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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/251569120x16040852770342
Etienne Farvaque, H. Iqbal, Nicolas Ooghe
Were policy responses of the US states to the pandemic driven by partisan politics or by budgetary reasons? We show that balanced-budget rules also had an impact, mediated by the possibility of benefiting from the funds previously stored in budget stabilisation funds. State policymakers tried to square the circle by simultaneously respecting budget rules, limiting the economic impact of the social distancing measures, combating the pandemic and pandering to their political bases. Some fiscal rules have induced a trade-off between health and public finance, which may reignite the debate on the pro-cyclicality of fiscal rules.
{"title":"Health politics? Determinants of US states’ reactions to COVID-19","authors":"Etienne Farvaque, H. Iqbal, Nicolas Ooghe","doi":"10.1332/251569120x16040852770342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569120x16040852770342","url":null,"abstract":"Were policy responses of the US states to the pandemic driven by partisan politics or by budgetary reasons? We show that balanced-budget rules also had an impact, mediated by the possibility of benefiting from the funds previously stored in budget stabilisation funds. State policymakers tried to square the circle by simultaneously respecting budget rules, limiting the economic impact of the social distancing measures, combating the pandemic and pandering to their political bases. Some fiscal rules have induced a trade-off between health and public finance, which may reignite the debate on the pro-cyclicality of fiscal rules.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66317101","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 : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1332/251569119x15682726799586
Carla Marchese
This article criticises the standard approach to intellectual property rights, interpreted as property rights conferring a monopolistic position, by showing that a public good is not a suitable basis for a private monopoly and that the bundle of rights included in an intellectual property right is so different from those enjoyed under a standard monopoly as to suggest that a different mechanism is at work, that is, a private power to tax has been granted. To highlight how this novel approach works, mainstream economic models of economic growth based on research and development, whether protected or not by intellectual property rights, are revisited. The theory of taxation is then recalled to show that taxes involved by intellectual property rights can range from an amount equal to the monopoly profit to Lindahl taxes. Finally, the principles of taxation elaborated by economic theory are examined for clues to improving the design of intellectual property rights.
{"title":"Do intellectual property rights involve a private power to tax","authors":"Carla Marchese","doi":"10.1332/251569119x15682726799586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569119x15682726799586","url":null,"abstract":"This article criticises the standard approach to intellectual property rights, interpreted as property rights conferring a monopolistic position, by showing that a public good is not a suitable basis for a private monopoly and that the bundle of rights included in an intellectual property\u0000 right is so different from those enjoyed under a standard monopoly as to suggest that a different mechanism is at work, that is, a private power to tax has been granted. To highlight how this novel approach works, mainstream economic models of economic growth based on research and development,\u0000 whether protected or not by intellectual property rights, are revisited. The theory of taxation is then recalled to show that taxes involved by intellectual property rights can range from an amount equal to the monopoly profit to Lindahl taxes. Finally, the principles of taxation elaborated\u0000 by economic theory are examined for clues to improving the design of intellectual property rights.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48506809","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 : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1332/251569119x15633560811750
Zhiyong An, Yilin Hou
This article examines the causal effect of debt decentralisation on the budget constraint of subnational governments. China’s debt decentralisation reform of 2011 authorised four provincial-level units to issue debt on their own, but not the remaining ones. Using data on the budgetary expenditure and revenue of Chinese subnational governments from 2009 to 2014, we estimate the effect of the reform with a difference-in-differences approach, with those four provincial units as the treatment group and the others as the control group. Our findings suggest that debt decentralisation can help harden the budget constraint of subnational governments.
{"title":"Centralised versus decentralised subnational debt and soft budget constraint: evidence from China","authors":"Zhiyong An, Yilin Hou","doi":"10.1332/251569119x15633560811750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569119x15633560811750","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the causal effect of debt decentralisation on the budget constraint of subnational governments. China’s debt decentralisation reform of 2011 authorised four provincial-level units to issue debt on their own, but not the remaining ones. Using data on the budgetary\u0000 expenditure and revenue of Chinese subnational governments from 2009 to 2014, we estimate the effect of the reform with a difference-in-differences approach, with those four provincial units as the treatment group and the others as the control group. Our findings suggest that debt decentralisation\u0000 can help harden the budget constraint of subnational governments.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1332/251569119x15633560811750","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43489315","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 : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1332/251569119x15675896755755
I. Murtazashvili, J. Murtazashvili
Externally assisted state-building efforts cost trillions but typically fail to produce states capable of providing public goods and services on their own. Drawing on the public choice literature and evidence from historical state-building processes, we argue that political self-sufficiency depends on political institutions that allow for self-governance, reasonably high levels of fiscal and administrative capacity, economic institutions that encourage wealth creation, and social institutions that reinforce political and economic freedom. Importantly, we do not expect that democracy is a critical determinant of political self-sufficiency. Our theory explains why state building in Afghanistan in the two decades since 2001 did not produce a more functional state. Despite massive international investment in blood and treasure, the state-building effort prioritised national elections over institutional reforms that encourage local self-governance, failed to establish meaningful constraints on national political decision-makers (especially the president) and disregarded customary private property rights and customary processes to adjudicate land disputes.
{"title":"The political economy of state building","authors":"I. Murtazashvili, J. Murtazashvili","doi":"10.1332/251569119x15675896755755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/251569119x15675896755755","url":null,"abstract":"Externally assisted state-building efforts cost trillions but typically fail to produce states capable of providing public goods and services on their own. Drawing on the public choice literature and evidence from historical state-building processes, we argue that political self-sufficiency\u0000 depends on political institutions that allow for self-governance, reasonably high levels of fiscal and administrative capacity, economic institutions that encourage wealth creation, and social institutions that reinforce political and economic freedom. Importantly, we do not expect that democracy\u0000 is a critical determinant of political self-sufficiency. Our theory explains why state building in Afghanistan in the two decades since 2001 did not produce a more functional state. Despite massive international investment in blood and treasure, the state-building effort prioritised national\u0000 elections over institutional reforms that encourage local self-governance, failed to establish meaningful constraints on national political decision-makers (especially the president) and disregarded customary private property rights and customary processes to adjudicate land disputes.","PeriodicalId":53126,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1332/251569119x15675896755755","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43175402","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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