We have summarized the results of the many econometric specifications to explain the potential determinants of city governance in the synthesis in Table 6 (the full set of regressions are available upon request)<sup>18</sup> .

# **7 Concluding: Future Research and Emerging Policy Implications**

## **7.1 Brief synthesis**

In this paper we attempted to contribute to the field of urban governance and globalization through an empirically-based exploration of some key determinants of the performance of cities. This empirical inquiry was made possible through the construction of a worldwide database for cities that contains variables and indicators of globalization (at the country and city level), of city governance, and of city performance (access and quality of infrastructure service delivery). This city database integrates existing data with new data gathered specifically for this research project. We find that good governance and globalization matter for city-level performance in terms of access and quality of delivery of infrastructure services, and also that globalization and good city governance are related. There appear to be dynamic pressures from globalization and accountability that result in better performance at the city level. Furthermore, we find that there are complex interactions between technology, governance and city performance, as well as evidence of a non-linear (u-shaped) relationship between city size and performance, challenging the view that very large cities necessarily exhibit lower performance and pointing to potential agglomeration economies. Our framework also suggests a way of bridging two seemingly competing strands of the literature, namely viewing the city as a _place_ or as an _outcome_ . We find evidence that port cities seem to be in general more dependent on good governance for the city performance variables that matter for globalization (access to cell phone, internet access) and that capital cities tend more to serve local sewerage access better (water sewerage, electricity).

A preliminary analysis of city level data from EOS 2004 corroborates the main findings in our paper (summarized in Annexes A and B). These results were corroborated when replacing 2003 data with 2004 data. Finally, 2004 data confirms the strong positive correlation between city performance and globalization as well as the strong positive correlation between city performance and city governance that we highlighted in Sections 4 and 5 . This is indicative of the robustness of our results.

> 18 We have presented synthesis results and have not shown the results of multiple correlations.  We also have chosen to use data plots and not the actual econometric results.  We thought the synthesis results were a better way to present the results.  The actual regressions were tested for sign switches, and except for the access to electricity variable, the regressions did not show sign switches for the key variables.  This is why we thought it best to show the range of coefficient estimates and the statistical significance.  All the synthesis tables we have developed present controlled statistical results, as opposed to bivariate regressions, even if shown only in synthesis form.

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