Performance budgeting: effects on government debt and economic growth

This article examines the effects of performance budgeting on government debt and economic growth rates. The results show that countries with a higher share of ministries using performance targets in budget negotiation tend to have lower government debt and higher GDP growth rates. A simple fixed-effect model shows similar results. The evidence suggests that these results hold only in those countries with relatively lower corruption.     

我国地方政府债务管理的问题及对策

由于地方政府债务规模不断扩大,债务管理过程中存在的问题日益凸显。在阐述地方政府债务规模及结构的基础上,提出地方政府债务管理中存在的问题,并有针对性地提出加强地方政府债务管理的具体建议。     

地方政府的危机管理:责任、信息与制度

当前我国危机管理体制建设已经进入了一个新阶段。本文从危机管理的分权效率、信息响应等角度论证了地方政府在我国危机管理体系中的特殊地位,分析了效率导向下的地方政府危机管理事权划分问题,探讨了信息优势与危机管理资源配置的关系。本文指出,应从赋权与问责、事后管理、制度建设等方面重新审视和发展我国的地方政府危机管理体制。     

浅谈地方政府绩效管理问题

伴随着我国改革开放的不断深化和政府行政改革的不断推进,绩效管理逐渐被引入到我国的政府管理中.同时,我国各级政府为了提高行政效能积极推行和应用绩效管理,取得了丰硕的成果.但是,政府绩效管理制度理念不科学、制度设计不健全、绩效管理制度运行存在障碍等,已成为政府实施绩效管理过程中产生大量问题的重要原因之一.     

The effects of local government investment on economic growth and employment: evidence from transitional China

Based on the panel data of 28 provinces in the year of 1987-2001,this paper examines the effects of the local government investment on economic growth and employment.The empirical result shows that the local government investment plays a significant positive role in economic growth and emplovment.However,while the proportion of local government investment to GDP had a remarkable rise after 1998.the elasticity of local government investment on economic growth declined,which shows that there is a hig room for raising the efficiency of local government mvestment.Moreover,the empirical examination shows that although local government investment had positive effect on employment,the elasticity had a decrease after 1994 when the tax-sharing system reform was put into practice.This shows that the positive role of local government investment on emplovment is also limited.This paper argues that the role of local governments as investors must be weakened,and local governments of different levels should lessen direct economic intervention and concentrate on public regulation.     

对我国地方政府债务问题的思考

地方政府债务问题一直以来是我国财政体系急需解决的问题之一,虽然新《预算法》已允许经批准的省级地方政府发行债券,可以让政府债务更加透明化,但要真正解决目前规模庞大的地方政府债务问题,还需从根源上进行分析,进而采取有针对性的措施予以控制和管理。     

Government consumption,government debt and economic growth

This paper compares the effects of government consumption and government debt on economic growth using data from 83 countries, including both developed and developing markets, over the period from 1960 to 2014. Linear regressions reveal that the negative effects of government consumption are relatively higher than the negative effects of government debt. A nonlinear investigation further suggests that the restrictions on government expenditure to prevent negative growth are more important for countries with lower trade openness, lower inflation, or greater financial depth, whereas the restrictions on government debt are shown to be more important for countries with higher trade openness, lower inflation or greater financial depth.     

The impact of governance and transparency on firm investment in Vietnam

A large literature asserts a causal relationship between the quality of economic governance and economic performance. However, attempts to establish such a link at an aggregate level have met with considerable methodological criticism. This paper seeks to overcome this limitation. We match a panel of Vietnamese enterprises from 2006 to 2010 with a unique panel dataset measuring sub‐national economic governance to estimate a relationship between local governance and private investment. We do not find a significant relationship between investment and most traditional forms of governance. However, there is one important exception – transparency, especially the public posting of planning documents, is strongly associated with higher investment across a range of different specifications. Our results have significant implications for policy, given the prevailing theory that changes in the quality of local economic governance will spur improved economic performance.     

Natural resource windfalls and efficiency in local government expenditure: Evidence from Peru

We study the role of natural resource windfalls in explaining the technical efficiency of public expenditure. Using a rich dataset of expenditure and public good provision for 1836 municipalities in Peru for the period 2001–2010, we estimate a nonmonotonic relationship between the efficiency of public good provision and the level of natural resource transfers. Local governments that were extremely favored by the boom in mineral prices were more efficient in using fiscal windfalls, whereas those that only benefited from modest transfers were more inefficient. These results can be explained by the increase in political competition associated with the boom. However, the fact that increases in efficiency were related to reductions in public good provision casts doubts on the beneficial effects of political competition in promoting efficiency.     

Fiscal transparency,government effectiveness and government spending efficiency: Some international evidence based on panel data approach

The global financial crisis and the debt crisis of the EU countries revealed serious weaknesses in fiscal reporting. As a consequence, uncertainties regarding the real situation of the public accounts of the countries raised doubts in relation to the effectiveness of government policies. Since then, countries are undertaking reforms in order to improve fiscal transparency. This paper analyzes whether countries are making efforts to enhance fiscal transparency, and whether fiscal transparency affects government effectiveness and government spending efficiency. We consider two channels through which this effect occurs. The first channel is indirect and it works through public debt. The second channel is the direct effect that transparency has on government effectiveness and government spending efficiency once transparency enhances accountability and thus the task of resource allocation. We use a sample of 82 countries (68 developing and 14 developed) for the period 2006–2014, and panel data analysis. Comparing the scores of fiscal transparency between 2006 and 2014, we observe that approximately 80 per cent of the countries made efforts to improve fiscal transparency. The results suggest fiscal transparency is important to reduce public debt and to improve government effectiveness and government spending efficiency.     

Evolutionary dynamics of social tolerance in the economic interaction model with local social cost functions

The evolutionary dynamics of social tolerance in a society with local social cost functions have been discussed. We show that, very different from the global function case studied previously, dynamics of social tolerance in a society with local social cost functions is integrable in phase space. The exact solution of the evolutionary dynamics in phase space is obtained, and the evolutionary trajectories are discussed by using the Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem. We show that the property of steady states is closely related to the group populations. We also discuss the necessary condition of the full tolerance steady state, and it is demonstrated that both global and local social cost functions have the same necessary condition of achieving full tolerance.     

Political decentralization and corruption: Exploring the conditional role of parties

This study investigates how national levels of corruption are influenced by the interaction of two factors in political decentralization: the presence of local elections and the organizational structure of national parties. Previous studies have focused primarily on the role of fiscal decentralization on corruption and have mostly ignored the institutions of political decentralization. Using new data in a series of expansive models across multiple countries and years, we find that corruption will be lower when local governments are more accountable to and more transparent toward their constituents. This beneficial arrangement is most likely to occur when local elections are combined with nonintegrated political parties, meaning that party institutions themselves are decentralized from national control. Such an institutional arrangement maximizes local accountability by putting the decision to nominate and elect local leaders in the hands of those best in a position to evaluate their honesty—local electors.     

Neutral agents and social tolerance: a dynamic perspective based on economic interaction model with local social cost functions

The influence of neutral agents on the evolutionary dynamics of social tolerance is discussed based on a recently proposed economic interaction model with local social cost functions. We show that the dynamical structure of social tolerance is completely changed even if a few neutral agents are introduced into the society. Especially, the full intolerance steady state, which is stable in previous works, becomes unstable and avoidable due to the economic incentive introduced by the neutral agents. The necessary condition of achieving full tolerance is also reduced compared to previous works without neutral agents.     

Competition in the political arena and local government performance

Competition reduces rent extraction in private-sector firms. In this article, we empirically assess whether it similarly disciplines politicians by evaluating local-level governments’ performance in Flanders. The results indicate that electoral competition – measured via the number of parties competing in elections – significantly positively affects the productive efficiency of municipal policy. Intertemporal competition – measured as the volatility of election outcomes over time – has a similar, but weaker, positive effect. These beneficial effects are mitigated by the fact that competition may lead to more fragmented governments, which is shown to work against their productive efficiency. Overall, though, the beneficial effects outweigh the unfavourable ones in our sample.     

Economic performance,government size,and institutional quality

This paper studies the empirical link between government size, institutions and economic activity using a panel of 140 countries over 40 years. Our results, robust under different econometric techniques, show mostly a negative effect of government size on output, while institutional quality has generally a positive impact. Moreover, the detrimental effect of government size on economic activity is stronger the lower institutional quality, and the positive effect of institutional quality on output increases with smaller government sizes.     

Fiscal policy,government debt,and economic growth in the Kaleckian model of growth and distribution

This article presents the Kaleckian model of growth and distribution that sets a budget deficit ratio as an indicator of fiscal policy and examines the short- and long-run effects of an increase in budget deficits and a rise in income tax rates on the economy. The key short-run outcomes are as follows. First, expanded budget deficits have a positive effect on the rate of capacity utilization. Second, the tax rate for wage income does not affect the rate of capacity utilization, whereas the tax rate for capital income has a favorable impact on it. This result implies that raising the tax rate for capital income can be an important policy instrument for stimulating the economy. Third, we find that the economy exhibits a wage-led aggregate demand in the short run. The main long-run results are as follows. First, the effect of expanded budget deficits on the growth rate is ambiguous, since a higher debt burden negatively influences the rate of capacity utilization and hence economic growth, despite the increase in demand caused by government borrowing. A higher budget deficit ratio thus raises the growth rate only if a certain condition is satisfied. Second, the tax rate for capital income has a positive impact on the growth rate. Third, the economy shows a wage-led growth in the long run.     

The role of ageing in the growth of government and social welfare spending in the OECD

Government expenditure as a share of GDP in the OECD rose at an annual growth rate of 1.02% in the period between 1970 and 1997. Government spending has increased most on functions particularly demanded by elderly population: social welfare, health and defence. Ageing is the main driving force of the growth of government spending, followed by relative prices and population. However, we also find that the other age groups react to ageing, thereby preventing increases in benefits per retired persons and that institutional reforms have been successful at reducing the impact of ageing on pensions in recent years.     

The nexus of economic and institutional evolution

The current state of the development economics literature ascribes an indisputable central role to institutions. This paper presents a formal model of institutional evolution that is based on the dynamic interactions between formal and informal institutions and economic development; the main features of the model is consistent with the fundamental theories that shed light to institutional evolution, namely the collective action and transaction cost theories, as well as dialectics. As informal institutional quality accumulates like technological know-how, while the level of formal institutional quality is chosen by the government to maximize welfare, subject to the economic and political costs. The solution of the model yields a punctuated trajectory of formal institutional evolution. Simulations reveal that the extent of diversity in informal institutional quality across a country delays formal institutional reforms. We also observe that, both the optimal quality of formal institutions and welfare are higher the more homogeneous is the country with respect to its informal institutions or the cultural attributes.