IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v48y2011i9p1835-1851.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Government Performance Matter? The Effects of Local Government on Urban Outcomes in England

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Greasley

    (Lecturer in Comparative Public Policy, PSI, Arts2, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK.)

  • Peter John

    (Hallsworth Chair of Governance, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, Ml3 9PL, UK.)

  • Harold Wolman

    (Director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy at George Washington University, 805 21st St, NW, Room 615, Washington, District of Columbia, 20815, USA.)

Abstract

This paper applies an extensive literature that argues that political leadership and local government activity enhance urban performance. Using the State of the Cities Database of 56 Primary Urban Areas in England, it tests for the impact of consolidated governance, political stability, planning performance, average service performance, local government capacity and planning development expenditure on jobs and population growth from 1995 to 2005. The regression analysis finds that the competence of service delivery is weakly associated with full-time jobs growth and that a consolidated governance structure is weakly associated with greater population growth. None of the other tests is statistically significant. Overall, the findings place doubt on the salience of the political determinants of economic performance in English cities for the period in question.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Greasley & Peter John & Harold Wolman, 2011. "Does Government Performance Matter? The Effects of Local Government on Urban Outcomes in England," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(9), pages 1835-1851, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:48:y:2011:i:9:p:1835-1851
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098010380955
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://usj.sagepub.com/content/48/9/1835.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098010380955?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deirdre N. McCloskey & Stephen T. Ziliak, 1996. "The Standard Error of Regressions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 97-114, March.
    2. Fernando Ferreira & Joseph Gyourko, 2009. "Do Political Parties Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 399-422.
    3. Paul Cheshire & Stefano Magrini, 2009. "Urban growth drivers in a Europe of sticky people and implicit boundaries," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 85-115, January.
    4. repec:hoo:wpaper:e-95-4 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. John M. Quigley, 1998. "Urban Diversity and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 127-138, Spring.
    6. Paul Cheshire & Stefano Magrini, 2006. "Population growth in European cities: Weather matters - but only nationally," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 23-37.
    7. Richard Florida & Charlotta Mellander & Kevin Stolarick, 2008. "Inside the black box of regional development: human capital, the creative class and tolerance," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(5), pages 615-649, September.
    8. Zoltan J. Acs, 2005. "Innovation and the Growth of Cities," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Urban Dynamics and Growth: Advances in Urban Economics, pages 635-658, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    9. Jesse M. Shapiro, 2003. "Smart Cities: Explaining the Relationship between City Growth and Human Capital," Urban/Regional 0309001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Glaeser, Edward L. & Scheinkman, JoseA. & Shleifer, Andrei, 1995. "Economic growth in a cross-section of cities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 117-143, August.
    11. Paul C. Cheshire, 2006. "Resurgent Cities, Urban Myths and Policy Hubris: What We Need to Know," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(8), pages 1231-1246, July.
    12. K G Ward, 1997. "Coalitions in Urban Regeneration: A Regime Approach," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(8), pages 1493-1506, August.
    13. Stansel, Dean, 2005. "Local decentralization and local economic growth: A cross-sectional examination of US metropolitan areas," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 55-72, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tobias Ketterer & Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, 2015. "Local quality of government and voting with one’s feet," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 55(2), pages 501-532, December.
    2. Delgado García, Juan Bautista & De Quevedo Puente, Esther, 2016. "The complex link of city reputation and city performance. Results for fsQCA analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2830-2839.
    3. Debojyoti Mazumder & Rajit Biswas, 2017. "Political Regime Change and State Performance," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 8(1).
    4. Athanasios-Alexandru Gavrilidis & Andreea Nita & Mihaita-Iulian Niculae, 2020. "Assessing the Potential Conflict Occurrence Due to Metropolitan Transportation Planning: A Proposed Quantitative Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-21, January.
    5. William F. Lever, 2013. "Evaluating the urban milieu of an individual city," Chapters, in: Peter Karl Kresl & Jaime Sobrino (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Urban Economies, chapter 15, pages 372-395, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aurélie LALANNE & Guillaume POUYANNE, 2012. "Ten years of metropolization in economics: a bibliometric approach (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2012-11, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    2. Delgado García, Juan Bautista & De Quevedo Puente, Esther, 2016. "The complex link of city reputation and city performance. Results for fsQCA analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2830-2839.
    3. Paul Cheshire & Stefano Magrini, 2008. "Urban Growth Drivers and Spatial Inequalities: Europe - a case with geographically sticky people," Working Papers 2008_32, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    4. Adelheid Holl, 2018. "Local employment growth patterns and the Great Recession: The case of Spain," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 837-863, September.
    5. Todd M. Gabe, 2009. "Knowledge And Earnings," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(3), pages 439-457, August.
    6. Haifeng Qian, 2010. "Talent, creativity and regional economic performance: the case of China," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 45(1), pages 133-156, August.
    7. Niclas Berggren & Mikael Elinder, 2012. "Is tolerance good or bad for growth?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 283-308, January.
    8. Beckstead, Desmond Brown, W. Mark Gellatly, Guy, 2008. "Villes et croissance : le cerveau gauche des villes nord-américaines : scientifiques et ingénieurs et croissance urbaine," L'économie canadienne en transition 2008017f, Statistics Canada, Division de l'analyse économique.
    9. José Miguel Navarro-Azorín & Andrés Artal-Tur, 2017. "How much does urban location matter for growth?," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 298-313, February.
    10. Vicente Royuel & Rosina Moreno & Esther Vaya, 2007. "Is the influence of quality of life on urban growth non-stationary in space? A case study of Barcelona," IREA Working Papers 200703, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Feb 2007.
    11. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    12. Paula Prenzel & Simona Iammarino, 2018. "Ageing labour: How does demographic change affect regional human capital?," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1832, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Aug 2018.
    13. Carazza, Luís & Silveira Neto, Raul da Mota, 2021. "Evaluating the Regional Expansion of Brazil’s Federal System of Vocational and Technological Education," Revista Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos, Associação Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos (ABER), vol. 15(2), pages 212-246.
    14. Haifeng Qian, 2013. "Diversity Versus Tolerance: The Social Drivers of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in US Cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(13), pages 2718-2735, October.
    15. Goodman, Christopher B, 2019. "Political Fragmentation & Economic Growth in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," SocArXiv dx75m, Center for Open Science.
    16. Thisse, Jacques-François & Proost, Stef, 2015. "Skilled Cities, Regional Disparities, and Efficient Transport: The state of the art and a research agenda," CEPR Discussion Papers 10790, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Rafael González-Val, 2015. "Cross-sectional growth in US cities from 1990 to 2000," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 83-106, January.
    18. Gilles Duranton & Matthew A. Turner, 2011. "The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2616-2652, October.
    19. Shade T Shutters & José Lobo & Rachata Muneepeerakul & Deborah Strumsky & Charlotta Mellander & Matthias Brachert & Teresa Farinha & Luis M A Bettencourt, 2018. "Urban occupational structures as information networks: The effect on network density of increasing number of occupations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-14, May.
    20. Annie Tubadji & Brian Osoba & Peter Nijkamp, 2015. "Culture-based development in the USA: culture as a factor for economic welfare and social well-being at a county level," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 39(3), pages 277-303, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:48:y:2011:i:9:p:1835-1851. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.