Association.
    2. Halstead, John M. & Girard, Peter & Deller, Steven C., 2005. "Privatization of Municipal Service Provision: Panacea or Pandora's Box?," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19355, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    3. Germa Bel & Anton Costas, 2006. "Do Public Sector Reforms Get Rusty? Local Privatization in Spain," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 1-24.
    4. Hyndman, Noel & Liguori, Mariannunziata & Meyer, Renate E. & Polzer, Tobias & Rota, Silvia & Seiwald, Johann, 2014. "The translation and sedimentation of accounting reforms. A comparison of the UK, Austrian and Italian experiences," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 388-408.
    5. Halstead, John M. & Hallas-Burt, Shanna & Huang, Ju-Chin, 2004. "Alternatives For Financing Municipal Services: The Case Of Unit-Priced Trash Disposal," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 19953, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    6. Germà Bel & Xavier Fageda & Melania Mur, 2010. "¿Por qué se privatizan servicios en los municipios (pequeños)? Evidencia empírica sobre residuos sólidos y agua," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 192(1), pages 33-58, March.
    7. Germà Bel & Mildred E. Warner, 2016. "Factors explaining inter-municipal cooperation in service delivery: a meta-regression analysis," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 91-115, April.
    8. Yolanda Kodrzycki, 1998. "Fiscal pressures and the privatization of local services," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Jan, pages 39-50.
    9. Amir Hefetz & Mildred E Warner & Eran Vigoda-Gadot, 2012. "Privatization and Intermunicipal Contracting: The US Local Government Experience 1992–2007," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 30(4), pages 675-692, August.
    10. Yan, Jia & Oum, Tae Hoon, 2014. "The effect of government corruption on the efficiency of US commercial airports," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 119-132.
    11. Juri Demuth & Hans W. Friederiszick & Steffen Reinhold, 2022. "Reverse Privatization as a Reaction to the Competitive Environment: Evidence from Solid Waste Collection in Germany," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 60(2), pages 217-261, March.
    12. Germà Bel & Xavier Fageda & Melania Mur, 2011. "Why do municipalities cooperate to provide local public services? An empirical analysis," IREA Working Papers 201118, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Oct 2011.
    13. Amir HEFETZ & Mildred E. WARNER, 2010. "Dynamics of service provision: service, market and place characteristics," Departmental Working Papers 2010-33, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    14. Juri Demuth & Hans W. Friederiszick & Steffen Reinhold, 2018. "Reverse privatization as a reaction to the competitive environment: Evidence from solid waste collection in Germany," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-18-02_R1, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, revised 05 Oct 2021.
    15. Germa Bel & Anton Costas, 2004. "Do public sector reforms get rusty? An empirical analysis on privatization of solid waste collection," Public Economics 0409014, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Cooray, Arusha, 2011. "The role of the government in financial sector development," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 928-938, May.
    17. Ian Hodge & William M. Adams, 2016. "Short-Term Projects versus Adaptive Governance: Conflicting Demands in the Management of Ecological Restoration," Land, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-17, November.
    18. Ball, Amanda & Craig, Russell, 2010. "Using neo-institutionalism to advance social and environmental accounting," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 283-293.
    19. Deller, Steven C. & Hinds, David G. & Hinman, Donald L., 2001. "Local Public Services In Wisconsin: Alternatives For Municipalities With A Focus On Privatization," Staff Papers 12658, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    20. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Robbins, Geraldine & Lapsley, Irvine, 2015. "From secrecy to transparency: Accounting and the transition from religious charity to publicly-owned hospital," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 19-32.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea10:60991. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.