Benchmarking the performance of US Municipalities

Area of Science:

• Public Administration
• Urban Studies
• Econometrics

Background:

• The performance of US municipal governments is crucial for public service delivery.
• Previous studies on municipal efficiency often assume convex production sets, potentially limiting accuracy.
• The 2007-2008 financial crisis provides a critical period to assess government performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the technical efficiency and productivity of US municipal governments.
• To investigate the impact of the 2007-2008 financial crisis on municipal performance.
• To explore regional and temporal variations in government production sets.

Main Methods:

• Employed fully nonparametric methods to estimate technical efficiencies.
• Utilized recently developed statistical results for advanced analysis.
• Allowed for non-convexity in local government production sets, a departure from prior research.

Main Results:

• Strong evidence suggests non-convexity in municipal production sets, challenging previous findings.
• Municipal production sets exhibit significant differences across time and US regions.
• Municipalities in the Midwest and South generally outperformed those in the Northeast and West.

Conclusions:

• Non-convexity is a key characteristic of municipal production, necessitating advanced analytical methods.
• Regional disparities in efficiency and productivity exist among US cities.
• Midwest and Southern municipalities demonstrated superior performance both pre- and post-financial crisis.