Jana Soukopová

Assessing the efficiency of municipal expenditures regarding environmental protection.

The article deals with efficiency of usual municipal expenditures on environmental protection and suggests a methodology for assessing this efficiency. Authors consider efficiency in the sense of 3E methodology: Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness and methodology of sustainable development: social, environmental and economic part of sustainable development as well as the role of those who make decisions in environmental politics. It uses multicriteria assessment, where a dominant criterion of performance is C/E. This procedure is applied to a file of environmental expenditures data from the representative sample of municipalities in selected areas of environmental protection which were used in a project of the Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic SP/4i1/54/08 Analysis of municipal budgets efficiency in relation to the environmental protection.

Municipality Size and Local Public Services: Do Economies of Scale Exist ?

Abstract Economies of scale are a standard topic in economic theory, frequently applied, for example, in the analysis of monopolies. They exist when a firm optimising its production costs while facing some fixed costs enjoys lower per-unit production costs as the production increases. Similarly to other production units municipalities have to be large enough to minimise average costs. We analysed the local public services in 205 municipalities with extended powers in the Czech Republic for the first time in this context, using regression analysis, a correlation diagram of local public services and statistical analysis. The paper examines this issue using data from 2008 to 2012. Our analysis showed that economies of scale cannot be clearly identified for local services in municipalities with extended powers in the Czech Republic and that the size of a municipality is not a key factor influencing the provision of local services.

National Environmental Data Facilities and Services of the Czech Republic and Their Use in Environmental Economics

National environmental data facilities and services are part of the environmental information systems of the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic that have been under development since 1990. In 2010 the development of the National Information System for Collecting and Evaluating Information on Environmental Pollution project started, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund. This project consists of an integrated system of reporting (ISPOP), an environmental help desk (EnviHELP), and the national INSPIRE geoportal, which were developed between 2010 and 2013 and were discussed at ISESS 2013. This paper introduces the current development of several national environmental and financial data facilities and services based on eGovernment implementation in the Czech Republic and the open environmental and financial data approach of the Czech Ministry of the Environment and the Czech Ministry of Finance. It also introduces the web information system that enabled us to find the relationship between environmental economics and municipal waste management in the Czech Republic.

Decision Support of Waste Management Expenditures Efficiency Assessment

This paper is devoted to the development of methodology and information and communication technology tools for decision support in the public sector. It analyses appropriate metrics for a municipal solid waste management expenditure (MSWE) efficiency assessment using cost-effectiveness Analysis (CEA). In addition to many other methodological issues, finding a proper output (performance, outcome) measurement is important. From the point of view of municipalities, such a measurement ought to be as clear and simple to use as possible. We analyse three possible criteria – total generated municipal solid waste, population, and municipality area – for evaluating MSWE efficiency in order to examine their appropriateness for municipal administration. The analysis covers three years, from 2009 to 2011, and municipalities from the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. We focus on a sample of 21 municipalities with specific administrative status. Expenditures were estimated using open public data from the Czech Ministry of Finance municipal accounts database. Correlation analysis showed a very strong relationship between the three chosen criteria. Public administration can certainly use all of the criteria for an efficiency assessment of MSWE to aid in decision making. However, the most suitable criterion to be population, since efficiency analysis results showed a strong correlation between population and both CEA for waste amount and CEA for municipality area. Moreover, population has a stronger relationship with MSWE than either of the other two criteria.

Methodology for the Efficiency Evaluation of the Municipal Environmental Protection Expenditure

This paper deals with an efficiency of current municipal expenditure on environmental protection and suggests a methodology for assessing this efficiency. A proposal of methodological procedure for evaluating efficiency of municipal environmental protection expenditure uses multi-criteria evaluation, where a dominant criterion of performance is modified method of Cost-effectiveness analysis. It was implemented in open source software. The efficiency in the methodology is intended in terms of 3E methodology – Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness, together with the methodology of sustainable development – social, environmental and economic part of sustainable development. This procedure is applied to a set of environmental protection expenditure data that come from the representative sample of municipalities in areas of waste management which were used in a project of the Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic SP/4i1/54/08 “Analysis of municipal budgets efficiency in relation to the environmental protection”.

Population age structure and the cost of municipal waste collection. A case study from the Czech Republic

Waste management is a common public service whose provision is the responsibility of local governments. As is usual with public services, the question of its efficiency naturally arises. The majority of studies focus on such efficiency from the perspective of the provider. This is based on the assumption that waste collection expenditure is a function of available equipment and municipal characteristics. In our opinion this approach has its limitations, and therefore we have used a novel approach based on the demand from municipal citizens for waste collection services. We build on previous results obtained from data concerning social and demographic characteristics, and focus on the relationship between age and expenditure on municipal solid waste, concentrating specifically on the ageing of the population. The ageing of societies in general is a very topical issue, but there is rather little focus in research on the effects of ageing on the demand for various public services. The research that does exist in the area of waste management that takes the age factor into account typically only makes a very rough division of the population into age categories such as children, people of working age and elderly people. Such wide groups naturally contain people with a large variety of needs, and therefore often lead to ambiguous results. The goal of our paper is to examine this topic in more detail, and to estimate the effects of various age categories of municipal citizens on municipal waste expenditure. We use models with age categories differentiated by decades, an approach which provides significantly more detailed information than the age variables used in other studies in this area. We use population age and waste management expenditure data collected from more than 6100 municipalities in the Czech Republic in 2011 and 2014. The results of our investigation have shown that senior citizens of a certain age (approximately at the onset of retirement) have a surprisingly strong influence on waste management expenditure.

Mixed System: Transformation and Current Trends in the Provision of Local Public Services in the Czech and Slovak Republics

This chapter covers two new EU member states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It describes the socialist era and the transformation after 1989. Concerning changes, main local public utilities were first transferred from national committees to local governments and soon afterwards the process of at least partial asset privatisation and outsourcing began. Water and sewage services are delivered in a non-competitive environment by legal entities with various ownership structures. Energy supply is a regulated service provided by a small number of suppliers using common infrastructure and competing on price. Education and healthcare have been converted into a real public-private civil sector mix of forms of delivery (financing is predominantly public), whilst there has been comparatively little de-institutionalisation and de-nationalisation of care for the elderly.

Environmental Protection Expenditure: Ex–Post Evaluation

The paper presents the methodology for monitoring and evaluating the efficiency of current environmental protection expenditures of municipalities developed within the project of Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic. The methodology has been approved as the voluntary environmental tool for municipal officials. A proposal of methodological procedure for evaluating municipal environmental protection expenditure is based on multi-criteria weighed assessment. It gives municipalities the instrument for assessment of expenditure efficiency and includes all three pillars of sustainable development – economical, ecological and environmental. In the paper are investigate outputs which results from the evaluation of environmental protection expenditures in the city of Brno that is the second largest city in the Czech Republic and represents the territory where live approximately 380 000 citizens. The results show real state of expenditure efficiency in the city Brno and point out the possibility of improving the current situation. The methodology is assessing tool based on available data usable for other states and their municipalities for evaluation of effectiveness of public spending at the local level.

Local Governments and Local Waste Management in the Czech Republic: Producers or Providers?

Abstract Local governments are responsible for the delivery of a large variety of very different public services. The article is focused on two issues: 1) we try to discover whether the local governments in the Czech Republic prefer to be “producers” or “providers” of the waste-collection services; 2) we test and compare the efficiency of “production” and the efficiency of “provision”, and for this purpose we take into account various factors, inter alia inter-municipal cooperation, the existence of hybrid organizations, economies of scale etc. A main goal is to find out what the local governments in the Czech Republic prefer if they decide on the delivery of local services linked to waste management and what factors are the most important ones from the perspective of their potential influence on efficiency. Concerning the data, we analyse linked open data on municipal solid waste expenditure collected by the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic and data relating to features of waste collection obtained via a questionnaire-based survey which was carried out at the turn of 2015 – 2016. The results of the presented analysis show a clear relationship of dependence between the inter-municipal cooperation and the relevant costs, and it confirms the assumption that the Czech local governments undoubtedly prefer the position of “providers” in the field of the local waste management. Paradoxically, the results show that neither internal nor external provision of waste-collection services is a key factor of cost-efficiency.

The Efficiency of Local Service Delivery: The Czech Republic and Slovakia

In this chapter selected factors/dimensions of the efficiency of local service delivery in the Czech Republic and Slovakia are assessed. The first, analytical, part presents results obtained from externalisation and analyses the main results in relation to achieving greater effectiveness. The subsequent analytical parts investigate the impact of the level of competition between suppliers on the costs of waste collection services and the core factors determining these service costs.