Evaluating effectiveness in public provision of infrastructure and equipment: The case of Spanish municipalities

Concern about local government ability to provide public services in an effective way is increasing in Spain as these functions are being decentralized from the central to regional governments. The goal of this research is to provide state and local officials with a decision making tool that allows evaluation of the quantity and quality of the public services-infrastructure and equipment-that they are responsible for offering. We characterize performance among similar administrative observations, e.g. municipalities, by defining effectiveness improvement strategies-based on selective funds allocation-that identify and rank those sectors and variables that present provision deficits and require prior attention. In order to evaluate provision at the municipality level we define an additive effectiveness measure making use of Data Envelopment Analysis techniques which are enhanced to account for the presence of standards. The statistical data are from the Spanish Local Infrastructure and Equipment Survey.