Stronger together? Assessing the causal effect of inter‐municipal cooperation on the efficiency of small Italian municipalities
研究意大利市际合作（市政联盟）对成员城市行政效率的影响，使用数据包络分析和准实验方法，未发现显著效应。
Abstract When local governments are small and fragmented, promoting inter‐municipal cooperation (IMC) among them is seen as a tool to improve the management of public services by reaping economies of scale and scope. Yet, the empirical evidence on the impacts of IMC on local governments' efficiency is scarce and inconclusive. In this paper, we investigate the experience of Italy's municipal unions ( Unioni di comuni ). We develop an index of technical efficiency by means of robust data envelopment analysis. We then exploit nearest‐neighbor matching and fuzzy regression discontinuity design estimators to explore whether municipal unions have any impacts on the administrative efficiency of member municipalities. We fail to find any strong, significant effect.