Sustainable provision of school buildings in the Netherlands: An empirical productivity analysis of local government school building operations

Building operations and construction are responsible for a large part of global energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. In this paper, we present an analysis of the efficiency and productivity of the provision of school buildings by Dutch municipalities. A cost function is estimated for the years 2005–2016 using stochastic frontier methods...

Economies of scale and sustainability in local government: A complex issue

Local governments may seek efficient public service delivery through scaling up production, and the quest for the optimal local government size has attracted extensive attention of scholars and policy makers. Indeed, if scale matters for local government efficiency, increasing size may be a key factor in achieving more value for money for...

Managing size of public schools and school boards: A multi-level cost approach applied to dutch primary education

In many countries, the provision of primary education is among the core responsibilities of local governments. One of the main questions local governments face concerns the optimal configuration of school boards and size of schools. In this paper we analyse the relation between cost and scale in school boards and in schools. The influence of...