{"title":"Budgetary choices and institutional rules: veto rules and budget volatility","authors":"Jinhee Jo, Lawrence S. Rothenberg","doi":"10.1007/s10101-020-00234-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-020-00234-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Studies of the line item veto have traditionally focused on whether it leads to less spending than an all-or-nothing veto and have only produced modest results. However, other impacts that differences in rule choice might effectuate have not been investigated in detail. We examine the role of veto rules for <i>budgetary volatility</i>, the extent to which expenditures vary. Theoretically, we model budget choices given all-or-nothing, line item, and item-reduction vetoes and demonstrate that more encompassing veto authority does not necessarily decrease spending but should result in more political gridlock, implying less volatility. We then analyze the model’s prediction by examining American state budget expenditures from 1978 to 2007. Whether one looks at budget categories or total spending, volatility is greater with the all-or-nothing veto relative to more stringent alternatives. Hence, delegating greater authority to executives such as governors, perhaps unexpectedly, likely strengthens expectations about future budgets while reducing the responsiveness of spending to changing preferences or circumstances.</p>","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140888864","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}
Mehdi Feizi, Rasoul Ramezanian, Saeed Malek Sadati
{"title":"Borda paradox in the 2017 Iranian presidential election: empirical evidence from opinion polls","authors":"Mehdi Feizi, Rasoul Ramezanian, Saeed Malek Sadati","doi":"10.1007/s10101-019-00233-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00233-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Different voting paradoxes identified by social choice theorists have rarely been documented in real-world elections. The collected data from the opinion polls in the 2017 Iranian presidential election provides substantial empirical evidence indicating that during the electoral campaigns, strong Borda paradox (the Condorcet loser wins plurality.) and weak Borda paradox (An alternative that is not the Condorcet winner wins plurality.) have occurred. At the same time, there was no evidence of a Condorcet paradox, i.e., a cycle among the top three candidates. The results support the empirical relevance of theoretical paradoxes in social choice and a call for the importance of voting procedures.</p>","PeriodicalId":46302,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Governance","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2019-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140888859","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":"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}