The Impact of Municipal Territorial Reforms on Economic Performance of Local Governments. Systematic Review of Existing Academic Studies

During the last decade (2008-2017) municipal territorial reforms have been implemented in 15 different European countries, and if we add to that list countries which implemented similar reforms in early XXI century, we get to the list including more than 20 countries. Altogether, the number of European municipalities has decreased by more than 5,000 during the discussed period. The main arguments used in almost all of those reforms have been related to the economic performance – cost savings and increased capacity to deliver services. Similarly, a large part of the existing empirical studies of the territorial reforms traces their economic outcomes. Several studies investigated also spending and borrowing patterns in the pre-amalgamation period in order to portray common pool exploitation. Territorial reforms implemented selectively, affecting only part of administrative units provided a unique opportunity to use quasi-experimental research designs (e.g. difference-in-differences, synthetic control). The aim of the paper it to provide the systematic review of those studies, which would allow to synthetize their conclusions. The review concentrates on the articles published after 1990 in the international academic journals. The analysis will focus on four main dimensions: geographical coverage of the study, main research questions, research design and main results/conclusions.