Pub Date : 2019-02-04DOI: 10.1007/s10101-019-00223-5
C. Guccio, D. Lisi, I. Rizzo
{"title":"When the purchasing officer looks the other way: on the waste effects of debauched local environment in public works execution","authors":"C. Guccio, D. Lisi, I. Rizzo","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00223-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00223-5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"20 1","pages":"205 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s10101-019-00223-5","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48769580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-02DOI: 10.1007/s10101-019-00222-6
Lang Yang
Local governments in the United States can file for bankruptcy to restructure their debt if allowed by state laws. While some states legislate an unconditional authorization, others conditionally permit local filings, do not give authorization, or intervene in local crises. This paper investigates the impact of state policy adoption on local governments’ revenue to expense ratio, a measure of deficit. While bankruptcy authorizations do not show an impact at the mean, a median locality decreases the revenue–expense ratio after the state adopts an authorization unconditional on state intervention, suggesting a moral hazard effect. Localities with conditionally high deficits, however, increase the ratio upon the adoption of a conditional authorization, possibly because they want to avoid being subjective to conditions placed by states.
{"title":"The impact of state intervention and bankruptcy authorization laws on local government deficits","authors":"Lang Yang","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00222-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00222-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Local governments in the United States can file for bankruptcy to restructure their debt if allowed by state laws. While some states legislate an unconditional authorization, others conditionally permit local filings, do not give authorization, or intervene in local crises. This paper investigates the impact of state policy adoption on local governments’ revenue to expense ratio, a measure of deficit. While bankruptcy authorizations do not show an impact at the mean, a median locality decreases the revenue–expense ratio after the state adopts an authorization unconditional on state intervention, suggesting a moral hazard effect. Localities with conditionally high deficits, however, increase the ratio upon the adoption of a conditional authorization, possibly because they want to avoid being subjective to conditions placed by states.</p>","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140888786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rich economies are characterized by the coincidence of, on the one hand, high state capacity and, on the other, well-functioning markets and the rule of law. They have states that are powerful and centralized and yet also limited . Furthermore, relatively low rates of shadow economic activity and tax evasion suggest that citizens perceive their states’ limitations to be credible. This suggests that a state’s ability to be credibly limited may facilitate its investments in state capacity. Consistent with this, we explore the potential link between historical traditions of representative governance institutions and state capacity today. We report that medieval and early modern representative assembly experiences positively correlate with higher tax revenues, smaller shadow economies, greater state control of violence and yet fewer state resources dedicated to violence. Relative to tax revenues, the evidence regarding shadow economies and violence is more robust to various controls and samples.
{"title":"Medieval European traditions in representation and state capacity today","authors":"J. Pavlik, A. Young","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3251355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3251355","url":null,"abstract":"Rich economies are characterized by the coincidence of, on the one hand, high state capacity and, on the other, well-functioning markets and the rule of law. They have states that are powerful and centralized and yet also limited . Furthermore, relatively low rates of shadow economic activity and tax evasion suggest that citizens perceive their states’ limitations to be credible. This suggests that a state’s ability to be credibly limited may facilitate its investments in state capacity. Consistent with this, we explore the potential link between historical traditions of representative governance institutions and state capacity today. We report that medieval and early modern representative assembly experiences positively correlate with higher tax revenues, smaller shadow economies, greater state control of violence and yet fewer state resources dedicated to violence. Relative to tax revenues, the evidence regarding shadow economies and violence is more robust to various controls and samples.","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"21 1","pages":"133-186"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46104274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-25DOI: 10.1007/s10101-019-00221-7
Nobuo Akai, Motohiro Sato
This paper revisits the soft budget versus the hard budget constraint in federations. By extending Besfamille and Lockwood (Int Econ Rev 49:577–593, 2008), who examine a case where the soft budget is ex ante favorable, we consider a model that allows the federal government to use a matching grant as an ex post policy instrument. We establish that this instrument acts as a commitment device and may improve social welfare compared with the situation in which the government’s ex ante policy options are limited to a hard or soft budget.
{"title":"The role of matching grants as a commitment device in the federation model with a repeated soft budget setting","authors":"Nobuo Akai, Motohiro Sato","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00221-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00221-7","url":null,"abstract":"This paper revisits the soft budget versus the hard budget constraint in federations. By extending Besfamille and Lockwood (Int Econ Rev 49:577–593, 2008), who examine a case where the soft budget is ex ante favorable, we consider a model that allows the federal government to use a matching grant as an ex post policy instrument. We establish that this instrument acts as a commitment device and may improve social welfare compared with the situation in which the government’s ex ante policy options are limited to a hard or soft budget.","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140889723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-17DOI: 10.1007/s10101-018-00220-0
Ryan H. Murphy
{"title":"The state economic modernity index: an index of state building, state size and scope, and state economic power","authors":"Ryan H. Murphy","doi":"10.1007/s10101-018-00220-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-018-00220-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"20 1","pages":"73 - 101"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s10101-018-00220-0","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48749529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-03DOI: 10.1007/s10101-018-0219-y
Antonis Adam, Sofia Tsarsitalidou
{"title":"Environmental policy efficiency: measurement and determinants","authors":"Antonis Adam, Sofia Tsarsitalidou","doi":"10.1007/s10101-018-0219-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-018-0219-y","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"20 1","pages":"1 - 22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s10101-018-0219-y","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"52490440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-14DOI: 10.1007/s10101-018-0218-z
Roger D. Congleton, Yang Zhou
The governorships of Jesse Ventura of Minnesota and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California provide two natural experiments for testing the institutionally induced stability hypothesis. Both men rose to their governorships through unique career and electoral paths that would reduce the stabilizing effects of partisan commitments and electoral competition, which would tend to increase their impact on public policy. Nonetheless, our evidence suggests that despite their unique backgrounds and paths to office neither governor had a statistically significant impact on their state’s expenditures or deficits.
{"title":"A test of the institutionally-induced equilibrium hypothesis: on the limited fiscal impact of two celebrity governors","authors":"Roger D. Congleton, Yang Zhou","doi":"10.1007/s10101-018-0218-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-018-0218-z","url":null,"abstract":"The governorships of Jesse Ventura of Minnesota and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California provide two natural experiments for testing the institutionally induced stability hypothesis. Both men rose to their governorships through unique career and electoral paths that would reduce the stabilizing effects of partisan commitments and electoral competition, which would tend to increase their impact on public policy. Nonetheless, our evidence suggests that despite their unique backgrounds and paths to office neither governor had a statistically significant impact on their state’s expenditures or deficits.","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2018-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140888787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-21DOI: 10.1007/s10101-018-0217-0
Daniel Gibbs
Bureaucratic personnel policy influences agency performance by affecting both the types of bureaucrats who are selected for employment and the actions that bureaucrats take. An effective policy selects intrinsically motivated bureaucrats for promotion or retention and provides incentives for bureaucrats to exert a high level of effort. I investigate a retention and promotion policy used in a number of U.S. government agencies in which only a previously specified percentage of bureaucrats in a cohort are retained after one period. The proportion of bureaucrats retained after a review is referred to as a “selection rate”. Using a formal model, I show that the adoption of a selection rate facilitates the separation of intrinsically motivated and unmotivated bureaucrats where they would otherwise pool, allowing bureaucratic personnel managers to screen out unmotivated bureaucrats. Effective screening by itself, however, is not welfare-enhancing because screening removes unmotivated bureaucrats’ incentives to exert effort. Compared to alternative welfare-reducing screening mechanisms which bring about screening through monitoring or wage policy, selection rates facilitate welfare-enhancing screening by inducing motivated types to exert additional effort in order to distinguish themselves from unmotivated bureaucrats. I find that selection rates are most effective where material or ego rents from government employment are high and where the policy rewards that motivated bureaucrats realize are low. These properties of selection rates explain their adoption in several U.S. government agencies’ personnel systems, most notably the military officer corps.
{"title":"Selection rates and bureaucratic performance","authors":"Daniel Gibbs","doi":"10.1007/s10101-018-0217-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-018-0217-0","url":null,"abstract":"Bureaucratic personnel policy influences agency performance by affecting both the types of bureaucrats who are selected for employment and the actions that bureaucrats take. An effective policy selects intrinsically motivated bureaucrats for promotion or retention and provides incentives for bureaucrats to exert a high level of effort. I investigate a retention and promotion policy used in a number of U.S. government agencies in which only a previously specified percentage of bureaucrats in a cohort are retained after one period. The proportion of bureaucrats retained after a review is referred to as a “selection rate”. Using a formal model, I show that the adoption of a selection rate facilitates the separation of intrinsically motivated and unmotivated bureaucrats where they would otherwise pool, allowing bureaucratic personnel managers to screen out unmotivated bureaucrats. Effective screening by itself, however, is not welfare-enhancing because screening removes unmotivated bureaucrats’ incentives to exert effort. Compared to alternative welfare-reducing screening mechanisms which bring about screening through monitoring or wage policy, selection rates facilitate welfare-enhancing screening by inducing motivated types to exert additional effort in order to distinguish themselves from unmotivated bureaucrats. I find that selection rates are most effective where material or ego rents from government employment are high and where the policy rewards that motivated bureaucrats realize are low. These properties of selection rates explain their adoption in several U.S. government agencies’ personnel systems, most notably the military officer corps.","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2018-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140888861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-15DOI: 10.1007/s10101-018-0216-1
J. Ferris, B. Dash
{"title":"Expenditure visibility and voter memory: a compositional approach to the political budget cycle in Indian states, 1959–2012","authors":"J. Ferris, B. Dash","doi":"10.1007/s10101-018-0216-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-018-0216-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"20 1","pages":"129 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2018-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s10101-018-0216-1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41701137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-01DOI: 10.1007/s10101-018-0214-3
Diether W. Beuermann, M. Amelina
{"title":"Does participatory budgeting improve decentralized public service delivery? Experimental evidence from rural Russia","authors":"Diether W. Beuermann, M. Amelina","doi":"10.1007/s10101-018-0214-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-018-0214-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"19 1","pages":"339 - 379"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s10101-018-0214-3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47495121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}