Professor John Ashworth john.ashworth@durham.ac.uk
PGR Combined Role
Competition in the political arena and local government performance
Ashworth, B.; Geys, B.; Heyndels, B.; Wille, F.
Authors
B. Geys
B. Heyndels
F. Wille
Abstract
Competition reduces rent extraction in private-sector firms. In this article, we empirically assess whether it similarly disciplines politicians by evaluating local-level governments’ performance in Flanders. The results indicate that electoral competition – measured via the number of parties competing in elections – significantly positively affects the productive efficiency of municipal policy. Intertemporal competition – measured as the volatility of election outcomes over time – has a similar, but weaker, positive effect. These beneficial effects are mitigated by the fact that competition may lead to more fragmented governments, which is shown to work against their productive efficiency. Overall, though, the beneficial effects outweigh the unfavourable ones in our sample.
Citation
Ashworth, B., Geys, B., Heyndels, B., & Wille, F. (2014). Competition in the political arena and local government performance. Applied Economics, 46(19), 2264-2276. https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2014.899679
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Mar 25, 2014 |
Publication Date | Jul 1, 2014 |
Deposit Date | Mar 29, 2016 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 29, 2016 |
Journal | Applied Economics |
Print ISSN | 0003-6846 |
Electronic ISSN | 1466-4283 |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 46 |
Issue | 19 |
Pages | 2264-2276 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2014.899679 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1385570 |
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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Applied Economics on 25/03/2014, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00036846.2014.899679.
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