Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name:  Marco Alberto De Benedetto
Author-Email:  mdebenedetto@unime.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università degli Studi di Messina
Author-Name:  Sergio Destefanis
Author-Email:  destefanis@unisa.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche, Università degli Studi di Salerno
Author-Name:  Luigi Guadalupi
Author-Email:  l.guadalupi@iriss.cnr.it
Author-Workplace-Name: RISS-CNR
Title:  Electoral Reform and Public Sector Efficiency. Some Evidence From Italian Municipalities
Abstract: We study the effect of Law 81/1993, which introduced a different electoral rule for the election of the mayor, on the technical efficiency of Italian cities. Since 1993, municipalities below 15,000 inhabitants vote with a single-ballot system, whereas cities above 15,000 inhabitants threshold are subject to a double ballot. We first estimate the technical efficiency in 1994 (taken as a pre-change year), and 1999 and 2004 for a sample of Italian municipalities, through a non-parametric DEA, and then we perform on both input and output oriented efficiency scores a difference-in-differences analysis, through various panel techniques. We find evidence that, after the reform, municipalities voting under a double-ballot show low levels of efficiency compared to cities voting under a single-ballot, by about 16 (input oriented) and 4 percentage points (output oriented). We speculate that the difference in the level of efficiency among cities voting under a different electoral rule is essentially driven by a lower average quality of politicians elected under a double ballot compared to those elected with a single ballot.
Creation-Date: 2019-03
Publication-Status: Published in Working Papers, March 2019, pages 1-24
File-URL:http://www.dises.unisa.it/RePEc/sep/wpaper/3_237.pdf
File-Format:Application/pdf
File-Function:First version, 2019
Number:3_237
Classification-JEL: C21; C23; C24; D72;H76
Keywords: Electoral reforms, Technical efficiency, Difference-in-differences, DEA.
Handle:RePEc:sep:wpaper:3_237