Institutions and the Provision of Local Services in Mexico

The growing relevance of local governments in the provision of public services and the implementation of development policies increasingly require an attentive analysis of the determinants of governments' performance at this scale. Among these determinants I analyze the impact of institutional factors in the provision of public goods at the municipal level in Mexico, and more specifically: the institutional capacity (a skilled bureaucracy and local budgets), institutional thickness (civic engagement, corruption), and region size (surface area and population) in the provision of education (literacy), health (child mortality), and housing (electricity, water, and sewerage supply). The results highlight the importance of institutional capacity at the local level, as well as the size of subnational units in the provision of public goods, but there are mixed findings regarding the level of institutional thickness.