Administrative Reform Options in Baden-Wuerttemberg
Non-peer-reviewed screening study on county-level cost frontiers and reform prioritization
This project ranks administrative reform options for Baden-Wuerttemberg using a reproducible current-cost model. The main empirical object is a county-level cost frontier for current Kreis administrative expenditure proxies, combined with geographically adjacent Landkreis candidate pairs, non-overlapping reform packages, and explicit transition-cost and realization assumptions.
The study is intentionally skeptical. The estimates are not causal merger effects and should not be read as cashable budget savings. They are model-implied fiscal potentials meant to discipline audit prioritization: which adjacent Landkreis pairs and non-territorial reform margins merit closer institutional, legal, and operational assessment.
The current results suggest modest central net savings under the territorial packages, with uncertainty large enough that the model should not prescribe a final reform map. Its value is in separating cases where scale arguments deserve further review from cases where the model offers little support for reform on fiscal grounds alone.
Current manuscript: non-peer-reviewed screening study.