Finančné zdravie a hospodárenie miestnej samosprávy na Slovensku – súčasné trendy a vybrané priestorové aspekty

Financial Health and Economic Performance of Local Self-government in Slovakia – Recent Trends and Selected Spatial Aspects

Peter Bulla, Katarína Melichová

In: Geografické informácie (Geographical Information), Ročník (Volume) 21, Číslo (Issue) 2, 2017, p. 4-27, ISSN 1337-9453

DOI: 10.17846/GI.2017.21.2.4-27

Abstract

The importance of local self-government spending is increasing with the implementation of decentralization policies aimed at reorienting public decision-making processes from central to local level. Whether these local expenditures are spent efficiently is an important area of ​​research. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the trend of the development of selected dimensions of financial health and economic performance of local self-government sector in Slovakia as well as their spatial aspects and inter-municipal variability between 2009 and 2015. The results clearly confirm the assumption that there are significant spatial disparities in the different financial health and economic performance indicators, which confirms the argument that external factors significantly affect the financial management of local government in Slovakia, and therefore these should also be taken into account in attempts to benchmark or build municipal performance evaluation lists in terms of their financial health. Their lower performance in this regard, in many cases, does not have to indicate a shortcoming arising from bad financial management of the municipal bodies, but is often determined by these external factors. In addition to the spatial external factors affecting the financial health of municipalities, the economic fluctuations have a demonstrably negative impact on the municipal performance.

Keywords: local self-government, financial health, economic performance, spatial disparities, economic crisis

FULL TEXT