Lockwood, Ben, Porcelli, Francesco, Redoano, Michela and Schiavone, Antonio (2022) Does data disclosure improve local government performance? Evidence from Italian municipalities. Working Paper. Coventry, UK: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) (1434). (Unpublished)

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Abstract

We exploit the introduction of an open data online platform - part of a transparency program initiated by the Italian Government in late 2014 - as a natural experiment to analyse the effect of data disclosure on mayors’ expenditure and public good provision. First, we analyse the effect of the program by comparing municipalities on the border between ordinary and special regions, exploiting the fact that the latter regions did not participate in the program. We find that mayors in ordinary regions immediately change their behaviour after data disclosure by improving the disclosed indicators, and that the reaction depends also on their initial relative performance, a yardstick competition effect. Second, we investigate the effect of mayors’ attention to data disclosure within treated regions by tracking their daily accesses to the platform, which we instrument with the daily publication of newspaper articles mentioning the program. We find that mayors react to data disclosure by decreasing spending via a reduction of service provision, resulting in an aggregate decrease inefficiency. Overall, mayors seem to target variables that are disclosed on the website at the expense of variables that are less salient.

Item Type:	Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) J Political Science > JS Local government Municipal government
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Local government -- Italy, Local government -- Information technology -- Italy, Local government -- Italy -- Finance, Expenditures, Public, Internet in public administration -- Italy
Series Name:	Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS)
Publisher:	University of Warwick. Department of Economics
Place of Publication:	Coventry, UK
ISSN:	0083-7350
Official Date:	9 November 2022
Dates:	Date Event 9 November 2022 Available
Number:	1434
Number of Pages:	42
Institution:	University of Warwick
Status:	Not Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Description:	This paper also appears as QAPEC Discussion paper 17

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