Gemeindegröße, Verwaltungsform und Effizienz der kommunalen Leistungserstellung – Das Beispiel Sachsen-Anhalt
Peter Haug
External Publications,
2012
Abstract
Municipality Size, Institutions and Efficiency of Municipal Service Provision: The Case of Saxony-Anhalt In this contribution we analyze the determinants of the efficiency of municipal service provision using the example of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The focus lies on the effects of municipality size, institutional setting and spatial or demographic factors. We perform a non-parametric efficiency estimation (Data Envelopment Analysis and the Convex-order-m approach by Daraio and Simar). In contrast to previous studies, we choose the aggregate budget of municipal associations as the object of our analysis since important competences are settled at the joint administrative level. The results show that municipal associations do not necessarily have to be less efficient than independent municipalities. Furthermore, the results for scale efficiency indicate that most municipalities of Saxony-Anhalt had a sufficiently efficient “firm size” in 2004. Moreover, demographic factors and settlement structures have a significant effect on the technical efficiency of towns and municipalities: While a higher population density might be, to some extent, efficiency-enhancing, an increasing share of senior citizens or population growth might have the opposite effect. The integration of spatial interdependencies in efficiency estimations is a complex problem that has only been solved insufficiently yet. However, the estimation results for Moran’s I show mostly statistically significant but, nevertheless, only little or moderate relationships between the single inputs and outputs. Hence, there is no cause for concern about a substantial bias in the results if we neglect spatial interrelationships in our calculation. Furthermore, we found no evidence that the surrounding municipalities benefit from their proximity to core cities by increased efficiency.
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Cities and Regions in Locational Competition – New Tendencies, Effects and Policy Consequences
Albrecht Kauffmann, Martin T. W. Rosenfeld
Forschungs- und Sitzungsberichte der ARL, Bd. 238,
2012
Abstract
Due to ongoing globalisation tendencies and the increasing intensity of exchanges of information, goods and services, competition between regions seems likely to continue to intensify. Numerous changes in framework conditions also give rise to new approaches to planning and management. These range from various types of competition to questions relating to new strategies for regional and urban development policy. This volume uses various different issues to trace, order and specify the multiple dimensions and underlying causes of structural changes in competition between locations, supported by cross-sectional studies primarily based on existing investigations. As empirical proof of the concrete consequences of changed competitive conditions is largely lacking in the existing literature, explorative case-studies of chosen cities and regions are also used to investigate the extent to which changes expected to arise from new structures of locational competition can be verified and how the political actors responsible have reacted thus far.
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Local economic development between system transformation and locational competition- the example of the city of Leipzig
Martin T. W. Rosenfeld, S. Kohler
Forschungs- und Sitzungsberichte der ARL, Bd. 238,
2012
Abstract
The example of Leipzig is used to investigate the effects ofstructural changes and increasin¬gly intense locational competition. Leipzig is particularly interesting because the city was traditionally a location for knowledge and trade, factors and/or activities that are being assigned particular significance under present day conditions of locational competition. Leipzig is currently well equipped with important potential factors. However, in terms of economic results the city has not yet been able to regain the position it occupied before the Second World War. In this context the consequences of the command economy and system transformation have played just as important a role as the changes in locational competition. The influence of these changes in Leipzig is made particularly clear by, among otherthings, L. the way in which the city - in common with other cities too - applies “modern“ economic policy strategies (cluster promotion, amenity strategy, metropolitan region strategy).
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New Tendencies in Competition Between Cities and Regions: Empirical Results from Case Studies in Germany and Austria
Martin T. W. Rosenfeld
Economy and Geography,
2013
Abstract
It is often discussed that during the last decades, due to several new developments, locational competition at the local and regional scale has changed its appearance and has increased significantly, all over Europe. Modern economic theories are suggesting that some locational factors have become more important than in previous times and might have led to changing conditions for the competition between cities and regions. The intention of the paper is to bring more light into this discussion and to illustrate, with the help of case studies, whether locational competition has really become more intensive, and / or whether new categories of competition have evolved.
The paper is based on the work of an interdisciplinary research group which was initiated and partially financed by the German National Academy for Spatial Research and Planning (Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung, ARL). The paper’s first part is reporting on a survey of recent theoretical and empirical literature on locational competition and has the task to classify the new tendencies systematically. The second part of the paper is presenting the results of case studies, which were carried out in order to find out about the importance of the expected changes in selected cities and regions in Germany and Austria. The main findings may be characterized as follows. For several cities and regions, we found out that the decrease of transportation and transaction costs had positive impacts on local and regional development, as within these cities and regions, industries are concentrated which benefit from technologies which are connected to transportation or transaction costs. Also for some regions, a positive impact of the downsizing of administrative borders was found – although especially in Eastern Germany, the process of catching up was restrained by agglomeration economies in the West. Although the impact of the new categories of locational competition on the economic development of the case cities and regions was, overall, limited, there was an important impact on the creation of new strategies by local and regional policymakers.
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Delineation of City Regions Based on Commuting Interrelations: The Example of Large Cities in Germany
Albrecht Kauffmann
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 4,
2012
Abstract
The comparison of cities with regard to their economic or demographic development may yield misleading results, if solely the cities in their administrative borders are the object of consideration. Frequently, historical borders of cities neither conform to the contemporary settlement structures, nor do they consider the mutual dependencies between cities and parts of their hinterland. Therefore, it is often claimed to use city regions as objects of comparison or for the sake of urban planning. Commonly, the delineation of functional regions is based on commuting flows from the municipalities in the hinterland of the core cities directed to the cores. A municipality is regarded as belonging to a certain city region if the share of out-commuters from this municipality to the respective core in the total mass of those employees who reside in that municipality is the largest one, and if this share exceeds a certain threshold value. However, commuting flows in the opposite direction are not considered. The method presented here delineates city regions on the base of bidirectional commuting flows. Hereby, various modifications regarding the characteristics of the employment base, the possibility of overlaps of regions, the formation of polycentric city regions, and of the minimum threshold value of mutual connectivity are applied to the sample of 81 German cities with more than 100 000 inhabitants. Finally, the effects of different kinds of regionalisation on the coefficients of regional specialisation of these cities and city regions are demonstrated.
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Foreword: Competing: Important Stimuli for Knowledge Cities to Become Prosperous
Peter Franz
T. Yigitcanlar, K. Metaxiotis, J. Carrillo (eds), Building Prosperous Knowledge Cities. Policies, Plans and Metrics,
2012
Abstract
The author discusses the role of competitions in urban development strategies based on the cooperation of higher education institutions. The experience with similar strategies in regional policy and in innovation policy is reflected upon. After the presentation of some cases, the advantages and disadvantages of development strategies based on competitions are compared.
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Political Institutionalisation and Governance of the German Metropolitan Regions: A Comparative Study
Peter Franz
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 11,
2011
Abstract
In Germany, some cities and districts try to react to the challenges of global location competition by the constitution of metropolitan regions. Thus new forms of intermunicipal co-operation on a regional scale emerge. Within the context of a national policy for spatial development eleven such metropolitan regions have been defined in Germany, and local activities supporting their constitution were encouraged. In spite of differing results and success in the eleven regions this process of political institutionalisation has led to partially similar institutional forms. This study compares the institutionalisaton process in the German metropolitan regions with the help of an idealtype model of institutionalisation steps. In addition, the design of the comparative study also allows testing potential effects of intervening factors as the regions’ monocentricity / polycentricity and the existence of Laender borders in a region on cooperative success. The study comes to the result that so far only few metropolitan regions have reached the stage of advanced institutionalisation and co-operation. The diversity of the institutionalisation paths prevents a „best practice“ recommendation at the present state of knowledge. As the constitution process in the regions still proceeds in a highly dynamic way, this study should be repeated within a five years’ period.
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Local Economic Structure and Sectoral Employment Growth in German Cities
Annette Illy, Michael Schwartz, Christoph Hornych, Martin T. W. Rosenfeld
Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie,
No. 5,
2011
Abstract
This study systematically examines the impact of fundamental elements of urban economic structure on sectoral employment growth in German cities (“urban growth”). We test four elements simultaneously – sectoral specialisation, diversification of economic activities, urban size and the impact of local competition. To account for the effect of varying spatial delimitations in the analysis of urban growth, we further differentiate between cities and planning regions as geographical units. Our regression results show a U-shaped relationship between localisation economies and urban growth and positive effects of local competition on urban growth. With respect to diversification, we find positive effects on urban growth on the city level, but insignificant results on the level of the planning regions. The impact of urban size also differs between free cities and planning regions; in the former, a U-shaped relationship is found, whereas the effect is inversely U-shaped for the latter.
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Industrial Associations as a Channel of Business-Government Interactions in an Imperfect Institutional Environment: The Russian Case
A. Yakovlev, A. Govorun
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 16,
2011
Abstract
International lessons from emerging economies suggest that business associations may provide an effective channel of communication between the government and the private sector. This function of business associations may become still more important in transition economies, where old mechanisms for coordinating enterprise activities have been destroyed, while the new ones have not been established yet. In this context, Russian experience is a matter of interest, because for a long time, Russia was regarded as a striking example of state failures and market failures. Consequently, the key point of our study was a description of the role and place of business associations in the presentday
Russian economy and their interaction with member companies and bodies of state
administration. Relying on the survey data of 957 manufacturing firms conducted in
2009, we found that business associations are more frequently joined by larger companies, firms located in regional capital cities, and firms active in investment and innovation. By contrast, business associations tend to be less frequently joined by business groups’ subsidiaries and firms that were non-responsive about their respective ownership structures. Our regression analysis has also confirmed that business associations are a component of what Frye (2002) calls an “elite exchange”– although only on regional and local levels. These “exchanges” imply that members of business associations, on the one hand, more actively assist regional and local authorities in social development of their regions, and on the other hand more often receive support from authorities. However, this effect is insignificant in terms of support from the federal government. In general, our results allow us to believe that at present, business associations (especially the
industry-wide and “leading” ones) consolidate the most active, advanced companies and act as collective representatives of their interests. For this reason, business associations can be regarded as interface units between the authorities and businesses and as a possible instrument for promotion of economic development.
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University Cities: Including Universities and Research Institutes into Strategies for Urban Growth
Peter Franz
International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development,
2011
Abstract
The topic of this special issue refers to the observation that many larger and middle-sized cities dispose of a considerable potential of institutions creating and disseminating knowledge. This kind of endowment seems to be especially valuable in an upcoming knowledge-based economy. Recent strategic concepts and inter-city competitions referring to ‘knowledge-based urban development’, ‘knowledge city’, ‘creative city’, ‘science city’ or ‘entrepreneurial university’ indicate that urban planners and politicians are beginning to search for strategies to take advantage and to make use of this potential. The papers in this special issue a) present case studies of cities trying to activate their knowledge resources for local economic growth, b) deal with regulatory barriers and problems for cities applying ‘knowledge city’ strategies, c) analyze the university support for entrepreneurial activities, and d) discuss some implications of ‘knowledge city’ strategies for architecture and urban planning.
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