A political-economy perspective on social expenditures: corruption and in-kind versus cash transfers

This paper presents a novel political-economy perspective on the composition of social expenditures. We take into account the possibility that institutions are weak, i.e. there is corruption, and analyze how this affects the government’s choice between cash and in-kind transfers. Our results show that the share of in-kind transfers (e.g. basic health care, public housing or food stamps), whose appropriation by corrupt politicians is more easily observed than in the case of cash transfers, increases with corruption. This positive relationship exists, however, only in highly democratic countries. We argue that voters use their political influence in democratic countries to ensure that a higher share of transfers is provided in kind thereby shielding transfers from appropriation by corrupt politicians.     

An Analysis of the Convergence of the Composition of Public Expenditures in European Union Countries

The literature on fiscal policies is paying increasing attention to the impact of the composition of public expenditures on long‐term economic growth. Public policy endogenous growth models recommend to change the composition of public expenditures to items considered productive expenditures. In this sense, European institutions are encouraging the rise in the share of productive outlays like public investments, R&D, and active labor market policies, among others. The article analyzes whether these recommendations are followed by European Union countries and whether a convergence to a new pattern of public finances with a higher share of those items considered productive expenditures by European institutions is arising.     

Socio-institutional determinants of educational resource efficiency according to the capability approach: An endogenous stochastic frontier analysis

We investigate the role of private and public resources in educational attainments and the socio-institutional determinants of educational resource efficiency in Italy. Following the Sen's capability approach, we consider social capital and the quality of government part of the social conversion factors through which resources can be converted into human capabilities, such as education. We analyze the case of Italy by constructing a new longitudinal dataset from 1993 to 2012, using repeated cross sections from the main social survey of the Italian Statistical Institute and a panel stochastic frontier model that takes into account endogeneity. The results show the relative importance of private resources (measured by an ad hoc constructed wealth index), the complementarity between private wealth and public expenditures on education, and the positive impact of social capital and the quality of government on educational resource efficiency.     

Multi-sectoral interdependencies of regional public infrastructure investments

Public investment decision-making processes involve multiple and interrelated sectoral and regional policy objectives and budget constraints. This paper presents a dynamic spatio-economic model that considers multi-sectoral investment interdependencies using data at the prefecture level in Greece. The expenditure allocation dynamics of most types of regional public investment are found to be competitive with each other. This outcome is attributed to the lack of policy coordination, technological and budget constraints, geographical factors, and equity and political considerations. The investment interrelationships may have a significant effect on future state funding needs and the strategic assessment of infrastructure development at the country level.     

Government wage differentials

This paper shows that public sector wages usually exceed private but the size and composition of the differentials depend on sex and level of government. Using a technique derived from the literature on sex discrimination, these differentials are decomposed into a portion attributable to differences in productivity between the two types of workers and a portion ascribed to economic rent. This rent results from public workers' relatively greater political influence in the government wage-setting process and a systematic upward bias in public wages imparted by present government pay policy.     

The Euro System as a Laboratory for Neoliberalism: The Case of Spain

Since the 1970s, neoliberalism has evolved from ideology to political agenda, from political program to public policy, and from public policy to a system that replaces democratic control over economic policy with a system of elite economic management. This process of change has been possible due to the endorsement of a meta‐political theory that destroys democracy and legitimizes technocratic despotism, financial deregulation, the debasement of labor into a new proletariat, and the purging of constitutional politics. In this article, we analyze this profound transformation of social and legal relations in the “euro system” and, specifically, in the regressive policies that have emerged from the “crisis” in Spain, a peripheral country of the European Union. The problems in contemporary Europe are a direct consequence of the neoliberal version of European economic unity. Their solution will depend on the capacity of the member states to create a social Europe that strengthens institutional democracy and develops universal systems of social protection. This, in turn, will depend on the ability of citizens to remodel state institutions in accordance with new social goals that place life at the center.     

Green public procurement: An empirical analysis of the uptake of organic food policy

This paper analyses the uptake of a voluntary green public procurement policy in Sweden. The policy, decided in 2006, stated a national goal for the public sector to increase its share of organic food purchases to 25% by 2010. The overall purpose was to increase organic farming. Municipalities, which are highly independent authorities with self-determination, were encouraged to formulate own political goals. Based on survey data on organic food purchases for the period 2003–2016, supplemented with data on municipality characteristics, we analyse the determinants of the local uptake of the national policy, accounting for potential selection bias. The main finding is that local political goals are set and that these have in turn, a significant and positive effect on the share of organic food purchases. This suggests that there is an uptake of the voluntary policy. Also, we find that the increase in expenditures per capita devoted to organic food is quite substantial following the adoption of a local policy.     

Is Red or Blue More Likely to Narrow the Gap? The Effect of CEO Political Ideology on CEO-Employee Pay Disparity

How does CEO political ideology influence the pay disparity between a CEO and typical firm employees? Drawing on the upper echelons theory, we postulate that politically liberal CEOs are more inclined to address within-firm vertical pay disparity versus conservative or neutral CEOs, because liberals attend more closely to potential inequality issues and are more open to social changes. We furthermore contend that the effect of CEO political ideology varies across certain contextual factors. Results based on a sample of United States public firms support our arguments. Our study contributes to the literature on income inequality by highlighting CEO political ideology as a crucial determinant and investigating the boundary conditions.     

Does government ideology influence budget composition? Empirical evidence from OECD countries

This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced the allocation of public expenditures in OECD countries. I analyze two datasets that report different expenditure categories and cover the time periods 1970–1997 and 1990–2006, respectively. The results suggest that government ideology has had a rather weak influence on the composition of governments’ budgets. Leftist governments, however, increased spending on “Public Services” in the period 1970–1997 and on “Education” in the period 1990–2006. These findings imply, first, that government ideology hardly influenced budgetary affairs in the last decades, and thus, if ideology plays a role at all, it influences non-budgetary affairs. Second, education has become an important expenditure category for leftist parties to signal their political visions to voters belonging to all societal groups.     

Local public goods, property values, and local public choice

This paper examines the relationship between the benefits and costs of local public good provision and local property values within the context of the Koopmans-Beckmann-Gale location-assignment model. Property values do not in general measure accurately the marginal net benefits of local public goods; special conditions sufficient for property values to measure or bound the marginal net benefits are stated, however. In addition, it is shown that under certain circumstances, households vote for property-value-enhancing levels of local expenditures. Under these conditions, a political equilibrium produces a Lindahl solution to the local public good problem.     

Political Process and Popular Protest

A bstract . The mobilization to defeat the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement is used as a point of departure for reflections on the role political processes play in social movement mobilization. Previous articles in this Journal presented a resource mobilization-political opportunities paradigm in the study of social movements. This article expands this paradigm's analytic reach to a country that has contributed little research to the ongoing debate about social movement mobilization. Adopting a political process perspective, political institutions, political opportunities, and social and political organizations shaped the emergence and mobilization of the popular campaign. This case can strengthen a generalized understanding of those political factors most conducive to the interesting interplay and outcome of movement, party, and electoral politics.     

The possible adverse impact of innovation subsidies: some evidence from Italy

The impact of public funding on innovative productivity is estimated using a sample of Italian firm-level data (CIS3). A bivariate endogenous switching model is developed in order to free the analysis of the sources of sample selection and firm heterogeneity, the possible simultaneity between subsidy allocation and the qualitative composition of the innovative output, as well as the endogeneity of public support with respect to innovative performance. Results show that innovative productivity is negatively affected by the subsidy; as a result of government intervention, supported firms appear to exhaust their advantage through merely increasing their innovative expenditures.     

Party polarization,political alignment,and federal grant spending at the state level

Research on the distribution of federal expenditures has provided mixed evidence showing that states with more legislators who belong to the president’s party and states with more legislators in the chamber majority tend to receive a larger allocation of federal funds. We add to this research by considering how political polarization and political alignment impact these presidential and congressional determinants of how the domestic US budget is distributed to the states. Our results show that states with a larger percentage of senators in the majority can secure a larger share of federal grant expenditures per capita when political polarization is relatively low.     

Political Profit: Taxing and Spending in the Hierarchical State

A bstract . The actions of government fall into two types: taxes (the taking of property ) and expenditures (the awarding of gifts ). Politicians profit as long as the value of resources raised from taxation exceeds the cost of expenditures. From their point of view, fiscal efficiency consists in maximizing the support obtained by spending and minimizing the opposition generated by taxing. This is accomplished by spending on well-organized groups and taxing the uninformed public. This results in the "iron law of political redistribution" in which income and wealth are transferred from the latter to the former. In a hierarchical State , it is usually profitable for those at the top to centralize control over taxing and spending, if for no other reason than to make it difficult for politicians at lower levels to compete against them. This gives rise to the "law of hierarchical centralization "—in a hierarchical State, power becomes centralized over time. The greater the power of government, the faster this process takes place. In order to avoid this problem, one could design constitutions which are non-hierarchical in nature, in which each unit of government is completely autonomous from the others, as firms are in a free market.     

Changes in Clientelism and Urban Government: A Comparative Case Study of Naples and Marseilles

This article discusses changes to political clientelism and forms of urban government in Naples and in Marseilles in the period from the 1960s to the 2000s. From a socio-historical, comparative perspective I show that, even in two Southern European cities, the expansion of political clientelism does not depend principally on cultural factors, but rather on politico-institutional processes. The generalization of clientelistic relationships and the increase in policies for redistributing resources on the basis of clientelistic criteria go hand in hand with two historical trends that were evident in the 1960s and 1970s. Those decades were a period both of demographic development and of welfare state expansion at both central and local levels, the latter leading to the distribution of public resources to growing masses of individuals and social groups. In this phase, clientelistic redistribution policies promoted the integration and the upward social mobility of sections of the middle classes and some strata of the working classes in the local and national political system. From the late 1970s and early 1980s onwards, however, these policies were less and less able to promote this upward mobility and social integration. The article ends with a favourable account of some of the new urban management policies conducted by new political leaderships.     

Differences in leadership behaviour and influence between public and private organizations in Greece

This paper aims at comparing certain managerial aspects which seem to affect and account for the differences in organizational performance between public and private organizations in Greece.

By presenting empirical evidence concerning leadership behaviour and influence in both types of organizations, it becomes apparent that leadership quality is not necessarily the problem in public organizations. A number of leadership substitutes and neutralizers such as bureaucratic controls, external political influence and the limited positive reward power which leaders seem to possess have to be removed in order to enhance the role of leadership in public sector organizations.     

The 'New Class': Analysis of the Concept, the Hypothesis and the Idea as a Research Tool

A bstract . The concept of the 'New Class' often is invoked to explain not only why the capitalist countries of the West are drifting leftwards into socialism but also why socialist nations of East Europe have totalitarian governments, tolerate gross economic inefficiencies, and exploit their workers. Certain critical issues underlying such an approach that are relevant to political economists , especially those interested in the changing boundary between the public and private sectors of the economy , are examined. The concept is found to rely on hypotheses which are not (easily) testable and the argument for its existence to be based on premises that are dubious. Special attention is given to hypotheses in public finance employing the concept in an attempt to explain increasing public expenditures ; these are found wanting.     

新时期提高事业单位政工管理水平的有效途径分析

事业单位是独具中国特色的组织形式,在我国经济发展、社会公共服务、维护社会秩序和谐稳定等方面发挥着不可替代的作用。新时期背景下,事业单位所处行业领域竞争加剧,提升核心竞争力、强化内部管理效能成为单位发展重点。基于此,论文简要论述新时期提高事业单位政工管理水平的重要性,简要分析新时期背景下事业单位政工管理现存问题,重点从提升政工管理意识、创新政工管理机制、改进政工工作方法、加强政工干部队伍建设4个方面探究新时期提高事业单位政工管理水平的有效途径。     

Cultural values and public policy: The case of international development aid

This paper investigates whether the quantity and character of aggregate expenditures on foreign aid by donor governments are related to the cultural values held by the people of the donor countries. In particular, we study whether any association exists between three measures of donors’ foreign aid expenditures and two dimensions of culture. We find that the shares of national income governments spend on aid, the proportion of total aid provided in the form of grants, and the proportion of aid directed to humanitarian relief are all related in statistically significant and quantitatively important ways to the location of the cultural values of people in the donor countries on two continua, one from “traditional” to “rational” beliefs about social organization and authority, and the other from “survival” to “self-expression” as the focus of individual aspirations. These results contribute to our understanding of the political economy of aid, and to a growing literature on how culture shapes economic policies, institutions, and performance.     

A model of local demand for education

A careful modeling of the spending behavior of local school districts in New Jersey is presented. The theoretical model relies on the common hypothesis of political competition leading to a median outcome as well as the assumption that school superintendents act as budget maximizers. The model is estimated for a sample of 177 school districts under three different aid formulas. Pooling of the cross sections suggests that the response of school expenditures to changes in variables other than those associated with school aid parameters has remained constant over time. The results are discussed in the context of recent theories regarding the effect of intergovernmental aid on the level of public expenditure.