Budgetary Procedures and Deficits in Norwegian Local Governments

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the connection between budgetary procedures and deficits in Norwegian local governments. We argue that centralized budgetary procedures have an advantage in overcoming common-pool resource problems in the decision-making process and will lead to lower deficits. This hypothesis is tested on a panel data set of Norwegian local governments. The results add to the existing evidence of a negative connection between deficits and the degree of centralization of the budget process. Special emphasis is put on the problem with potential biased estimates resulting from endogeneity of the budgetary variables.     

Local Pollution in Federal Systems

It is widely accepted that decentralized control of local pollution is inefficient if the central and the local authorities are imperfectly informed. This paper shows how the central authority can introduce a flexible grant-in-aid system that induces the local authority to use a weighted combination of local and central information when the local authority suffers from confirmatory bias. If the central authority is highly uncertain about the environmental effects of a specific pollutant, the tax/subsidy scheme can be designed to allow local information to play an essential role in the environmental policy. If the central authority is certain that a pollutant must not exceed a specific limit, the tax/subsidy scheme can be designed to allow local information little influence on the environmental policy.     

Contents Volume 15 2000

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 15 2000     

The Political Economy of Trade Liberalization and Environmental Policy

A pressure group model where environmental and industry lobby groups offer political support in return for favorable pollution tax policies is used to explain and predict the equilibrium pollution tax in sectors protected by tariffs. The political economy effects of trade liberalization are investigated. The pollution tax is shown to decrease if the lobbying effort by the environmental lobby decreases more rapidly than by the industry lobby ceteris paribus. The level of political conflict falls with trade liberalization. Pollution may increase because of a reduction of the pollution tax, and tax revenues may fall simultaneously as pollution increases.     

Influence of design on tourists’ recommendation intention: an exploratory study of fjord cruise boats

ABSTRACT

In this article we study the influences of esthetic, functional, and symbolic dimensions of design on attitude toward fjord cruise boats and intention to recommend using the product. Also, we argue for the importance of a product to blend in with the surroundings in which it is used – contextually congruent design. In two studies we find that aesthetic, functional and contextually congruent design has positive influences on attitude toward fjord cruise boats. Designers of fjord cruise boats should develop boats with designs that are congruent with the surroundings in which they will be used.     

Trade policy in majoritarian systems: the case of the U.S.

Abstract We provide a theory of trade policy determination that incorporates the protectionist bias inherent in majoritarian systems, suggested by Grossman and Helpman (2005) . The prediction that emerges is that in majoritarian systems, the majority party favours industries located disproportionately in majority districts. We test this prediction using U.S. data on tariffs, Congressional campaign contributions, and industry location in districts represented by the majority party over the period 1989–97. We find evidence of a significant majority bias in trade policy: the benefit to being represented by the majority party appears at least as large in magnitude as the benefit to lobbying.     

Organizational Culture and Organizational Change: The Transformation of Savings Banks in Denmark, 1965-1990

In this article, I argue that organizations' historical narrativesare a basic and important component of their culture and identity,and that these narratives can be resources as well as constraints.I combine a narrative approach with Joanne Martin's three perspectivetheory of organizational culture, and using the transformationof Danish savings banks as a case, I demonstrate how a narrativeapproach can provide a new and better understanding of organizationalbehaviour and change than mainstream economics and the abundantfunctionalist organizational culture literature. I demonstratehow, when change was called for by external pressures, the savingsbanks choice set was constrained by a shared narrative abouttheir historical origins. This narrative, in turn, constitutedthe identity, image and organizational culture of savings banksand to a high degree restrained learning capabilities, createdorganizational inertia and delayed the adoption of a new strategy.     

“This is who i am”: Identity expressiveness and the theory of planned behavior

This paper explores the role of self‐identity expressiveness and social identity expressiveness in the context of Multimedia Messaging (MMS) adoption. An extended version of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) including a wider array of identity and social influences is developed and tested. As hypothesized, self‐identity expressiveness and social identity expressiveness prove to be significant determinants of intentions to use. Moreover, the extended TPB model explains 62% of the variance in usage intentions. The paper also investigates the relationship between self identity expressiveness and attitude and between social identity expressiveness and subjective norm. The study results indicate that the concept of subjective norm alone is insufficient to capture the rich universe of identity and social influences driving behavioral intentions. Implications for marketing managers and scholars are discussed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Insider-outsider forces in wage and employment determination: The case of Sweden

This paper applies a statistical approach used by Andersen & Hylleberg (1993) in their study of insider-outsider effects in wage-employment determination in the Danish manufacturing sector, to analyse insider-outsider effects in the Swedish private sector. Focusing on the univariate and multivariate trend properties of the data, a bivariate wage-employment error correction model is used as an explicit test-bed for the theoretical predictions of adjustments to anticipated and unanticipated shocks. According to the Blanchard & Summers (1986) insider-outsider model, the former changes are absorbed entirely by wages while the latter changes are reflected fully in employment. As in the case of analysis on Danish manufacturing data, it is found that the evidence based on data related to the Swedish private sector also fails to accept the Blanchard & Summers insider-outsider model in its unqualified version. Nonetheless several important traits of insider-outsider mechanisms seem to be in accordance with the observed evolution of the data.     

Why do transaction costs of agricultural policies vary?

Policy related transaction costs (TCs) is an important issue when evaluating different policy options. However, TCs are often not taken into account in policy evaluations, but may be as important for efficiency as the direct production costs. Different policies may result in different TCs, and the main aim of this article is to explore possible reasons for these differences. We compare the level of TCs for 12 different agricultural policy measures in Norway, and we analyze the causes of the differences along three different dimensions: asset specificity, frequency, and point of policy application. At the national level we find that all three dimensions are of importance when explaining the differences, while variation in TCs incurred by farmers are mainly due to differences in point of policy application and asset specificity. Data show that direct price support has the lowest TCs, while more direct payments for environmental amenities has the highest.