Determinants of Budget Transparency in Lithuanian Municipalities

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to find evidence whether Lithuanian municipalities use new technologies to disclose all relevant budget information in a timely, systematic, and comprehensive manner. The article creates a budget transparency index for each municipality using criteria from theory and previous research and then builds an empirical model to identify what determining factors make the budget process more transparent in some municipalities than in others. The results show that the percentage of population living in rural areas and turnout at local elections are negatively related to budget transparency while the level of debt is positively related to the level of transparency. The findings also provide evidence that revenue per capita and level of intergovernmental grants are negatively related to budget transparency. The research contributes to the existing literature by adding Lithuania to the relatively small set of countries that have developed budget transparency indices for subnational governments.