Bernardino Benito

• Full Professor
• Professor (Full) at Universidad de Murcia (University of Murcia)

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework for addressing global challenges and building a more equitable and sustainable future for all. Governments must coordinate to achieve the SDGs, addressing capacity and resource constraints, as well as political, institutional, and socioeconomic barriers. In this context, this study examin...

This study assesses the role of culture in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the Spanish public sector, focusing on the influence of local government cultural spending and education levels on SDG compliance in municipalities. Cultural spending, considered as a percentage of total non-financial local government spending , municip...

Purpose Nowadays, there is a strong public interest in promoting transparency to be informed about the actions of the public sector. At the same time, there has been a significant change in society’s perceptions and concerns about sustainable development, with a marked increase in attention to this area. In this context, our main objective is to i...

Local government officials are accountable to citizens, who increasingly demand more transparency given the amount of taxes they pay. This paper analyses the relationship between municipal tax revenues and transparency in Spain. Based on a sample of 141 Spanish municipalities with more than 15,000 inhabitants and applying least squares regression a...

According to the Institutional Theory, governments must respond to the climate and socio-economic challenges of the future by implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Moreover, in line with the Legitimacy Theory, governments need to adhere to the timetable of the 2030 Agenda to reduce social and economic disparities and avoid the seri...

Making progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) re- quires the involvement of citizens, with the public sector, and in particular local governments, being a key agent in their achievement. Currently, the political and media commitment to the SDGs is developing with notable success, but the indicators reflect the need to reorient the act...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a universal challenge to which all society must be committed. Local governments play a fundamental role as they are closest to citizens, with first-hand knowledge of their needs and as providers of essential services. Municipal governments are involved in many aspects of SDG implementation. Thus, the...

Urban environments are key to mitigating the effects of climate change, contributing to sustainability and improving people's lives. A significant part of the commitment to sustainable development is made by assuming the vital role played by local governments as the administrations closest to citizens and responsible for providing most of the essen...

The financial crisis that began in 2008 and the appearance of numerous scandals related to the management of public funds have made transparency and accountability key issues in the study of everything that is classified as public. This has occurred in the hope that transparency would improve the information provided by public entities and serve as...

The aim of this paper is to determine whether transparency influences efficiency of public services delivery and, therefore, the economic performance of municipal governments. First, and taking into account previous research, we select the appropriate inputs and outputs to calculate efficiency using several nonparametric methodologies such as Data...

Spanish legislation on gender quotas in electoral candidate lists implies the effective incorporation of women into politics. This measure has created interest in the impact of this law on public service management (substantive representation), especially welfare services. This is due to the influence these services have on work-life balance. Hence...

Local governments play a crucial role in the fight for a more sustainable world and, therefore, in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as they are the closest public entities to citizens and best know their needs. Local governments should be the driving force behind integrating the different areas of sustainability in their municipa...

This article investigates whether citizens reward those politicians who achieve better results in public management with re-election. It analyses the last three electoral processes in Spanish local governments, a period that runs from the beginning of the economic crisis (2007) to the last municipal elections (2019). For periods of financial crisis...

There are few studies that relate tax revenues to corruption at the municipal level due to their great complexity and the difficulty in obtaining data. Continuing the research we started years ago, the main objective of this article is to analyse whether municipal political corruption influences some or all tax revenues. A panel database of all Spa...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents the largest health and economic crisis in recent history. It has particularly affected the countries of the Mediterranean area, with serious repercussions in terms of not only infections and deaths, but also economic losses. In particular, social distancing measures, severe restrictions, and lockdowns imposed by gov...

This article seeks to ascertain whether local governments make improper use of their discretion and use pecuniary sanctions for electoral purposes. To this end, a sample of Spanish municipalities with a population of more than 1,000 citizens during the period 2010 to 2016 has been used. Our results show that revenues from fines are influenced by th...

The European Commission has launched numerous recovery plans for Member States to try to mitigate the damage caused by COVID-19. The most important element of this program is the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which is worth EUR 672.5 billion in loans and grants. Seventy per cent of the RRF grants will be distributed between 2021 and 2022,...

Background The pandemic generated by Covid-19 has changed the way of life of citizens around the world in a short time, affecting all areas of society directly or indirectly, which is facing a global health crisis with different national responses implemented by governments. Several months into the pandemic, the first after-effects of Covid-19 are...

Las debilidades que presenta el modelo de financiación local provocan que en algunos municipios haya surgido el debate sobre si la distribución de los fondos de los entes superiores de gobierno se realiza en base a principios adecuados o simplemente son resultado de criterios puramente partidistas. En este contexto, este trabajo tiene por objetivo...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse if municipalities that manage their services more efficiently are more transparent. Using a sample of Spanish municipalities for 2019, we find that more efficient municipalities do indeed put a greater emphasis on the dissemination of the information on most of the issues related to their management. Moreover...

Currently, in all developed countries there is great interest in improving democratic practices in local governments, as the administration closest to citizens. However, the possible influence of these actions on the management of public services and municipal finances have been side-lined, despite the great interest in evaluating the performance o...

The commitment of governments to sustainable development was materialised in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and later in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the latter being a more ambitious project that positions local governments as the main agents for its implementation. With the aim of improving the sustainability of cities, this...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of the police service in Spanish municipalities with a population of more than 50,000 inhabitants. Using Data Envelopment Analysis, we obtain the efficiency levels and the targets that the input and outputs have to reach to be efficient in the provision of the police service. Next, and based on...

Official milk prices in the Spanish small ruminant sector were used for 5 years (2015–2019) to analyze the effect caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis in 2020. Meat price fluctuations were also studied using the weekly prices officially provided by some of the main agrarian markets of the country (n = 6) in 2019 and 2020. Moreover, t...

The weaknesses of the local funding model mean that in some municipalities a debate has arisen as to whether the distribution of funds from upper levels of government is based on proper principles or is simply the result of strictly partisan criteria. In this context, this paper aims to analyze the criteria that determine the amount of funds receiv...

Local governments have powers to decide on various issues concerning the public services they provide, as well as on how to finance them. We believe that it is important to analyse the existence of Political Budget Cycles, since politicians may misuse this discretionary power by manipulating budget variables for electoral purposes. Specifically, we...

The human pandemic COVID-19 caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) started in China in 2019 and has rapidly spread around the world, leading to extreme control measures such as population confinement and industries activity closure. Despite small ruminants are not sanitary affected by this virus, the short-term e...

Cases of corruption, the financial and economic crisis, and citizens' growing interest in public affairs have contributed to the political changes that have taken place in Spain in recent years. In this scenario, in which new political actors appear, this research analyses whether politicians' remuneration, their dedication regime and several socio...

In recent years, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is becoming a major challenge for local governments. This research focuses on the role of Spanish local governments in the fulfillment of SDG-6, which aims to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all citizens. Specifically, this study analy...

Most research on corruption has been at the national level, because its study at the regional or local level is more complex. Although there are many studies about the relation between corruption and government spending, very few examine the influence of corruption on government revenues, and we have not found any at the subnational level, except t...

This research analyzes the factors that can improve the efficiency of public lighting. First, the annual and inter-annual efficiency levels are calculated. Second, the effects of a set of environmental variables on these efficiency levels are checked with a truncated regression model. The results show that public management is more efficient than p...

This paper evaluates whether the agency problem in public administration shapes Spanish municipalities' tax policy. To this aim, we have considered 2,431 Spanish municipalities for the period from 2002 to 2013. We find significant evidence of tax mimicking of neighboring municipalities, in both property tax and car tax. However, incumbents are not...

El objeto de nuestro trabajo es la recopilación de las prácticas actuales, tanto en España como en diferentes países, en torno al plan de actuación, y al papel y tipo de organización de los organismos que se encargan de su tutela y supervisión, así como la propuesta de medidas de eficiencia técnica a partir del mismo.No ha resultado posible contras...

La ciudadanía ha mostrado en los últimos años un interés creciente por conocer que está haciendo el sector público con los recursos que recibe, por lo que las entidades públicas se han visto obligadas a facilitar y poner a su disposición información actualizada sobre la utilización de estos recursos. En este sentido, el propósito del presente traba...

OBJECTIVES The main purpose of this research is to analyse the evolution of budgetary transparency in the Spanish Autonomous Communities (ACs) (also known as regions) and determine which socio-economic and political factors favor such evolution. To this aim, we will use the Transparency Index of the Autonomous Communities (INCAU), elaborated by Tr...

This paper uses DEA methodology to analyze the efficiency of the drinking water provision service in small municipalities. After obtaining the efficiency indicators, these are related to a group of exogenous variables to evaluate the determinants of the efficiency. We use a sample of Spanish municipalities of under 5,000 inhabitants in 2014, and th...

This paper uses DEA methodology to analyze the efficiency of the drinking water provision service in small municipalities. Once the efficiency indicators are obtained, these are related to a group of exogenous variables, so as to evaluate the determinants of efficiency. We use a sample of Spanish municipalities of under 5000 inhabitants in 2014, an...

Objectives The article focuses on the study of the resources available to measure the impact of Spanish foundations, and more specifically on the accountability of these entities, and in particular on the publication of the action plan, as well as on the role played by public authorities in this process. The aim of our work is to compile current pr...

This paper examines the impact of mayors’ corruption on the municipal interest rate set by lenders. In Spain, given the absence of a municipal bonds market and credit rating, banks fix the interest rate of municipal loans. Our results, robust to different specifications, indicate that banks do not take mayors’ corruption as a significant risk compo...

This paper aims to analyse whether illegal (corruption) and legal rent extraction (high politicians’ wages) affect electoral outcomes at municipal level. We use an initial sample of 145 Spanish municipalities over 50,000 for two electoral periods: 2004–2007 (before the crisis) and 2008–2011 (during the crisis). Our findings show that neither illega...

We investigate the rent extraction by politicians (illegal and legal) and its relationship with electoral outcomes in the Spanish municipalities over 50,000 inhabitants for two electoral periods: 2004-2007 (before the crisis) and 2008-2011 (during the crisis). With this aim, first, we build two indicators to measure illegal and legal rent extractio...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it assesses the efficiency of the drinking water supply in the Spanish municipalities of over 5,000 inhabitants. Second, it examines the hypothesis that this efficiency is conditioned by a group of environmental variables. Unlike monitoring reports based on descriptive methods, this paper uses the double...

Although some studies highlight the risks to fiscal discipline, others regard legislative scrutiny as essential for fiscal transparency. We consider it necessary to analyze the potential risks and benefits associated with legislative budgetary oversight simultaneously. In particular, this article aims to ascertain whether legislative budgetary over...

Advocates of the privatisation/outsourcing of public sector services defend the cost savings and greater efficiency derived from this type of management. In this sense, many local governments have opted to outsource the provision of some public services. However, empirical evidence for cost savings in the provision of public services is mixed. Acco...

This paper analyses the impact of transparency on fiscal performance. Our sample considers the 100 largest Spanish municipalities for the years 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2014. The results show that the level of municipal transparency influences budget forecast deviations in tax revenues and current expenditures. On the one hand, less transparent m...

This article analyses the determinants of municipal waste collection expenditure, specifically the effects of electoral cycles on municipal waste collection expenditure. We use a database with information on Spanish municipalities with more than 1000 inhabitants for the period 2002–2011. Our results reveal that incumbents adopt an opportunistic beh...

The aim of this study is to examine the determinants of spending in the municipal service of waste collection in Spain. For this we have used a sample of municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants (144), which are those contained in a report of transparency of municipalities made in the Rey Juan Carlos University. In our work we group the dif...

Background and Objectives This paper mainly focuses on decisions taken by politicians that may affect the level of municipal corruption. Specifically, we study whether local politicians' incentives to be corrupt are influenced by the wages they receive and/or their intention to run for next elections. This issue has hardly been empirically tackled...

This paper attempts to examine which factors explain public participation in the budget process in an international comparative approach. In particular, we investigate which socio-economic, institutional and political factors promote public engagement in the central government budget process. Using a sample of 93 countries, our results indicate tha...

Fiscal transparency and the cost of sovereign debt This article analyses the factors that seem to play an important role in determining the cost of sovereign debt. Specifically, we evaluate to what extent transparency, the level of corruption, citizens’ trust in politicians and credit ratings affect interest rates. For that purpose, we create a tra...

Antecedentes y objetivos: El papel que las fundaciones desempeñan actualmente en la sociedad justifica el análisis de su eficiencia, resultando imprescindible conocer si los recursos de los que disponen son convenientemente destinados a su finalidad. En este sentido, el trabajo que presentamos propone un enfoque actual y sin precedentes para el aná...

El libro está dirigido tanto a estudiantes universitarios como a opositores y profesionales que desarrollan su actividad en la gestión económico-financiera de las entidades locales. La obra consta de 24 supuestos prácticos, debidamente resueltos y comentados, que enriquecen, clarifican y actualizan el tratamiento de la disciplina objeto de estudio...

En este artículo se aborda el análisis de las normas contables que actualmente deben tener en cuenta las fundaciones españolas así como la información contenida en el modelo de plan de actuación exigido por la actual Ley 50/2002 de Fundaciones, el cual ha sido normalizado en el Plan General de Contabilidad de Entidades sin Fines Lucrativos y en el...

In an attempt to foster political will to combat corruption and improve anti- corruption policies and measures adopted by the Member States, the European Commission created a new mechanism, the EU Anti-Corruption Report, to oversee and evaluate anti-corruption efforts. With the support of a group of experts and a network of research correspondents...

This paper aims to examine the effect of tax revenue budgeting errors on fiscal balance and mayor’s party re-election. Specifically, we contribute to the literature by testing whether the relationship between tax revenue underestimation and fiscal balance is influenced by political ideology, political strength and the electoral cycle. To this end,...

While some studies highlight the risks to fiscal discipline, others regard legislative scrutiny as essential for fiscal transparency. We consider it necessary to analyze the potential risks and benefits associated with legislative budgetary oversight simultaneously. This paper aims to ascertain whether legislative budgetary oversight is a risk to f...

This paper analyses which factors determine the cost of debt, specifically in the light of the deep economic crisis the world is facing in today. We evaluate the impact of transparency, financial indicators and sovereign ratings on public debt interest. We consider several measures related to transparency: transparency index, corruption index and p...

This article analyses the factors that seem to play an important role in determining the cost of sovereign debt. Specifically, we evaluate to what extent transparency, the level of corruption, citizens’ trust in politicians and credit ratings affect interest rates. For that purpose, we create a transparency index matching the 2007 Organisation for...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the recent Spanish housing boom and the subsequent burst on local public finances. Particularly, we investigate the effect of the rise and later fall in revenue from urban development on local government debt. Using a sample of the Spanish largest municipalities in 2003-2011, we find that debt was s...

Recent years have seen Spain and many other developed countries move more and more into outsourcing public service management on the grounds that production costs are higher in the public sector than in the private. However, there is often no empirical support that this is always the case. This paper shows that the private sector is not always more...

En los últimos años, y como consecuencia de la entrada de España en la Unión Monetaria, se ha impuesto para las Administraciones públicas un nuevo marco presupuestario-financiero definido por el Pacto de Estabilidad y Crecimiento y la Ley General de Estabilidad Presupuestaria, que ha introducido cambios en el planteamiento de la financiación de pro...

During the first half of the nineties, many accounting innovations and reforms have been introduced in Spanish governmental accounting. In this context, the purposes of this paper are, on the one hand, to present the main features of local financial reporting legal requirements, which are very close to the central state accounting regulations, as w...

This paper analyzes the impact of economic, social and political factors on municipal debt behavior. With this aim, we have obtained a stratified random sample of 130 cities during a five-year period. These data have been used to configure a micro panel to obtain accurate estimates and to control for problems such as unobserved heterogeneity. The m...

In the first years of the 21st century, there was a building boom in Spain, which triggered many corruption cases in municipalities. This paper contributes to the scarce literature on this issue by analysing the impact of socio-economic and financial factors on urban political corruption. Our sample covers the 110 Spanish largest municipalities for...

En los últimos años han sido frecuentes los acuerdos de Colaboración Público-Privada (CPP), en los que la administración pública concierta un contrato a largo plazo con una empresa privada cuya finalidad es un servicio para los ciudadanos, y ésta desarrolla diferentes funciones según los contenidos del acuerdo. En dichos acuerdos se generan activos...

1. INTRODUCCIÓN Los criterios restrictivos de Maastricht en cuanto a déficit y deuda de las Administraciones Públicas han obligado a todos los Estados de la Unión Económica y Monetaria a limitar el recurso al endeudamiento para la financiación de las obras públicas. Debemos recordar a este respecto que en virtud del Pacto de Estabilidad y Crecimien...

This paper attempts to evaluate the role the legislative budgetary oversight plays in enhancing budget transparency. This relationship has not been empirically tested so far. For a sample of 93 countries surveyed by International Budget Partnership in 2010, we show that, as expected, legislative budgetary oversight has a positive influence on budge...

This paper analyzes the causes of legal political rent extraction by using a direct measure of it, namely, local top politicians' wages. In particular, we investigate whether local politicians' incentives to extract rents by setting their own wages are influenced by the degree of political competition and voter information. We use a sample of the l...

The credibility of policy decisions depends on reliable budgets that are consistently enforced. This paper gets an insight into the determinants of municipalities’ budget deviations, with the aim of drawing useful conclusions for decision makers and legislators. We show an opportunistic behaviour influenced by the electoral cycle. Specifically, we...

In decentralized European Monetary Union members such as Austria, Belgium, Germany, Finland or Spain, the Stability and Growth Pact can only be implemented if a close fiscal coordination among government tiers exists. Thus, limits on sub-central governments’ debt are essential in this coordination. This paper analyses which political and socio-econ...

Recent years have seen a wealth of studies on Cultural Economics, in line with the importance of the economic performance of the public sector. In this context, the two-stage double bootstrap procedure of Simar and Wilson (2007) has been used to estimate the efficiency determinants of Spanish local entities in the management of culture oriented pub...

This article analyzes the usefulness of municipal accounting information in the interest rates agreed on by financial institutions in the European context. Most of the literature has focused on municipal bonds, mainly in the United States. Our core contribution is to study which factors determine the interest rates on bank loans to municipalities....

En este artículo se profundiza, desde el punto de vista de los usuarios internos, en la información aportada por el plan de actuación que recoge el Real Decreto 1491/2011 (PGC ESFL 2011), el cual deja a las fundaciones muy cerca del control de gestión. Partimos de lo conveniente que resulta el hecho de que la información económica y financiera elab...

En los últimos años se ha producido en España y, en general, en el resto de países desarrollados, una progresiva descentralización y externalización en la gestión de los servicios públicos, lo que ha provocado que los estados financieros publicados por la entidad principal hayan perdido relevancia y representatividad. Por ello, se hace preciso defi...

This paper makes an analysis of the European System of Accounts (ESA95) financial treatment of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). PPP are complex operations that allow incumbents to create infrastructures while hiding debt, with an eye on the next elections. However, the sad part of the story is that PPP are more expensive than traditional contract...

La normas 8ª de activos fi nancieros, la 9ª de pasivos fi nancieros y la 10ª de coberturas constituyen una de las novedades más importantes del nuevo Plan General de Contabilidad Pública (PGCP). La valoración de estos activos y pasivos financieros no depende, como en el PGCP de 1994, de su naturaleza, sino de la clasificación inicial de los mismos,...

We examine the effect of a balanced budget rule on the local political budget cycle. Specifically, we pay attention to the evolution of budget deficit, taxes and capital spending around elections. Using a sample of the Spanish largest municipalities in 1994-2009, we find that the balanced budget rule has not dampened the political budget cycle in b...

Las medidas adoptadas por los países miembros de la Unión Europea para aplicar el Pacto de Estabilidad y Crecimiento suponen la adopción de políticas más estrictas de control del gasto público y la deuda pública. Por lo tanto, el desarrollo de las políticas de protección y bienestar social pueden estar condicionadas al cumplimiento de los objetivos...

Despite the current international crisis the tourism sector has managed to maintain high levels of activity. Against a backdrop of weak demand and stiff competition, efficiency has come to the fore as a key issue, especially in consolidated markets, like the Spanish one, where hopes that the sector will lead the way to economic recovery contrast wi...

In the Spanish local sector, as well as in other western countries, we are witnessing a process of managerial decentralization. Con- sequently, municipal financial statements are no longer relevant, since a growing percentage of operations is excluded from these statements. As suggested by IMF Manual on Fiscal Transparency and OECD Manual of Best P...

This paper considers the provision of some important municipal services and applies the non-parametric double bootstrap Simar and Wilson (J Econ 136(1):31–64, 2007) model based on a truncated-regression to estimate the effect of a group of relevant factors, which include the political sign of the governing party and the type of management, on robus...

We analyze the effect of municipal financial transparency on the magnitude of political budget cycles. Our sample covers the Spanish largest municipalities in the period 1999-2009. While the impact of transparency on the electoral cycle has been studied at the international and regional level, there is no empirical evidence of its effect at the loca...

This paper attempts to identify the socio-economic, political and institutional determinants of central government budget disclosure, both through the Internet and other media. It builds budget disclosure indicators based on the International Budget Partnership questionnaire for 93 countries. The findings show that Internet penetration, education l...

This work focuses on the relationship between budgetary institutions, sovereign rating and central government debt. Based on the 2007 OECD/World Bank Budgeting Database (OWD), we assess the transparency of national budget reports. This is a new development of Bastida and Benito (2007) transparency measurement (which referred to 2003 OWD). Once we b...

Present characteristics of governmental accounting in Europe must be analysed against the background of the evolution that has been taking place in worldwide accounting harmonisation in recent years. To this end, special reference must be made to IFAC Public Sector Committee (PSC) work; various studies, guidelines and accounting standards have alre...

Spain is a country where the Governmental Accounting system is very homogeneous at central and local level. In fact, the accounting regulations that are in force at local level follow the main orientation and guidelines of the accounting system applied at Central Government Level. This homogeneity has been a tradition in Spain, even when considerin...

This paper provides, for the first time, an insight into the influence of urban, political, demographic and economic factors on several categories of municipal spending, after controlling for the spatial effects. We apply spatial two-step least squares (S2SLS), spatial lag and spatial error models to a sample of 3,204 Spanish municipalities for the...

This paper analyzes the effects of electoral cycles on municipal police expenditure. We use a database with information on Spanish municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants for the period 2001–2008. Our data show that incumbents increase police spending 1 year before the elections, thus we confirm an electoral budget cycle on police expendit...

En los últimos años se ha incrementado el interés por estudiar el endeudamiento de las Administraciones Públicas, ya que existe el convencimiento generalizado de que el nivel que ha alcanzado dicho endeudamiento es excesivo. En este contexto, el presente trabajo pretende analizar las variables que mejor explican el endeudamiento en uno de los tres...