Hierarchical and Spatial Effects in the Development of Municipalities

Abstract

The paper presents the results of analysis of the influence of separate levels of public administration hierarchy (regional, municipal) and neighboring territories on the indicators of socio-economic condition of municipal entities. The study was conducted in the context of 300 municipal entities of six subjects of the Russian Federation. The hierarchical and spatial effects were determined in several stages. The impact of separate administration levels on the results obtained by municipal entities was assessed with the use of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), which is applied in other scientific fields to analyze group and inter-group relations. The connectedness of municipalities was evaluated with the use of spatial statistics methods (Moran Index). The analysis has shown that both vertical and horizontal connections of municipal entities are important. They determine spatial and hierarchical effects. Assessing the change in a given indicator, taking into account both the internal potential and the existing external horizontal and vertical links simultaneously is the most difficult but necessary step in the formation of management decisions regarding municipal entities. Within the present paper, the existence of spatial and hierarchical effects allowed us to build a model that links the change in the volume of social payments and taxable incomes of the population per resident of the municipal entity to the volume of shipped products in the municipal entity and neighboring municipal entities, taking into account their hierarchical subordination. Calculations showed that the role of the regional level of ownership is 21.1%. The change in the volume of social payments and taxable money incomes of the population on average per resident is related to the actions of the municipal authority by 78.9%. The results obtained with the use of the proposed methods would make it possible to make substantiated managerial decisions in regional economic policy and determine the powers of various levels of public administration hierarchy

Keywords

• regional administration
• management hierarchy
• multi-level analysis
• spatial effect