An Empirical Assessment of the Optimal Size of Municipalities

Abstract

This research aims to carry out an empirical investigation on the optimal size of the municipalities, that is, the number of inhabitants that offers the lowest level of expenditure in relation to the municipal GDP, obtaining an economic scale to provide the best level of public resources. This study analyzes a sample of data from 4.835 municipalities with a population of less than 50,000 inhabitants, which represent 89% of the total Brazilian municipalities. The database gathers information on municipal revenues and expenses extracted from Finance of Brazil-Accounting Data of Municipalities-FINBRA 2010, socioeconomic data from the 2010 IBGE Demographic Census and the municipalities GDP from the 2010 IBGE. The outcomes showed that the optimal population size for a Brazilian municipality is equivalent to 31.667 inhabitants per city, based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) with robust standards errors. This population size provides gains of scale in public administration and improves local autonomy in relation to the central government in order to offer quality public goods.