Pub Date : 2024-04-15DOI: 10.1177/10911421241242516
Peter Calcagno, Taylor Crawford, Beatriz Maldonado
Free trade is important in the development of good economic institutions. One issue, in particular, is whether free trade agreements (FTA) can reduce corruption. Liberalizing trade while reducing corruption can reinforce moral behavior. We examine FTA between the United States and its Latin American trading partners. Free trade may provide incentives that could possibly result in countries becoming less corrupt over time. However, since 2004 the United States has included explicit anti-corruption clauses in its agreements. Using a difference-in-difference framework and a panel of 16 Latin American countries between 1991 and 2018, we test if trade agreements with the U.S. have any effect on corruption. We find that there is an increase in general corruption in countries after signing these trade agreements in comparison to countries that never signed one. These findings suggest that letting countries determine their own rules for reducing corruption might be better than dictating them through an agreement.
{"title":"Do U.S. Trade Agreements Affect Corruption in Latin America? A Difference in Difference Analysis","authors":"Peter Calcagno, Taylor Crawford, Beatriz Maldonado","doi":"10.1177/10911421241242516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421241242516","url":null,"abstract":"Free trade is important in the development of good economic institutions. One issue, in particular, is whether free trade agreements (FTA) can reduce corruption. Liberalizing trade while reducing corruption can reinforce moral behavior. We examine FTA between the United States and its Latin American trading partners. Free trade may provide incentives that could possibly result in countries becoming less corrupt over time. However, since 2004 the United States has included explicit anti-corruption clauses in its agreements. Using a difference-in-difference framework and a panel of 16 Latin American countries between 1991 and 2018, we test if trade agreements with the U.S. have any effect on corruption. We find that there is an increase in general corruption in countries after signing these trade agreements in comparison to countries that never signed one. These findings suggest that letting countries determine their own rules for reducing corruption might be better than dictating them through an agreement.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140562635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-13DOI: 10.1177/10911421241245771
Phuong Nguyen-Hoang
Allocation mechanisms are crucial to shaping the effectiveness of a country's school finance system. In Vietnam, local authorities make their own decisions about allocating operating resources for pretertiary education. Despite this high level of control, there is a lack of comprehensive studies on how Vietnamese provinces allocate resources for their schools. This study aims to fill this gap by examining official legal documents from Vietnamese provinces, focusing on the allocation of operating funds to P-12 schools. The findings reveal significant variations in resource allocation across operating purposes (salary vs. nonsalary), grade levels, methods of accounting for scale economies, and different student subgroups, including those who are socio-economically disadvantaged students, gifted students, and with disabilities.
{"title":"Local Autonomy in Education Finance in a Mixed Economy: The Case of Vietnam","authors":"Phuong Nguyen-Hoang","doi":"10.1177/10911421241245771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421241245771","url":null,"abstract":"Allocation mechanisms are crucial to shaping the effectiveness of a country's school finance system. In Vietnam, local authorities make their own decisions about allocating operating resources for pretertiary education. Despite this high level of control, there is a lack of comprehensive studies on how Vietnamese provinces allocate resources for their schools. This study aims to fill this gap by examining official legal documents from Vietnamese provinces, focusing on the allocation of operating funds to P-12 schools. The findings reveal significant variations in resource allocation across operating purposes (salary vs. nonsalary), grade levels, methods of accounting for scale economies, and different student subgroups, including those who are socio-economically disadvantaged students, gifted students, and with disabilities.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140562840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1177/10911421241232444
Benjamin Blemings, Brad Humphreys
Local governments provide many crucial services from limited budgets, yet often subsidize the profitable, private businesses in professional sports leagues in the United States. Policing represents one important public service. Policing typically constitutes large portions of government budgets and also generates revenue through fines and forfeitures. Existing evidence suggests that large municipal expenditures in other areas can have an ambiguous effect on policing outcomes. This paper addresses the question of whether large public expenditures on sports facilities affect drug asset forfeiture using two-way fixed effects (TWFE) and generalized dynamic model specifications (GDMS). The results are similar across estimation methods, with static TWFE results suggesting a treatment effect of $1,274–5,589 in additional forfeiture per million in subsidies and results from the newer GDMS estimators suggesting $7,703 per million in subsidies. The results imply that, beyond generating no tangible local economic benefits, public subsidization of sports facilities also leads police to make up budget shortfalls by more aggressive policing, which has important implications for racial equity.
{"title":"Public Financing of Professional Sports Facilities and Drug Asset Forfeiture","authors":"Benjamin Blemings, Brad Humphreys","doi":"10.1177/10911421241232444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421241232444","url":null,"abstract":"Local governments provide many crucial services from limited budgets, yet often subsidize the profitable, private businesses in professional sports leagues in the United States. Policing represents one important public service. Policing typically constitutes large portions of government budgets and also generates revenue through fines and forfeitures. Existing evidence suggests that large municipal expenditures in other areas can have an ambiguous effect on policing outcomes. This paper addresses the question of whether large public expenditures on sports facilities affect drug asset forfeiture using two-way fixed effects (TWFE) and generalized dynamic model specifications (GDMS). The results are similar across estimation methods, with static TWFE results suggesting a treatment effect of $1,274–5,589 in additional forfeiture per million in subsidies and results from the newer GDMS estimators suggesting $7,703 per million in subsidies. The results imply that, beyond generating no tangible local economic benefits, public subsidization of sports facilities also leads police to make up budget shortfalls by more aggressive policing, which has important implications for racial equity.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"2014 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140170434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-12DOI: 10.1177/10911421241233373
Claudia Amadei, Marina Bertolini, Luciano Greco
A global trend, represented by the case of Italy, is that of movable cultural heritage hidden – and often not properly recorded – in public museums’ warehouses. Legal frameworks pose limits to privatization in the management of cultural assets. We propose the creation of a regulated market for tradable, long-term concessions of movable artwork to encourage selected private operators to invest in artwork's extraction from public museums’ warehouses. The social and monetary value that fiscally constrained countries can derive from once-hidden public cultural heritage would outweigh that of traditional means of exploiting the value of artwork. At the same time, public ownership of the extracted works of art would be retained.
{"title":"On the Management of Hidden Artwork: A Public–Private Partnership Approach","authors":"Claudia Amadei, Marina Bertolini, Luciano Greco","doi":"10.1177/10911421241233373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421241233373","url":null,"abstract":"A global trend, represented by the case of Italy, is that of movable cultural heritage hidden – and often not properly recorded – in public museums’ warehouses. Legal frameworks pose limits to privatization in the management of cultural assets. We propose the creation of a regulated market for tradable, long-term concessions of movable artwork to encourage selected private operators to invest in artwork's extraction from public museums’ warehouses. The social and monetary value that fiscally constrained countries can derive from once-hidden public cultural heritage would outweigh that of traditional means of exploiting the value of artwork. At the same time, public ownership of the extracted works of art would be retained.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"132 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140117141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-21DOI: 10.1177/10911421231225779
Zach Raff, Andrew Swanson, Danielle Zanzalari
This paper examines whether state and local political leaders’ partisan affiliations affect economic freedom at the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level. Because political leaders’ partisan affiliations likely correlate with unobserved state- and local-level characteristics that also affect the economic freedom levels of MSAs, we use a regression discontinuity design that leverages close elections as natural experiments to identify a causal effect. Using Stansel (2019)’s index, which aggregates a bundle of policies into a single measure of economic freedom, we find that close Republican majorities in the lower State House increase overall MSA-level economic freedom. This effect is realized through consistent governments (i.e., Republican governor and Republican State House majority) and primarily through changes in labor market policy. At the city level, Republican mayors also increase overall MSA-level economic freedom levels.
{"title":"Do Political Leaders Impact Economic Freedom at the Local Level? Evidence from Close Elections","authors":"Zach Raff, Andrew Swanson, Danielle Zanzalari","doi":"10.1177/10911421231225779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421231225779","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines whether state and local political leaders’ partisan affiliations affect economic freedom at the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level. Because political leaders’ partisan affiliations likely correlate with unobserved state- and local-level characteristics that also affect the economic freedom levels of MSAs, we use a regression discontinuity design that leverages close elections as natural experiments to identify a causal effect. Using Stansel (2019)’s index, which aggregates a bundle of policies into a single measure of economic freedom, we find that close Republican majorities in the lower State House increase overall MSA-level economic freedom. This effect is realized through consistent governments (i.e., Republican governor and Republican State House majority) and primarily through changes in labor market policy. At the city level, Republican mayors also increase overall MSA-level economic freedom levels.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139954597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-06DOI: 10.1177/10911421231206030
C. Clotfelter
Over the last three decades, a little-noted change has taken place in state lotteries. This change is an increase in the average payout rate, the share of sales that is returned to players in the form of prizes. Because it reduces the rate of implicit taxation on lottery purchases and its accompanying welfare loss, this change has inadvertently made lotteries better, or at least less objectionable. This paper reviews the normative case for reducing the implied tax, documents the rise in payout rates across the United States, offers an explanation for that rise, notes the starring role played by instant games, illustrates its effect on the regressivity of lottery finance, and documents the surprising correlation between the price of instant games and their payout rates.
{"title":"Better State Lotteries","authors":"C. Clotfelter","doi":"10.1177/10911421231206030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421231206030","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last three decades, a little-noted change has taken place in state lotteries. This change is an increase in the average payout rate, the share of sales that is returned to players in the form of prizes. Because it reduces the rate of implicit taxation on lottery purchases and its accompanying welfare loss, this change has inadvertently made lotteries better, or at least less objectionable. This paper reviews the normative case for reducing the implied tax, documents the rise in payout rates across the United States, offers an explanation for that rise, notes the starring role played by instant games, illustrates its effect on the regressivity of lottery finance, and documents the surprising correlation between the price of instant games and their payout rates.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"55 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138594983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-28DOI: 10.1177/10911421231217388
Ryota Nakatani
Does government revenue decentralization affect the probability of a fiscal crisis? Is there a tipping point where revenue decentralization worsens the probability of a fiscal crisis? To answer these questions, we use cross-country panel data on 66 countries from 1982 to 2019. The binary choice models show that revenue decentralization is positively associated with crisis probability when countries exceed a certain threshold of decentralization. When more than approximately 16 percent of general government revenue is decentralized to local governments, this adverse effect of revenue decentralization occurs. This is consistent with the recent theoretical prediction that tax revenue collection efforts weaken as the government decentralizes revenue more. The adverse effects of revenue decentralization are large in low-income countries. Our finding implies the benefits of revenue centralization, such as economies of scale for revenue agencies, eliminating externalities due to tax competition, and the intergovernmental insurance role of federal transfers against local shocks.
{"title":"Revenue Decentralization and the Probability of a Fiscal Crisis: Is There a Tipping Point for Adverse Effects?","authors":"Ryota Nakatani","doi":"10.1177/10911421231217388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421231217388","url":null,"abstract":"Does government revenue decentralization affect the probability of a fiscal crisis? Is there a tipping point where revenue decentralization worsens the probability of a fiscal crisis? To answer these questions, we use cross-country panel data on 66 countries from 1982 to 2019. The binary choice models show that revenue decentralization is positively associated with crisis probability when countries exceed a certain threshold of decentralization. When more than approximately 16 percent of general government revenue is decentralized to local governments, this adverse effect of revenue decentralization occurs. This is consistent with the recent theoretical prediction that tax revenue collection efforts weaken as the government decentralizes revenue more. The adverse effects of revenue decentralization are large in low-income countries. Our finding implies the benefits of revenue centralization, such as economies of scale for revenue agencies, eliminating externalities due to tax competition, and the intergovernmental insurance role of federal transfers against local shocks.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"314 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139224481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-28DOI: 10.1177/10911421231214886
James M. Strickland, Dallin Overstreet
We assess the effects of two citizen-initiated proposals on housing costs in California and Florida. In 1978, voters in California approved of Proposition 13. In 1992, voters in Florida approved a similar measure, the “Save Our Homes” amendment. Both proposals instituted acquisition-value assessments: for tax purposes, real property is assessed based on its value at acquisition. We argue that such assessment practices should inflate home costs by spurring demand immediately (via property-tax capitalization) and reducing supply gradually. Effects on supply occur due to the locking-in of residents and land-use fiscalization. Using synthetic-control analyses, we find that Proposition 13 increased home costs in California after 1993 when local costs diverged from national trends, but no effect occurred in Florida prior to 2008. At its peak, the variable effect of Proposition 13 increased California residential value added by more than 50 percent.
{"title":"Rent Control for Homeowners? Acquisition-Value Assessments and Housing Costs","authors":"James M. Strickland, Dallin Overstreet","doi":"10.1177/10911421231214886","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421231214886","url":null,"abstract":"We assess the effects of two citizen-initiated proposals on housing costs in California and Florida. In 1978, voters in California approved of Proposition 13. In 1992, voters in Florida approved a similar measure, the “Save Our Homes” amendment. Both proposals instituted acquisition-value assessments: for tax purposes, real property is assessed based on its value at acquisition. We argue that such assessment practices should inflate home costs by spurring demand immediately (via property-tax capitalization) and reducing supply gradually. Effects on supply occur due to the locking-in of residents and land-use fiscalization. Using synthetic-control analyses, we find that Proposition 13 increased home costs in California after 1993 when local costs diverged from national trends, but no effect occurred in Florida prior to 2008. At its peak, the variable effect of Proposition 13 increased California residential value added by more than 50 percent.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139221423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-21DOI: 10.1177/10911421231215019
Javier Cifuentes-Faura, Mihaela Simionescu
Public debt is a key issue for government institutions, both because of the amount of its revenues, which partly compensate for the possible shortfall in tax collection, and because it is an essential instrument of fiscal policy for the government. This paper reviews the literature on the determinants of public debt in order to identify the explanatory variables of public debt according to the main theoretical and empirical studies. This work will support policy makers who have to obtain financial resources to cover essential and very necessary expenditures nowadays, such as health, education, or infrastructure investment, by controlling debt levels and fiscal pressure. The main policy implication we can derive from these results is that governments should use some of these instruments to reduce general government debt.
{"title":"Analyzing the Importance of the Determinants of Public Debt and Its Policy Implications: A Survey of Literature","authors":"Javier Cifuentes-Faura, Mihaela Simionescu","doi":"10.1177/10911421231215019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421231215019","url":null,"abstract":"Public debt is a key issue for government institutions, both because of the amount of its revenues, which partly compensate for the possible shortfall in tax collection, and because it is an essential instrument of fiscal policy for the government. This paper reviews the literature on the determinants of public debt in order to identify the explanatory variables of public debt according to the main theoretical and empirical studies. This work will support policy makers who have to obtain financial resources to cover essential and very necessary expenditures nowadays, such as health, education, or infrastructure investment, by controlling debt levels and fiscal pressure. The main policy implication we can derive from these results is that governments should use some of these instruments to reduce general government debt.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139253612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-15DOI: 10.1177/10911421231212354
Clément Carbonnier
Three diverging interpretations of the property tax dominate the standard economic literature: the benefit view considers it meaningless to assess a distributive profile for the property tax; the capital-tax view assumes a progressive profile; and the excise-tax view assumes a regressive profile. This article discusses these views with theoretical and empirical arguments and defends the excise-tax view. Then, the distributive profile of the property tax in Québec is assessed thanks to a rich administrative database. The property tax appears very regressive. In addition, no general pattern appears depending on the size of the urban zones. At the opposite, property tax-to-income ratios depend steeply on the household composition, because of the economies of scale in housing consumption: they are larger for singles than couples (and even larger for aged singles) and lower for households with children than without children.
{"title":"Property Tax Regressivity, the Case of Québec","authors":"Clément Carbonnier","doi":"10.1177/10911421231212354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421231212354","url":null,"abstract":"Three diverging interpretations of the property tax dominate the standard economic literature: the benefit view considers it meaningless to assess a distributive profile for the property tax; the capital-tax view assumes a progressive profile; and the excise-tax view assumes a regressive profile. This article discusses these views with theoretical and empirical arguments and defends the excise-tax view. Then, the distributive profile of the property tax in Québec is assessed thanks to a rich administrative database. The property tax appears very regressive. In addition, no general pattern appears depending on the size of the urban zones. At the opposite, property tax-to-income ratios depend steeply on the household composition, because of the economies of scale in housing consumption: they are larger for singles than couples (and even larger for aged singles) and lower for households with children than without children.","PeriodicalId":46919,"journal":{"name":"PUBLIC FINANCE REVIEW","volume":"5 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139275330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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