The determinants of local government performance have long been of interest, and have been empirically investigated in a number of recent studies. A general question in this area is: why have some local governments across the countries achieved high rates of performance whilst the others remained at lower levels? Evidence from the relevant literature indicates that some local governments or municipalities, particularly in developed countries, achieve very good performance. Others, in particular those from underdeveloped or developing, have very little or almost no performance.

This research empirically investigates the budgeting conditions in North Cyprus and evaluate how budgeting conditions vary from one municipality to the other in the five major municipalities; Lefkosa, Magusa, Girne, Guzelyurt and Iskele over the period 2004Q1 to 2012Q4. Two types of methodologies are conducted. First; it empirically investigates the determinants of local government deficit by using cointegration techniques. The Johansen co-integration and The Vector Error Correction model (VECM) are applied to test the effect of each element such as own-source revenue, grants, expenditures and debt services on the budget deficit. Second, the study test the convergence hypothesis if similar regions within the country converge to the same long-run steady state by considering five major Cypriot municipalities in the North Cyprus economy.

The results from the empirical analysis on budget deficit findings show that there is evidence of a long-run relationship between general deficit and its determinants. The evidence of causality is found from expenditure and debt to general deficit for Lefkosa municipality. There is unidirectional causality from grant and revenue through deficit for Magusa municipality. Third empirical analysis on convergence introduced that the municipalities with the lowest number of people per staff, commonly diverge from the group mean.

This book is about economic growth and development through a new way of analysis. It is a research that explains many phenomena seen in the growth process such as productivity, economic stagnation, under-investment, ineffectiveness of foreign aid, wage trends, factor flows and concentrations, technology adoption, and convergence by “relational analysis”.

Relational analysis is a general alternative analysis that focuses on the relationships between factors and uses their vital consequences to extract knowledge rather than ignore them artificially and fatally. It emphasizes that there are important interrelationships between factors such as complementarity, substitution, embodiment, directing, input-output, and facilitation. Taking into account the relations enable to get more complete and accurate answers to important questions, especially in applied works that require real predictions such as forecasting and policy formulation. The analysis can be fruitfully applied in any field, and as the growth analysis shows it fundamentally enriches the ideas, and protect from misleading assumptions.

In the book the readers will find:

– Origins and alternative definitions of complementarity and substitutions,

– Eleven implications of these relationships for economic growth and development,

– Many explanations and references for inferences regarding growth accounting, poverty traps and thresholds, multiple eqilibria, obsolescence, financial development, growth accelerations, imitations and barriers, and empirical anaysis.

The book is for anyone looking for an alternative way to learn about the basics of the growth process. Researchers, students, and staffs at universities and research institutions and other social scientists in government, business, international organizations should greatly benefit from reading the book.