With the increase in public services offered at the local level and heightened budgetary and financial constraints on local government, new ways of managing local public services must be sought, in order to maximize the efficiency of resource management. Accordingly, local governments have introduced organizational changes, through contracting out, the creation of public agencies, and increased cooperation with other municipalities and private companies. However, previous studies have only examined the relationship between contracting out and efficiency, and no in-depth survey has been made of the relationship between efficiency with other forms of management, nor of the joint impact of these forms of management on efficiency. The main aim of this study is to determine whether New Public Management (NPM) delivery forms do in fact improve the efficiency of Spanish local governments. In this regard, we analyze the particular impact of the global recession. Our results suggest that in general terms the creation of agencies, contracting out, and intermunicipal cooperation reduce cost efficiency. However, these results also lead to the conclusion that during the global recession, some of these NPM delivery forms tended to become more efficient. Thus, empirical evidence suggests that the adoption of mixed firms contributes to higher levels of cost efficiency in the whole period considered, and thus it may be a suitable instrument in periods of crisis. Com o aumento dos serviços ofertados em nível local, aumentos nos orçamentos e nas restrições orçamentárias nos governos locais, novas formas de gerenciamento de serviços públicos no nível local precisaram ser descobertas a fim de maximizar a eficiência da gestão dos recursos. Dessa forma, governos locais têm introduzido mudanças organizacionais através de terceirizações, criação de agencias públicas e aumento da cooperação com outros municípios e empresas privadas. Contudo, estudos anteriores apenas examinaram o relacionamento entre o processo de contratação e a eficiência, e nenhum levantamento em profundidade foi feito sobre o relacionamento entre eficiência e outras formas de gerenciamento, nem sobre o impacto destas formas de gerenciamento sobre a eficiência. O objetivo principal deste estudo é determinar se formas de prestação de serviços propostas pela Nova Gestão Pública (NPM) realmente melhoram a eficiência de municípios espanhóis. Neste sentido, nós analisamos o impacto particular da recessão global. Nossos resultados sugerem que, em termos gerais, a criação de agencias, terceirização e cooperação intermunicipal reduz a eficiência de custos. Entretanto, estes resultados também levam a concluir que durante a recessão global, algumas destas formas de prestação de serviços via Nova Gestão Pública tendem a se tornar mais eficientes. Assim, as evidências empíricas sugerem que a adoção de organizações mistas contribuem para um nível maior de eficiência de custos em todo o período considerado, e, desta forma, este pode ser um instrumento adequado para períodos de crise. Translated by Ricardo Gomes, University of Brasília

One of the main problems in evaluating financial performance arises in carrying out comparisons between municipalities, as no account is taken of the impact of certain factors of the social and economic environment on the indicators in question. In this study, the concept of financial condition is applied, revealing the influence of such factors, and a methodology is proposed to minimize their effects on the results of the evaluation. The results of applying these to a sample of municipalities in Spain reveal that the model is useful for reinforcing the value of benchmarking between municipalities with similar characteristics. Points for practitioners The use of indicators for evaluating financial performance has advanced considerably in recent years. However, many criticisms have been made by public sector managers concerning the application of such indicators. One of these is that, in many cases, the values measured by different authorities are not comparable, as the services they provide differ significantly. If local authorities were grouped according to the social and economic factors influencing their provision of public services, the evaluations made would be much more effective, facilitating decision-making by supervisory bodies and by municipal managers.