The literature has not explored the interaction of economies of scope and economies of scale for public services provided by general-purpose local governments in detail. This study attempts to estimate the interactive effects on expenditures of the designation as a specially authorized city and merger, i.e. the interaction of economies of scope and scale. The findings of this research are summarized as follows. First, in the provision of public services by general local governments, the interaction of economies of scope and economies of scale is observed especially in the long term. The designation as a core city increases per capita expenditures for non-merged cities in the long term, but decreases for merged ones. Second, the contrasts of the long-term effects of designation as a specially authorized city between merged and non-merged cities hold for fiscal items such as ordinary expenses and conditional and unconditional grants.

Policymakers globally emphasize sub-national autonomy in environmental policies, but empirical evidence linking sub-national fiscal autonomy to climate risk is limited. This study addresses this gap by examining how AI preparedness and statistical performance mediate the relationship between environmental fiscal decentralization and climate risk, as measured by the IMF's Climate INFORM risk indicator. Using Panel Threshold Regressions with latent group structures (Miao et al., 2020) and quantile techniques on approx two decades of global data, we find that sub-national autonomy in climate finance reduces climate risk only up to a certain threshold. Beyond this point, excessive decentralization increases risk, though higher AI preparedness mitigates this negative effect. The findings suggest that strong statistical infrastructure and digital capabilities can counter protectionist policies in decentralized systems, improving climate change accountability. Additionally, decentralization reduces climate risk more effectively in countries with gender-sensitive policies, indicating that societal equality contributes to more sustainable outcomes.

Property tax collection in Zambia under-performs when compared to a number of African countries, owing in part to the existence of a dual tenure system which hampers local governments’ ability to raise revenue on customary land. Pursuing property taxation on customary land would require improved collaboration and information sharing between local councils and traditional leaderships, but also buy-in from owners living under the authorities of chiefs, who have historically reported low levels of trust in local councils’ ability to provide public services. Using novel data of 2’400 property owners in three councils of Zambia, equally distributed among owners who are property tax compliant and non-compliant, in informal settlements and on customary land, we use conjoint analysis to investigate (1) whether owners express a preference for a collaboration between local and traditional authorities in raising property tax, and (2) what drives owners’ preferences in the design of a property tax policy.

Limited access to credit has been identified as a major constraint to sustainable municipal development, but empirical evidence on the effectiveness of credit operations remains inconclusive. This paper evaluates the impact of federal government guaranteed loans on public expenditures. Using data from Brazilian municipalities and a regression discontinuity design --- that leverages a discontinuity in the eligibility criteria for federal government guarantees --- I show that the loans have a positive impact on the quality of local expenditure and social outcome indicators. This impact is characterized by a significant increase in investment while keeping personnel expenditures stable.