In recent years, various policies promoted in different parts of Europe and the world aim at improving the quality of public services provided at local levels. The economic theory suggests that cost savings and quality improvements could be realized by favoring the aggregation between local governments (i.e. municipalities), especially when they are too small to operate efficiently. Such processes are called “amalgamations” and can be realized in various forms, for example managing some services jointly or even by merging different local governments.

In this context, the thesis pursues three aims:

• To realize a map of the various policies implemented in Europe, identifying commonalities and differences
• To conduct a systematic literature review about the academic studies which assessed the effects of amalgamations on performance and costs of local governments in Europe
• To analyze the effects of amalgamations in Italy, by a statistical analysis on a new database available with recent data on Italian municipalities.