{"title":"The role of the past in public policy: empirical evidence of the long-term effect of past policy and politics on the local budget balance","authors":"Stefanie Vanneste, Stijn Goeminne","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00232-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00232-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The main focus of this paper is on the role of the past in budgetary policy and the impact of a multitude of relevant political characteristics on the local budget balance in a dynamic context. Although the importance of past policy was stated approximately 6 decades ago by Lindblom (Public Adm Rev 19(2):79–88, 1959), dynamic studies are relatively underexposed in recent literature on the budget balance at the local government level. The studies that do take into account the dynamics surprisingly do not focus on the past but treat it as a control variable. This paper exhibits the theoretical background of introducing past performance into the analysis. It is also noticeable that the dynamic studies thus far only test the partisan and the political budget cycle hypotheses. In the empirical part of this study, we add government fragmentation and government power to the dynamic analysis, and we look for both short- and long-term effects on the budget balance. In doing so, we test the impact of multiple political characteristics simultaneously on a dataset of all Flemish local governments for the period 1995–2017. The results from the dynamic panel analysis show that past performance is of importance, as are the electoral budget cycle and the power of the government. The importance of the government power for the budget balance is a new insight in dynamic research. As we focus on the long-term impact of the explanatory variables due to the dynamics, we avoid the underestimation of the impact of politics on the budget balance in the long run.</p>","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140888860","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}
{"title":"Does enfranchisement affect fiscal policy? Theory and empirical evidence on Brazil","authors":"Rodrigo Schneider, Diloá Athias, Mauricio Bugarin","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00230-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00230-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper studies the effect of political participation on public spending at the local level in Brazil. In particular, we look at the phased-in implementation of electronic voting in the late 1990s—which enfranchised poorer voters by decreasing the number of invalid votes—to identify the causal effect of political participation on public spending. We build a theoretical political economy model which allows voters to cast, not purposefully, an invalid vote, and show that when poorer voters’ likelihood of casting a valid vote increases, public social spending increases as well. We test this prediction empirically using a difference-in-differences model where municipalities using electronic voting constitute our treatment group. We find that an increase of 1 percentage point in the valid vote to turnout ratio for state representatives increases health spending by 1.8%; education by 1.4%; public employment by 1.25%; intergovernmental transfers by 1%; and local taxes by 2.6%.</p>","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140889587","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}
{"title":"Do victims of crime trust less but participate more in social organizations?","authors":"Matteo Pazzona","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00227-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00227-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We explore how crime victimization affects two of the main dimensions of social capital: trust and participation in social groups. Using a large database that includes many Latin American countries, we find that victimization lowers trust, especially in other people and the police. However, participation in social groups is increased as a result of this event. These findings suggest that the net effect of victimization on social capital is miscalculated unless all of its dimensions are taken into account.</p>","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140888858","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}
{"title":"Is it the gums, teeth or the bite? Effectiveness of dimensions of enforcement in curbing corruption","authors":"S. Capasso, R. Goel, James W. Saunoris","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00228-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00228-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"20 1","pages":"329 - 369"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s10101-019-00228-0","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42649874","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}
Rustam Romaniuc, Gregory J. DeAngelo, D. Dubois, Bryan C. McCannon
{"title":"Intergroup inequality and the breakdown of prosociality","authors":"Rustam Romaniuc, Gregory J. DeAngelo, D. Dubois, Bryan C. McCannon","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00226-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00226-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"20 1","pages":"285 - 303"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s10101-019-00226-2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"52490590","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}
{"title":"Political incentives in firms’ financial reporting: evidence from the crackdown on corrupt municipal officials","authors":"X. Wang, Xian Gu","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00225-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00225-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"20 1","pages":"255 - 284"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s10101-019-00225-3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"52490513","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}
{"title":"Step-by-step group contests with group-specific public-good prizes","authors":"Katsuya Kobayashi","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00224-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00224-4","url":null,"abstract":"The achievements reached by group members’ effort, which accompanies the possibility of members’ free-riding, affect the outcomes of competition among groups. In some cases, each achievement has the binary characteristic of “one or nothing.” For example, research groups face the challenge of making a scientific finding or not. The groups compete for a scientific breakthrough by making the related findings in a “step-by-step” manner. One finding could fail because of a mistake caused by a slight lack of effort by one member. Such a characteristic of “one or nothing” motivates group members without any incentive scheme. This study analyzes group contests with group-specific public-good prizes, in which we introduce a step function with the characteristics of “one or nothing” and “step-by-step” as a group impact function. We show the existence of the Nash equilibrium at which no group member free-rides on the others and at which more achievements than those reachable by a single member are reached.","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140888788","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}