LIBRI DI ALBERTO ZANARDI

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the XLI Annual Scientific Conference held on line in September 2-4, 2020. The Web Conference contributed to motivate the scientific debate on the regional challenges and opportunities in times of crisis. A large number of contributions have investigated the territorial impact of economic shocks and natural disaster and discussed possible trajectories for a sustainable regional development process. The book collects a selection of these contributions, covering different topics on the economic, social, and regional consequences of crises and recovery processes.

This paper uses data collected for the determination of standard expenditure needs indicators recently published in opencivitas.it to shed light on some relevant profiles of the process of inter-municipal association under way in Italy. The paper shows firstly the distribution of the various forms of municipal association across regional territories and secondly whether cost savings actually result from the econometric estimation of standard expenditure needs indicators in the case that municipal associations are adopted in the public services provision. In particular, it is pointed out that in municipal services characterized by significant economies of scale the evaluation of the efficiency gains resulting from municipal associations could be distorted if associations are compared with single municipalities with the same features (especially in terms of population size). Instead, these efficiency gains, if any, would be correctly measured if the municipalities participating to an association (and not the association itself) were directly compared with the municipalities not involved in any association forms.

This paper deals with the effects of the reform of Italian Regions’ financing system which is under realization in 1999. The reform is based on the substitution of central government grants with a tax sharing system and on the introduction of a new equalization grants mechanism. Equalization rants are aimed to correct fiscal imbalances across Regions and to uarantee the provision of health services at standard level in every Region. The paper highlights the critical points of the reform. On one hand, the new financing system does not guarantee to the Regions the resources needed to meet the growth of health services demand, due to population ageing. On the other hand, the reform does not provide any equalization mechanism for the tax revenues yielded by the autonomous fiscal effort performed by single Regions.