Pub Date : 2022-07-26DOI: 10.1332/251569121x16553680060701
Zachary Kessler, R. Wagner
This article is concerned with the way economists conceptualise the relationship between state and market within their theories of public finance. It is customary for them to treat polity and economy as comprising separate domains of human activity. In contrast, the recently developing notion of entangled political economy treats the state–market dichotomy as an abstraction, whereas political and economic organisations are deeply entangled with one another. While property and its distinction between mine and thine is a universal quality of the human species, specific and particular rights of property are always contestable through entanglement among political and commercial entities. Entanglement calls attention to the processes through which rights of action are established and challenged within an entangled system of political economy. What results from our exploration of entanglement and public finance is recognition of the high analytical potential of reviving Antonio de Viti’s initial interest in transforming the focus of public finance from the practice of public finance into a scientific theory, thereby joining public finance and public choice to form political economy.
{"title":"State–market entanglement: some implications for the theory of public finance","authors":"Zachary Kessler, R. Wagner","doi":"10.1332/251569121x16553680060701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569121x16553680060701","url":null,"abstract":"This article is concerned with the way economists conceptualise the relationship between state and market within their theories of public finance. It is customary for them to treat polity and economy as comprising separate domains of human activity. In contrast, the recently developing notion of entangled political economy treats the state–market dichotomy as an abstraction, whereas political and economic organisations are deeply entangled with one another. While property and its distinction between mine and thine is a universal quality of the human species, specific and particular rights of property are always contestable through entanglement among political and commercial entities. Entanglement calls attention to the processes through which rights of action are established and challenged within an entangled system of political economy. What results from our exploration of entanglement and public finance is recognition of the high analytical potential of reviving Antonio de Viti’s initial interest in transforming the focus of public finance from the practice of public finance into a scientific theory, thereby joining public finance and public choice to form political economy.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45382274","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1332/251569121x16397576745954
Amadou Bobbo, Adalbert Abraham Ghislain Melingui Bate
This article re-examines political budget cycles in sub-Saharan Africa. It first examines the effect of elections on fiscal policy according to the rational opportunistic hypothesis. The study then analyses the strength of these effects. Ordinary least squares, fixed effects, random effects and generalised method of moment in system are applied on a sample of 41 countries from 1990 to 2015. Our results suggest that the lead-up to and holding of elections in sub-Saharan Africa lead to increasing government spending, declining tax revenues and worsening fiscal deficits. We also find that democracy and fighting corruption significantly reduce the strength of political budget cycles, while ethnic fragmentation has reverse effects. We recommend improving the quality of institutions that control public action in order to tame political budget cycles in sub-Saharan Africa.
{"title":"Political budget cycles in sub-Saharan Africa: new empirical evidence","authors":"Amadou Bobbo, Adalbert Abraham Ghislain Melingui Bate","doi":"10.1332/251569121x16397576745954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569121x16397576745954","url":null,"abstract":"This article re-examines political budget cycles in sub-Saharan Africa. It first examines the effect of elections on fiscal policy according to the rational opportunistic hypothesis. The study then analyses the strength of these effects. Ordinary least squares, fixed effects, random effects and generalised method of moment in system are applied on a sample of 41 countries from 1990 to 2015. Our results suggest that the lead-up to and holding of elections in sub-Saharan Africa lead to increasing government spending, declining tax revenues and worsening fiscal deficits. We also find that democracy and fighting corruption significantly reduce the strength of political budget cycles, while ethnic fragmentation has reverse effects. We recommend improving the quality of institutions that control public action in order to tame political budget cycles in sub-Saharan Africa.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66317330","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1332/251569121x16406994884298
Elena D’Agostino, Marco Alberto De Benedetto, G. Sobbrio
We analyse the impact of public spending on tax evasion using a two-period model in which the government and taxpayers make their decisions in terms of level and quality of expenditures to set and taxes to pay. Results predict that tax evasion increases with government inefficiency.
{"title":"A model of tax evasion and taxpayers' perception about public goods provision","authors":"Elena D’Agostino, Marco Alberto De Benedetto, G. Sobbrio","doi":"10.1332/251569121x16406994884298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569121x16406994884298","url":null,"abstract":"We analyse the impact of public spending on tax evasion using a two-period model in which the government and taxpayers make their decisions in terms of level and quality of expenditures to set and taxes to pay. Results predict that tax evasion increases with government inefficiency.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66317449","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1332/251569121x16224867507370
A. Craig, V. Storr
Is social capital likely to be underproduced without state action? Where previous analysts have typically argued that social capital is a public good and, therefore, needs government action to be produced at an optimal level, we argue that social capital is not a public good because though often non-rivalrous, it is almost always excludable. As such, social capital is more appropriately conceived of as a club good. Further, we argue that governments are not likely to be in a position to improve a society’s social capital due to epistemic limits and the complexity of social capital. Finally, we argue that rather than a state solution, solutions to social capital-related problems are best solved through a bottom-up process. As we demonstrate throughout, this has implications for how we understand community resilience in the wake of disasters. The key role that social capital plays in facilitating community rebound after disasters has been widely acknowledged. If social capital is a public good, then policymakers could be justified in focusing on cultivating social capital as a strategy for promoting community resilience. If social capital is a club good and there are limits to top-down strategies for creating social capital, however, then social capital creation is not an available policy lever.
{"title":"Is social capital underproduced?","authors":"A. Craig, V. Storr","doi":"10.1332/251569121x16224867507370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569121x16224867507370","url":null,"abstract":"Is social capital likely to be underproduced without state action? Where previous analysts have typically argued that social capital is a public good and, therefore, needs government action to be produced at an optimal level, we argue that social capital is not a public good because though often non-rivalrous, it is almost always excludable. As such, social capital is more appropriately conceived of as a club good. Further, we argue that governments are not likely to be in a position to improve a society’s social capital due to epistemic limits and the complexity of social capital. Finally, we argue that rather than a state solution, solutions to social capital-related problems are best solved through a bottom-up process. As we demonstrate throughout, this has implications for how we understand community resilience in the wake of disasters. The key role that social capital plays in facilitating community rebound after disasters has been widely acknowledged. If social capital is a public good, then policymakers could be justified in focusing on cultivating social capital as a strategy for promoting community resilience. If social capital is a club good and there are limits to top-down strategies for creating social capital, however, then social capital creation is not an available policy lever.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66317008","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1332/251569121x16207216460454
F. Mixon, K. Upadhyaya
This study examines the impact of research published in the two core public choice journals – Public Choice and the Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice – during the five-year period from 2010 through 2014. Scholars representing almost 400 universities contributed impactful research to these journals over this period, allowing us to rank institutions on the basis of citations to this published research. Our work indicates that public choice scholarship emanating from non-US colleges and universities has surged, with the University of Göttingen, University of Linz, Heidelburg University, University of Oxford, University of Konstanz, Aarhus University, University of Groningen, Paderborn University, University of Minho and University of Cambridge occupying ten of the top 15 positions in our worldwide ranking. Even so, US-based institutions still maintain a lofty presence, with Georgetown University, Emory University, the University of Illinois and George Mason University each holding positions among the top five institutions worldwide.
{"title":"The impact of publications in core public choice journals: an analysis of institution rankings","authors":"F. Mixon, K. Upadhyaya","doi":"10.1332/251569121x16207216460454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569121x16207216460454","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the impact of research published in the two core public choice journals – Public Choice and the Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice – during the five-year period from 2010 through 2014. Scholars representing almost 400 universities contributed impactful research to these journals over this period, allowing us to rank institutions on the basis of citations to this published research. Our work indicates that public choice scholarship emanating from non-US colleges and universities has surged, with the University of Göttingen, University of Linz, Heidelburg University, University of Oxford, University of Konstanz, Aarhus University, University of Groningen, Paderborn University, University of Minho and University of Cambridge occupying ten of the top 15 positions in our worldwide ranking. Even so, US-based institutions still maintain a lofty presence, with Georgetown University, Emory University, the University of Illinois and George Mason University each holding positions among the top five institutions worldwide.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66316968","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1332/251569121x16197097662211
Donald N. McCloskey
In a long review of Acemoglu and Robinson’s 2019 The Narrow Corridor McCloskey praises their scholarship but criticizes their relentless statism—their enthusiasts for a bigger and bigger Stato, so long as it is somehow “caged.” Their case is mechanical, materialist, and structuralist, none of which is a good guide to history or politics. Their theory of social causation mixes up necessary with sufficient conditions, though they are not unusual among political scientists an economists in doing so. They downplay the role of ideas, which after all made the modern world through liberalism. They recognize how dangerous the modern “capable” state can be, what they call The Leviathan, after Hobbes. But their construal of “liBerty” is the provision of goodies to children by a beneficent Leviathan. It is not the adultism that in fact made the modern world of massive enrichment and true liberty. Their vision is deeply illiberal, and mistaken as science.
{"title":"The statist neo-institutionalism of Acemoglu and Robinson","authors":"Donald N. McCloskey","doi":"10.1332/251569121x16197097662211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569121x16197097662211","url":null,"abstract":"In a long review of Acemoglu and Robinson’s 2019 The Narrow Corridor McCloskey praises their scholarship but criticizes their relentless statism—their enthusiasts for a bigger and bigger Stato, so long as it is somehow “caged.” Their case is mechanical, materialist, and structuralist, none of which is a good guide to history or politics. Their theory of social causation mixes up necessary with sufficient conditions, though they are not unusual among political scientists an economists in doing so. They downplay the role of ideas, which after all made the modern world through liberalism. They recognize how dangerous the modern “capable” state can be, what they call The Leviathan, after Hobbes. But their construal of “liBerty” is the provision of goodies to children by a beneficent Leviathan. It is not the adultism that in fact made the modern world of massive enrichment and true liberty. Their vision is deeply illiberal, and mistaken as science.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66316884","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 : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1332/251569121X16152354192487
Christina Boll, Till Nikolka
This study explores the link between regular grandparental childcare and SARS-CoV-2 infection rates at the level of German counties. In our analysis, we suggest that a region’s infection rates are shaped by region-, household- and individual-specific parameters. We extensively draw on the latter, exploring the intra- and extra-familial mechanisms fuelling individual contact frequency to test the potential role of regular grandparental childcare in explaining overall infection rates. We combine aggregate survey data with local administrative data for German counties and find a positive correlation between the frequency of regular grandparental childcare and local SARS-CoV-2 infection rates. However, the statistical significance of this relationship breaks down as soon as potentially confounding factors, in particular, the local Catholic population share, are controlled for. Our findings do not provide valid support for a significant role of grandparental childcare in driving SARS-CoV-2 infections, but rather suggest that the frequency of extra-familial contacts driven by religious communities might be a more relevant channel in this context. Our results cast doubt on simplistic narratives postulating a link between intergenerational contacts and infection rates.
{"title":"Rightly blamed the ‘bad guy’? Grandparental childcare and COVID-19","authors":"Christina Boll, Till Nikolka","doi":"10.1332/251569121X16152354192487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569121X16152354192487","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the link between regular grandparental childcare and SARS-CoV-2 infection rates at the level of German counties. In our analysis, we suggest that a region’s infection rates are shaped by region-, household- and individual-specific parameters. We extensively draw on the latter, exploring the intra- and extra-familial mechanisms fuelling individual contact frequency to test the potential role of regular grandparental childcare in explaining overall infection rates. We combine aggregate survey data with local administrative data for German counties and find a positive correlation between the frequency of regular grandparental childcare and local SARS-CoV-2 infection rates. However, the statistical significance of this relationship breaks down as soon as potentially confounding factors, in particular, the local Catholic population share, are controlled for. Our findings do not provide valid support for a significant role of grandparental childcare in driving SARS-CoV-2 infections, but rather suggest that the frequency of extra-familial contacts driven by religious communities might be a more relevant channel in this context. Our results cast doubt on simplistic narratives postulating a link between intergenerational contacts and infection rates.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66317293","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}
It is common for scholars to describe institutions as ‘rules of the game’. This description entails a separation between a society and its rules. Social change thus results as societies amend their framing rules. This article compares the common treatment of institutions as rules against an alternative treatment wherein societies and institutions are images of one another. If there were no rules governing interactions among some set of people, you would have a mass of people but that mass would not constitute what we recognise as society. This simple distinction between institutions as rules by which a society is governed and institutions as society itself creates divergent paths for institutional theory, which this article explores.
{"title":"Different paths for institutional theory: foundational dichotomies and theoretical framing","authors":"P. Aligica, R. Wagner","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3597748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3597748","url":null,"abstract":"It is common for scholars to describe institutions as ‘rules of the game’. This description entails a separation between a society and its rules. Social change thus results as societies amend their framing rules. This article compares the common treatment of institutions\u0000 as rules against an alternative treatment wherein societies and institutions are images of one another. If there were no rules governing interactions among some set of people, you would have a mass of people but that mass would not constitute what we recognise as society. This simple distinction\u0000 between institutions as rules by which a society is governed and institutions as society itself creates divergent paths for institutional theory, which this article explores.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47692338","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 : 2020-04-27DOI: 10.33774/apsa-2020-5lhhc
Gabriel Cepaluni, M. Dorsch, Réka Branyiczki
This article provides a quantitative examination of the link between political institutions and deaths during the first 100 days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that countries with more democratic political institutions experienced deaths on a larger per capita scale than less democratic countries. The result is robust to the inclusion of many relevant controls, a battery of estimation techniques and estimation with instrumental variables for the institutional measures. Additionally, we examine the extent to which COVID-19 deaths were impacted heterogeneously by policy responses across types of political institutions. Policy responses in democracies were less effective in reducing deaths in the early stages of the crisis. The results imply that democratic political institutions may have a disadvantage in responding quickly to pandemics.
{"title":"Political regimes and deaths in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Gabriel Cepaluni, M. Dorsch, Réka Branyiczki","doi":"10.33774/apsa-2020-5lhhc","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2020-5lhhc","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article provides a quantitative examination of the link between political institutions and deaths during the first 100 days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that countries with more democratic political institutions experienced deaths on a larger per capita scale than less democratic countries. The result is robust to the inclusion of many relevant controls, a battery of estimation techniques and estimation with instrumental variables for the institutional measures. Additionally, we examine the extent to which COVID-19 deaths were impacted heterogeneously by policy responses across types of political institutions. Policy responses in democracies were less effective in reducing deaths in the early stages of the crisis. The results imply that democratic political institutions may have a disadvantage in responding quickly to pandemics.\u0000","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42356829","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 : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/251569120x16055408993874
Mamadou Boukari, F. Veiga
This article aims to evaluate the impact of budget forecast manipulations on election results using a sample that covers all 308 Portuguese municipalities over the period running from 1998 to 2017. The results reveal that incumbent mayors overestimate revenues and expenditures. Overstating the budget more on the revenue side, they end up with a deficit. We check if this opportunistic behaviour is electorally beneficial. The results provide little or no evidence that election-year manipulations of revenue forecasts affect the vote shares of the party of the incumbent mayor. On the other hand, the opportunistic management of total and capital expenditure forecasts pays off, which is consistent with previous results for Portugal indicating that increased total and, mainly, capital expenditures lead to higher vote shares.
{"title":"Fiscal forecast manipulations and electoral results: evidence from Portuguese municipalities","authors":"Mamadou Boukari, F. Veiga","doi":"10.1332/251569120x16055408993874","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569120x16055408993874","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to evaluate the impact of budget forecast manipulations on election results using a sample that covers all 308 Portuguese municipalities over the period running from 1998 to 2017. The results reveal that incumbent mayors overestimate revenues and expenditures. Overstating the budget more on the revenue side, they end up with a deficit. We check if this opportunistic behaviour is electorally beneficial. The results provide little or no evidence that election-year manipulations of revenue forecasts affect the vote shares of the party of the incumbent mayor. On the other hand, the opportunistic management of total and capital expenditure forecasts pays off, which is consistent with previous results for Portugal indicating that increased total and, mainly, capital expenditures lead to higher vote shares.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66317219","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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