Privatization of social care delivery – how can contracts be specified?

When contracting out services to private actors, public authorities must be able to ensure that the quality of services provided is satisfactory. Therefore, it is important to formulate precise quality requirements, thus making them possible to monitor. In the study, 1,005 quality requirements from public procurements of nursing homes were categorized, and their degree of monitorability assessed. The analysis showed that quality requirements related to ‘soft’ areas such as social activities typically were non-monitorable. The requirements were written in an imprecise, vague manner, thus making it difficult for the local governments to determine whether or not they were met.     

The interaction between public and private governments: An empirical analysis

Private governments, found in planned developments and condominiums, are increasingly common methods of delivering local services to residents. This paper provides the first empirical study of their impact on local public finance. A novel data set of homeowners' associations allows construction of a panel of private governments in California. Panel methods test whether public expenditures respond to private government prevalence. Estimates indicate that local governments lower spending moderately in response to private government activity, consistent with strategic substitution. The paper then examines various mechanisms to explain this downloading and shows that the substitutability between public and private providers is key to which services are downloaded. Evidence also suggests that the economies of scale in service production in small cities temper the offloading of public services to private governments.     

Constructive Pressures And Incentives To Reform: Globalization and its impact on public sector performance and governance in developing countries

Contrary to widespread pessimism regarding the effects of globalization on nation states and the quality of governance in developing countries, this contribution stresses that several of its features can be made instrumental, and be beneficial, in terms of public policy making and state capability. Four ‘constructive pressures’ stemming from globalization could be seized constructively by citizens and governments in the developing world: First, better informed and better connected citizens, and an emerging global civil society, demand improvements in service delivery, transparency, and participation. Second, subnational governments, often backed by local NGOs and businesses, and keen to attract foreign investment, increasingly exert pressure vis-à-vis central governments. Third, global investment strategies by private businesses increase the demand for appropriate institutional arrangements within developing countries as well as credible government policies. Although with mixed results, forth, International Organizations, in particular IFIs, have been addressing public sector modernization in developing countries, also sponsoring global public policy networks in critical areas. Moreover, policy coordination and cooperation among states increases significantly, constraining arbitrary action by governments. Globalization, thus, advances the discussion about, and the demand for, new institutional arrangements, clearly with new opportunities for improvements in state capability and governance.     

Municipal corporatization in Germany and Italy

Abstract

During the last few years, the local government sector in European countries has undergone a number of important changes. Among the various reform initiatives has been the externalization of public services, such as corporatization, contracting-out, public–private partnerships and privatization. The key goal of this article is to describe and explain the evolution of local public services provision in the two selected countries, with a particular focus on ‘corporatization’. The article seeks to draw a picture of the actual municipal landscape with the administrative core and its various corporations. Furthermore, it will discuss the reasons for corporatization trends and their impact on the corporate governance structures of municipalities in Germany and Italy.     

The Completely Decentralized City: The Case for Benefits Based Public Finance

An alternative to centralized top-down city governance is a multi-level bottom-up structure based on small neighborhood contractual communities. This paper analyzes the voting rules and public finances of decentralized, contractual urban governance and the likely outcome of such a constitutional structure, substantially reduced transfer seeking or rent seeking. Tax and service substitution, with lower-level funding and services substituting for higher-level public finance, is the general process by which the governance would devolve. Land rent is the most feasible source of such decentralized public finance, and local communities could also engage in local currency and credit services. Some empirical examples demonstrate the implementation of some of these governance structures.     

城市公共服务的价值估计、受益者分析和融资模式探讨

城市生活质量决定城市价值.城市政府所提供的各类公共服务,直接影响着居民在城市中生活的舒适和便利程度,关系到城市长期发展的动力.围绕此主旨,论文探讨了3个相关的问题.第一,如何估计城市公共服务这些非市场的价值;第二,这些城市公共服务的成本承担和利益享受是否匹配;第三,怎样的公共口融资模式能够使上述关系更为匹配.基于显示性偏好法中的特征价格模型,利用北京市住宅市场和土地市场的徽观和个体交易数据,实证结果表明,居民愿意为居住在地铁站、公交车站和公署周边一定范围(0.8公里)内分别支付住宅价格的17.1%、12.4%和6.4%,但是,这种价值并没有被资本化到土地价格中.这表明,居民对城市公共服务偏好的住处并没有被房地产开发企业以地价的形式传递给政府,开发企业成为实际的受益者.以房地产价值作为税基的物业税的征收使信息可以从居民直接传递至城市政府,将使城市公共服务的融资模式更为合理.     

New Public Management and Citizens' Perceptions of Local Service Efficiency,Responsiveness, Equity and Effectiveness

Abstract

We examine the relationship between a range of new public management (NPM) practices and citizens' perceptions of service efficiency, responsiveness, equity and effectiveness in English local governments. We find that public–private relationships have a negative relationship with citizens' perceptions of all four dimensions of local service performance, but an entrepreneurial strategic orientation exhibits a positive association with all four. Performance management is also likely to positively influence rather than negatively influencing citizens' perceptions of local public services. Further analysis revealed that the impact of NPM practices varies according to the level of socio-economic disadvantage confronted by local governments.     

Public spending,public governance and economic growth at the Vietnamese provincial level: A disaggregate analysis

This study examines the role of economic governance in the relationship between public spending, private investment, and economic growth in Vietnam at the provincial level. The study data consist of sixty-two Vietnamese provinces for the period 2006–2015. Some notable results are attained by applying a sequential (two-stage) estimation. First, the marginal benefits to economic growth of increased Vietnamese provincial government expenditures may be constrained because of the inefficiency of expenditures on education, business services, and public administration. Second, public spending and private investment are found to be substitutes at the provincial level. Third, based on the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) ranking, used as a proxy for provincial public governance in Vietnam, the significance of public governance can be observed. The study concludes that good governance, characterized by different attributes, such as lower informal charges, greater transparency, and unbiased policy, plays a critical role in improving the impact of government expenditure on economic growth in Vietnamese provinces, particularly through its interactions with private sector investment.     

THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE ON MUNICIPAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: EMPIRICAL RESULTS FROM KENYA

This paper considers the role of public infrastructure in municipal economic development in Kenya. The primary objectives of the examination are to estimate the impact of roads and water infrastructure on municipal incomes, to ascertain the extent to which differences in institutional authority over water service delivery affect the quantity or quality of infrastructure, and to determine whether the presumed simultaneity between infrastructure and incomes matters for purposes of estimating the effect of the former on the latter. The analysis provides evidence to suggest that the impact of public infrastructure in the roads and water sectors on municipal economic development is significant. Also, the examination implies that local governments, when given authority over water services, do not appear to provide a larger quantity of water infrastructure than does the central government and/or its parastatal. On the other hand, and perhaps more significantly, the paper provides some initial evidence that the public water infrastructure services provided by local authorities are more accessible and reliable than those provided by central institutions. Finally, the results of the paper support the conclusion that possible simultaneity between public infrastructure and incomes does not seem to matter for estimating the quantitative impact of infrastructure on economic development.     

New Forms of Local Governance

Abstract

This article seeks to identify which factors lead local governments to use corporate public sector organizations, particularly municipal corporations, for service delivery. The authors argue that local officials trade off bureaucratic costs of in-house production with agency costs of external delegation to municipal corporations when deciding how to deliver local public services. Econometric models are employed to test this explanation for the adoption of municipal corporations by 278 Portuguese local governments. The results indicate that organizational size, financial independency and fiscal surplus, as well as ideological concerns and the activity of local interest groups, drive choices of local governance structures.     

Relationship risk perception and determinants of the collaboration fluency of buyer–supplier relationships in public service procurement

Public service procurement effectiveness has been emphasized as a major challenge in recent years. Well-managed partnerships between buyers and suppliers are needed in this domain to achieve collaboration fluency and improve the effectiveness of procurement. The main objective of this study is to determine which issues managerial teams must emphasize when aiming to create a solid partnership based on pre-existing collaborative relationships. The originality of this study lies in the domain approached (public service procurement in social and healthcare services), as well as the variable it attempts to explain (collaboration fluency). The study investigates two major issues: firstly, how collaboration risk perception influences communication, trust, and the governance of a collaboration and, secondly, how these factors (communication, trust, and governance) affect collaboration fluency. The study is performed via a survey regarding the collaboration of the public sector with organizations from the private and third (non-profit) sectors within public service procurement. The empirical evidence was gathered with a structured online questionnaire that was sent to organizations from the private and third sectors that provide services in the social and healthcare domain. The results indicate that in collaborative relationships in public service procurement, the higher the perceived relationship risks are, the more positive effects they will have in terms of increasing trust, communication, and the quality of collaboration management. Furthermore, communication, governance, and administration have strong influences on collaboration fluency.     

The New Institutional Economics

Current English policy towards general practice is ambivalent between developing new forms of contractual governance and constructing more hierarchically organized bodies. NHS policy documents say that Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) will contract some primary care services and directly manage others. Depending on the balance, PCTs could either organize general practice through practice-based contracts or start developing into hierarchies (albeit with some subcontractors for the time being).

New Institutional Economics, in particular Williamson's version, defines conditions where hierarchies are likely to be more efficient than markets (in terms of what welfare economics recognizes as allocative efficiency) and conditions where the reverse holds. This article considers the implications of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) for redesigning the governance of publicly financed services such as general practice which allow direct public access, in which it is difficult to define and manage service quality, and which have a professionalized but fragmented workforce. In contrast to their alleged implications for the hospital sector during the 1990s, NIE theories imply that for publicly funded professional services such as general practice there are stronger economic arguments for constructing hierarchies than for reconstructing quasi-markets at local level.     

How institutions affect export quality

We examine the relationship between a country's institutional environment and the quality of its exports. Institutional factors such as widespread corruption, inefficient bureaucracy, and high risk of expropriation of private property by government can create uncertainty among producers and discourage them from investing and innovating over the long term. This can limit the ability of producers to improve the quality of their exports in the future. We find some evidence that a better institutional environment (i.e. lower corruption, more efficient bureaucracy and more secure property rights) is associated with better export quality. After accounting for potential endogeneity between institutional and economic variables, we conclude that better institutions lead to improvements in export quality. Among the institutional factors considered in this article, corruption appears to be most robustly associated with export quality. These results have important implications for policymakers.     

Tax Competition and Revelation of Preferences for Public Expenditure

This paper considers a federal country composed of local jurisdictions that differ in their inhabitants' tastes for public goods, and which finance local public expenditure through a source-based tax on capital income. The taste for public goods is the private information of local governments. The central government seeks an optimal policy, in which grants to local governments are conditioned on local tax rates. The uninformed central government seeks both to allocate capital efficiently among jurisdictions, and to induce jurisdictions to provide an efficient mix of private and public consumption. It is shown that there persist at this constrained optimum both some misallocation of capital and some violation of the Samuelson rule for optimal public good provision in every jurisdiction.     

‘Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Lower Your Carbon Footprint!’ — Urban Laboratories and the Governance of Low‐Carbon Futures

The increasing threat of climate change has created a pressing need for cities to lower their carbon footprints. Urban laboratories are emerging in numerous cities around the world as a strategy for local governments to partner with public and private property owners to reduce carbon emissions, while simultaneously stimulating economic growth. In this article, we use insights from laboratory studies to analyse the notion of urban laboratories as they relate to experimental governance, the carbonization agenda and the transition to low‐carbon economies. We present a case study of the Oxford Road corridor in Manchester in the UK that is emerging as a low‐carbon urban laboratory, with important policy implications for the city's future. The corridor is a bounded space where a public‐private partnership comprised of the City Council, two universities and other large property owners is redeveloping the physical infrastructure and installing monitoring equipment to create a recursive feedback loop intended to facilitate adaptive learning. This low‐carbon urban laboratory represents a classic sustainable development formula for coupling environmental protection with economic growth, using innovation and partnership as principal drivers. However, it also has significant implications in reworking the interplay of knowledge production and local governance, while reinforcing spatial differentiation and uneven participation in urban development.     

What are public services worth, and to whom? Non-parametric estimation of capitalization in Pune

The availability and quality of basic public services are important determinants of urban quality of life. In many cities, rapid population growth and fiscal constraints are limiting the extent to which urban governments can keep up with increasing demand for these services. It therefore becomes important to prioritize provision of those services to best reflect local demand. We present a strategy to estimate the demand for public services, which is sensitive to heterogeneity in preferences across types of households, and the non-parametric estimation addresses problems arising from functional form restrictions. Using data from Pune, India, we estimate the demand for public services, as represented by the marginal change in the self-assessed monthly rental price of dwellings from the services. We find that the value of publicly-provided services accruing to the poor is greater than that going to wealthier households, and even untargeted across-the-board investment in specific services can be progressive.     

The new view of the property tax A reformulation

The ‘new view’ of the property tax is reformulated within the context of a model with interjurisdictional competition, endogenous local public services, individuals who are segregated into homogeneous communities according to tastes for local public services, a simple form of land use zoning, and a political or constitutional constraint on the use of head taxes by local governments. Expressions for the ‘profits tax’ and ‘excise tax’ effects of the property tax are derived. The effects of a ‘consumption distortion’ away from government services due to local reluctance to tax mobile capital are also examined.     

Let the G.L.C. Charge or Wind Up

How do we know if local government is efficient if it does not compete or sell its services? Rodney Lord draws on American experience to show the advantages of competition between local governments and between local government and private services.     

Cultural Cooperation,Institution Building and Metropolitan Governance in Decentralizing Indonesia

The institutional turn in metropolitan governance has been influenced to a considerable degree by a rational choice approach, which views metropolitan governance as essentially created by local actors to reduce the transaction costs of inter‐jurisdictional public‐service provision. Another influential theoretical route follows a historical approach, which emphasizes the role of the state structure in producing formal institutions to enable governance at the regional level. Both approaches tend to be formalistic, simplistic and deterministic in nature, thus neglecting the dynamic interactions between the actors and their more informal, intangible, yet more basic, legitimate institutions, such as culture. This article examines the dynamic role of culture in metropolitan governance building in the context of decentralizing Indonesia. The analysis focuses on ‘best‐practice’ experiences of metropolitan cooperation in greater Yogyakarta, where three neighbouring local governments known as Kartamantul have collaboratively performed cross‐border infrastructure development to deal with the consequences of extended urbanization. We draw on sociological institutionalism to argue that building this metropolitan cooperation has its roots in the capacity of the actors to use and mobilize culture as a resource for collaborative action.     

Credit bureaus,corruption and banking stability

This study assesses the impact that credit bureaus can have on the occurrence of banking crises, using data for 32 countries over the period 2004–2016 while considering the interference effect of corruption. Different levels of income are considered in order to check for the stability of the relationship. We also test for the existence of a threshold effect driving the credit bureau-banking stability nexus. Estimation outcomes suggest that more credit bureaus are correlated with less banking instability. Moreover, estimation outcomes show that curbing corruption improves the quality of information on delinquent borrowers shared among these institutions and can thus enhance the soundness of the banking system. Our findings also report the existence of a nonlinear relationship in the private and public credit bureaus and banking stability nexus.