When Does Everyone Contribute in the Private Provision of Local Public Goods?

When does everyone genuinely contribute in the private provision of a local public good? We first introduce a monotonic condition to characterize the relationship between the structure of the network that underlie the noncooperative game of private provision of local public goods on the one hand, and the preferences of the agents on the other, showing that the monotonic condition is a sufficient and necessary condition of existence of a distributed Nash equilibrium (DNE) in which each agent exerts a positive amount of effort to provision of the public good (Theorem 1). We then study the number of equilibria, and, by using the monotonic condition, characterize the condition under which the DNE set is a singleton, a continuum, or null (Theorem 2). As it turns out, the structure of the network and the agents’ preferences jointly shape the effort profile in the provision of local public goods.     

Politicians and Preferences of the Voter Majority: Does Gender Matter?

Does the gender of political representatives affect the extent to which they adhere to the voter majority's preferences? By matching individual male and female representatives' votes on legislative proposals with real referendum outcomes on the same issues, we obtain a direct measure of divergence. We find that female and male representatives adhere equally close to the majority's preferences if party affiliations are taken into account. This suggests that observed gender differences with respect to the national majority of voters may be reduced to an ideological left–right dimension.     

Public spending and outcomes: Does governance matter?

This paper studies the links between public spending, governance, and outcomes. We examine the role of governance–measured by the level of corruption and the quality of bureaucracy–in determining the efficacy of public spending in improving human development outcomes. Our analysis contributes to our understanding of the relationship between public spending, governance and outcomes, and helps explain the surprising result that public spending often does not yield the expected improvement in outcomes. We show empirically that the differences in the efficacy of public spending can be largely explained by the quality of governance. Public health spending lowers child mortality rates more in countries with good governance. Similarly, public spending on primary education becomes more effective in increasing primary education attainment in countries with good governance. More generally, public spending has virtually no impact on health and education outcomes in poorly governed countries. These findings have important implications for enhancing the development effectiveness of public spending. The lessons are particularly relevant for developing countries, where public spending on education and health is relatively low, and the state of governance is often poor.     

Eliminating Required Reserves: Does it Matter?

The Government of Canada has recently announced its intention to eliminate reserve requirements at the chartered banks. This paper investigates whether required reserves are relevant for economic stabilization, using a prototype macro model characterized by both contemporaneous and legged bank reserve accounting. It is shown that required reserves have no affect on economic stability as long as the central bank can set the interest elasticity of the supply of bank reserves. This adjustment depends on the reserve accounting system in effect at the time of the regime shift. [431]     

Consumer Boycotts: Does Trust in Law-Making and Law-Enforcing Institutions Matter?

This article estimates the effects of trust in political and judicial institutions on individuals’ propensity to take part in consumer boycotts. In particular, this study disentangles the effects of institutional trust and quality. The analysis relies on data from the 2010 European Social Survey, which is a path breaking comparative study of how justice is perceived and allows a valid measure of judicial and political trust to be constructed. A two-step instrumental variable method was used to measure the effects of institutional trust, controlling for micro- and macro- level factors. The results indicate that trust in law-making institutions is negatively associated with boycott participation, whereas the relationship between judicial trust in institutions and an individual’s likelihood to boycott is U-shaped. The findings are robust to the introduction of social capital and sociodemographic variables.     

Equity Markets and Economic Development: Does the Primary Market Matter?

This article examines the role played by primary and secondary equity markets in economic growth. It departs from standard literature to integrate both markets and to explicitly acknowledge the primary equity market. By employing a variety of dynamic panel estimators for 54 countries over the period 1995‐2010, we show that the primary equity market is not an important determinant of economic growth, although it facilitates the development of the secondary market. This study also confirms the importance of liquidity provided by the secondary market. The evidence here calls for further investigation into the capital‐raising function of equity markets.     

Public Expenditures on Education and Cultural Affairs in the West German States: Does Government Ideology Influence the Budget Composition?

Abstract. This paper examines whether government ideology influenced the allocation of public expenditures on education and cultural affairs in the West German states in the 1974–2006 period. I explicitly consider the allocation of policy responsibilities between the federal and the states' governments. The results suggest that leftist governments slightly increased public spending for schooling, whereas rightwing governments spent somewhat more on universities and cultural affairs. This spending pattern appears to be in line with the preferences of the governing parties' constituencies and indicates political competition in a time of declining electoral cohesion.     

Does Government Expenditure Crowd Out Private Consumption in Italy? Evidence from a Microeconomic Model

An abnormal expansion of the public sector may create serious problems to the market economy, as the literature suggests. This issue is quite important in countries such as Italy where the size of the public sector and of its debt are quite relevant. In this paper a model, in the microeconomic tradition, is developed and applied to the italian economy using a quite general utility function to represent consumer's behaviour. The aim of the article is to set up a methological framework in which to test for the hypothesis that the provision of public and impure public goods crowds out private consumption. The main result of the analysis is that, in Italy, traditional public goods play a neutral role in expenditure decisions while impure public goods crowd out private consumption. This crowding out is created by over-production of these services; merit goods are direct complements to a wide range of private goods, but this beneficial effect is more than offset by the negative income effect related to their financing.     

Does the Gender of Top Managers and Owners Matter for Firm Exports?

How are export propensity and intensity affected by gender? Data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys (waves 2006–07, 2009–10) are used in a cross-country analysis to investigate whether export propensity and intensity differ according to the gender of top managers and entrepreneurs. Exporting is riskier than selling domestically and women, on average, tend to be more risk averse than men. Exporting entails costs, and women may have reduced access to finance compared to men. Most firms managed or solely owned by women are young and small and may have more difficulty obtaining credit. Women may self-select into routine sectors with lower mean productivity. Unlike most previous research, here the gender effect only takes into account firms where women have decision-making power. Accounting for the endogeneity of firm productivity, firm self-selection into exporting, and several factors influencing export propensity and intensity, the gender effect operates indirectly via some of those factors.     

Public and Private Education in an Integrated Europe: Studying to Migrate and Teaching to Stay?

This paper investigates public and private choices between internationally applicable and country‐specific education when graduates are mobile. Human capital depends on innate skills and study effort with either type of education. It is shown that national governments provide too few students with internationally applicable education, and too many with country‐specific education. This effect is mitigated, but not entirely eliminated, by the introduction of a graduate tax, according to which graduates are required to pay part of their taxes to the country where they received their education, regardless of residence. However, private educational choices are socially optimal with suitably differentiated tuition fees.     

Performance of the Ambient Tax: Does the Nature of the Damage Matter?

The ambient tax is often considered as an efficient instrument to achieve a first best outcome of ambient pollution when the regulator cannot observe individual emissions, or when monitoring costs are prohibitive. While this view is supported to a large extent by experimental findings, there remains several hurdles that hinder the implementation of the ambient tax in the field. One of these hurdles is the nature of the damage. Experimental findings suggest that the efficiency of the ambient tax is higher under external damage, i.e. if ambient pollution affects non-polluters (Spraggon in J Public Econ 84:427–456, 2002) than under internal damage, i.e. if ambient pollution affects polluters themselves (Cochard et al. in Environ Resour Econ 30:393–422, 2005). But this result rests on very different experimental settings. Therefore, we designed a new experiment that allows to compare external and internal damage within a common setting. Our main finding is that the ambient tax is equally efficient under internal and external damage.     

Son Preference and Gender Gaps in Child Nutrition: Does the Level of Female Autonomy Matter?

This paper examines the association between parental son preference and child anthropometric status, and the extent to which this relationship depends on the level of female autonomy. Results highlight the importance of maternal son preference and mothers' involvement in household decision making when gender gaps in child nutrition are considered. These findings have important policy implications.     

Marketmaking in the Laboratory: Does Competition Matter?

This paper is the first experimental study of the effects of competition and adverse selection on the performance of market maker (MM-) markets. Information distribution may is either symmetric or heterogeneous. MM-markets are either monopolistic (the specialist markets), or competitive (the multi MM-market). Welfare comparisons are with respect to a continuous double auction (DA-) market. Informed subjects receive an imperfect signal of the true state of the world. We find three main results. First, competition among market makers significantly reduces the bid-ask spread, and increases transaction volume. Second, competition among market makers induces competitive undercutting, yielding net trading losses for market makers as a group in most periods. Third, from the perspective of uninformed traders, a competing MM-regime is optimal, since it minimizes their expected trading losses.     

The Use of Dental Services among Older Australians: Does Location Matter?

Based on the National Health Survey of 2005, this study examined the use of dental services among non‐institutionalised older Australians. The results of the regression revealed differences in the frequency of dental visits across the states. The greater the public dental health expenditure per capita in each state the more likely residents of that state were to have visited the dentist in the previous year. Older people residing outside major cities experienced the greatest disadvantage. In addition to the socioeconomic factors reported by studies, in Australia inequalities in access to dental health services was associated with urbanicity and Australian states.     

Public and Private Investments in Greece: Complementary or Substitute ‘Goods’?

This paper investigates whether government investment spending exerts a positive or a negative effect on private investments. Time-series data for Greece as well as the methodology of cointegration suggest that, over the period 1948-80, public investment spending exerted a positive effect on private investments, while over the period 1981-96, the relationship turned out to be negative. Empirical results indicate that the large increase of the public share in the total investment process tended to crowd out private investments and to jeopardize the growth process of the economy.     

Empirical Examination of the Effects of Competition and Regulation on Public Universities and Colleges＇ Performance in China

Competition and regulation are indispensable entities for a university＇s improved performance. Using university rating as an index to performance, empirical analyses with the data from 145 public universities and colleges in China show that increased competition in the education service market is associated with higher university＇s （college＇s） performance. And increased competition in R＆D may make a quadratic effect on university＇s （college＇s） performance. University＇s performance improves when a university is directed as a branch of the central government because they enjoy some degree of management flexibility more than the local government controlled ones. A major implication of the study is the need to reform competition and regulation for improving universities and colleges＇ operating performance in China.     

The Scope and Limits of a Public–Private Hybrid: Dispute Settlement under NAFTA Chapter 19

Globalisation is often depicted as having led to an increase in private authority at the expense of that of the state. It is important to correctly specify the scope that private authority has achieved and the capacity of states to push back and limit that authority. This article grounds these theoretical issues in a discussion of the hybrid, public–private dispute settlement mechanism set up in the original Canada–US Free Trade Agreement (CUSTFA), and later extended into Chapter 19 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It finds that privatising the enforcement process did make a difference. Trade experts on panels saw things differently to judges and in ways that were more sympathetic to exporters. This favoured Canadian and Mexican interests. However, the arrangement lacked deep roots. It was a late-stage compromise in trade negotiations. This rendered it vulnerable to a US counterattack once panels began to rule in favour of Canadian and Mexican challenges to US trade determinations. The transfer of quasi-judicial authority to a public–private hybrid proved contingent, partly on the hegemonic state's ongoing level of comfort with the arrangement, as well as on a lack of business consensus within the United States.     

Effects of Transport Regulation on the Oil Market: Does Market Power Matter?

Instruments used to regulate the consumption of oil in the transport sector include fuel taxes, biofuel requirements, and fuel‐efficiency standards. However, the effects that these have on oil consumption and price vary. If market power is present in the oil market, the directions of change in consumption and price might contrast with those in a competitive market. As a result, the market structure affects not only the effectiveness of the policy instruments used to reduce oil consumption, but also the terms of trade and carbon leakage. In particular, reduced oil consumption, as a result of increased fuel‐efficiency standards, will unambiguously increase the price of oil under a monopoly.     

Does Detrending Matter For the Determination of the Reference Cycle and the Selection of Turning Points?

We examine the sensitivity of turning points classification to detrending and compare the implied cycles to those derived by NBER or DOC researchers. Two dating rules are considered. Turning point dates are broadly insensitive to detrending with one dating rule but not the other and many procedures generate false alarms and miss several common turning points with the latter one. Amplitude and duration properties are also sensitive detrending and dating rules. The Hodrick and Prescott and a frequency domain filters are best in mimicing NBER and DOC cycles, regardless of the dating rule used.