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This is not the first report to destroy the myth of economy of scale. Nigel Edwards analysed evidence for mergers in "The Triumph of Hope over Experience". He found only 30% of them delivered "shareholder value" (a measure of success). KPMG found the same in their recent analysis. Frontier Economics couldn't find any evidence either in their analysis for Monitor http://vanguardinhealth.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/monitor-your-thinking-scares-me.html. There may be a benefit to be had from the "less of a common good" perspective but that is not what scale thinkers really believe. For them scale = lower transaction costs = efficiency. Yet this is wrong. Economy is in flow, not scale. End-to-end and over time. Scale thinking bedevils attempts to design responses that solve peoples problems. Scale thinking drives costs up and worsens service. Take a look here to see why https://www.vanguard-method.com/content/366/economy_of_scale_is_a_myth/. Or here for research into diseconomies of scale http://locality.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Public-Services-Civil-Society-and-Diseconomies-of-Scale.pdf