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การประหยัดจากขนาดในองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่น
และวิเคราะห์ศักยภาพการควบรวมท้องถิ่นขนาดเล็ก

position, ii) less number of seat in local council which implies higher cost
for political entrance, iii) cost of organizational adjustment during
transitional period. It may be worth mentioning that “optimal size” of
local governance is difficult to specify and it cannot be judged from the
“minimum unit cost” or a view from supply side alone: By optimality,
we should take into consideration the demand side, i.e., local people or
the user of local service as they may be negatively affected from the
transformation, for instance, higher transaction costs.
The second, an assessment of possibility to amalgamate small-
sized municipalities and subdistrict administrative organizations in reality.
The proposal for local amalgamation was in fact pioneered by the
National Reform Steering Assembly, their efforts to identify the need for
reform and an agenda setting which, as the result, made the proposal
widely known. To supplement the quantitative investigation, our conduct
adopt the qualitative approach by: i) conducting case studies of previous
local amalgamation, ii) an attitudinal survey of local people and officials
to gather information and opinions from stakeholders to obtain different
views regarding a proposal for local merge including the proposal for
“one Tambon, one local administration”.

Research methodology: The first part of our study are quantitative
by nature, conceptualization from economics, public policy and
management, define terminologies and specify the variables that reflect
unit cost and economies-of-scale. Later on the hypotheses are
postulated which refer to cost curve and its relation with operational
scale of local administration. The model is empirically estimated by the
robust regression method. Later on the survey of small-sized local
administration is conducted (drawn from those local units in rank500) to
collect information about awareness of “local amalgamation” proposal,
how local administrator prepare for local amalgamation, and their
attitudes. The second part is qualitative approach and comprised of i)
field survey, ii) case studies of previous local amalgamation, and iii)
survey of small-sized municipalities and subdistrict administrations.

สถาบันพระปกเกล้า XVII