1. dr. Jože Benčina, dr. Maja Klun, Lan Umek
ANALYSIS OF LOCAL BUDGET TRANSPARENCY INDEX IN THE LAST THREE YEARS: THE CASE OF SLOVENIA
dr. Jože Benčina, dr. Maja Klun, Lan Umek
This work has been supported by Croatian Science Foundation under the project (IP )
and by Slovenian Research Agency under the project (ID P5-0093).

2. Agenda Municipalities in Slovenia Theories behind the research
Methodology
Results
Conclusion

3. Municipalities in Slovenia
11 cities
The smallest municipality: 369 inhabitants and 0.6 mio EUR (Hodoš); 8.6 km2 (Trzin);
The largest municipality: inhabitants and mio EUR (Ljubljana); km2 (Kočevje)

4. Theories behind the research
principle-agent theory
legitimacy theory
fiscal illusion theory
debt illusion
attention model

5. Methodology 1
Index determined by methodology presented in Ott et al., 2014
We examined the publication of the following documents:
Budget proposal
Enacted budget
Mid-year report on the implementation of the budget
Year-end report on the implementation of the budget
Citizen’s budget

6. Methodology 2
Collection of 48 socio-demographic indicators, 11 financial indicators and 63 additional socio-demographic and financial indicators from the project “Zlati kamen”
First attempt: regression model with OLBT index
Second: we grouped municipalities to such subgroups that have the same “OLBT profile”: existence of 17 different combinations; We compared each pair of subgroups in terms of mean values of all indicators using Student’s t-test

7. Result 1 3.49 3.54 3.67 Year observed Budget proposal Enacted budget
Mid- year report
Year-end report
Citizens’ budget
An average index
2016
0.92
0.95
0.55
0.87
0.20
3.49
2017
0.91
0.94
0.76
0.73
3.54
2018
0.98
0.70
0.83
0.29
3.67

8. Result 2
growth of debt per capita in € is significantly higher for the groups with high OLBT profile.
the group of highest OLBT profile is more efficient, but the evidence of some pairs of groups supports just opposite situation. For Slovenian municipalities the positive impact of fiscal transparency on operational efficiency cannot be confirmed.
The municipalities with higher OLBT profile have lower share of older inhabitants, lower aging index, higher share of students in population and better living standard.

9. Conclusion
in Slovenia only using few variables confirmed theoretical assumptions in line with fiscal illusion theory
Our results are more in line with theoretical assumptions connected to attention issue
Open issues: OLBT index without citizens’ budget is high (similar in the most of municipalities); methodology used to determine OLBT