An evaluation of the financial sustainability of remote Australian local councils
An evaluation of the financial sustainability of remote Australian local councils
Economic Papers: A journal of applied economics and policy
- Author(s): Fellows, Caillan, Dollery, Brian, Marques, Rui
- Published: 2022
- Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
- ISBN: 0812-0439
Abstract: Spatial remoteness in the sense of great distances between population centres and limited access to public services is an on-going problem in Australian local government, where there exist large, sparsely populated regions dominated by the 'tyranny of distance'. From a public policy perspective, it is important to understand the impact of remoteness on local authorities. Accordingly, in this paper, we estimate the relationship between remoteness and financial sustainability using a 2014?2018 sample of Australian local governments. In general, we find only limited empirical evidence for a relationship between geographical remoteness and financial sustainability as we have proxied it.
- Urls: https://doi.org/10.1111/1759-3441.12334
- Keywords: structure and scope of government, publically provided goods, state and local government/intergovenmental relations, general regional economics, regional government analysis