Terrorism and pork-barrel spending

The horrifying, tragic events of 9/11 made Americans aware of their vulnerability to terrorist attacks and triggered the creation of the Department of Homeland Security along with a substantial increase in federal spending to both thwart terrorist attacks and to increase our ability to respond to such emergencies. Much of this large increase in spending was in the form of direct transfers to states and cities through several grant programs. Homeland Security grants may be used for protection against terrorist activities, thereby enhancing public interests, or as wealth transfers to state and local governments, enhancing the reelection efforts of incumbents, and thus, private interests. Using 2004 per capita Homeland Security grant funding to states and their cities, we find that the funding formula used for some of the grant programs, which allocates almost 40% of the funds in some grant programs through a minimum percent to each state with the rest allocated based on population, means that per capita funding is related to electoral votes per capita, i.e., to the politics of Presidential re-election. However, the funding in other grant programs is also related to some of the dangers and vulnerabilities faced by states and their cities. Some of the variation in per capita grant allocations is also explained by the amount of airport traffic in the state and the state's population density, which are variables closely linked to the state's vulnerability to attack. Per capita Homeland Security grant allocations, however, do not seem to be related to the closeness of the 2000 presidential race.     

Using Panel Data to Determine the Effect of the Americans with Disabilities Act on Per‐Student Public Education Expenditures at the State Level

The purpose of the present study is to determine whether passage of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 resulted in a statistically significant increase in per‐student public education expenditures at the state level. Although numerous studies have estimated educational cost functions, no prior study has examined the impact of the ADA on per capita education spending. The results of the present study are consistent with anecdotal evidence in that enactment of the ADA has had a positive effect on per‐student educational expenditures; this result suggests that legislative mandates may lead to increased government spending. In addition to the ADA, several of the leading determinants of per‐student education spending include population density, per capita income, percentage of the state that is over the age of 65, percentage of state's residents who have a four‐year college degree, percentage of state's residents who are homeowners, and total student population.     

Mayoral Quality and Local Public Finance

In most local developing settings, the political leader and the municipal manager are embodied in the same figure, the directly elected mayor. This research explores the impact of mayoral quality on local public finances in a developing country. Mayoral quality is operationalized as educational background and job-related expertise to analyze its impact on two local financial indicators: property tax collection and social spending per capita. The mayoral quality thesis is tested across 40 Colombian municipalities over five years (2000–2004). After considering other political, economic, and external influences, the findings reveal that mayoral quality is associated with greater property tax collection and more social spending per capita. This positive influence, however, decreases under external constraints—such as presence of illegal armed groups. This study demonstrates how much influence the mayor can have when circumstances permit. The findings point to the significance of electing qualified mayors, as decentralization may not directly improve subnational finance. Instead, through decentralization, qualified mayors contribute to improved local public finance.     

An Examination of the Public Good Externalities of Professional Athletic Venues: Justifications for Public Financing?

A review of the literature shows that stadiums and arenas are insignificant in terms of creating employment, engendering aggregate increases in local spending, and increasing per capita income levels. Public subsidies, then, may be better justified with reference to the nonpecuniary, public good externalities of professional athletic venues. This research examines whether the public good externalities of Baltimore's Oriole Park and Cleveland's Jacobs Field justify the use of taxpayer resources to finance such projects. This research finds that the public good externalities of Oriole Park and Jacobs Field are determinants of willingness to support the use of taxpayer resources to finance stadium projects.     

How does government funding affect nonprofits' program spending? Evidence from international development organizations

Under the new governance models, the scope of government funding of nonprofit activities in service delivery and policy implementation is extensive. There is a long‐standing concern that government funding may compromise nonprofit operations and lead to unintended consequences. This research examines the concern by exploring the effect of government funding on nonprofits' spending on programs and services. Existing theories and empirical evidence propose competing arguments concerning the relationship between government funding and nonprofits' program spending. Using a 20‐year panel dataset of international development nonprofits registered with the United States Agency for International Development, we find that nonprofits receiving more government funding spend significantly higher proportions of their organizational resources on development programs. Government funding seems to increase nonprofits' program spending and to make them more focused on their mission‐related activities.     

Fault Lines: The Effects of Bureaucratic Power on Electoral Accountability

This article introduces a new explanation for why citizens may fail to vote based on government performance. We argue that when politicians have limited capacity to control bureaucrats, citizens will not know whether government performance is a good signal of the incumbent's quality. We develop a selection model of elections in which policy is jointly determined by a politician and a bureaucrat. When politicians have incomplete power over policy, elections perform worse at separating good and bad types of incumbents. We test the theory's predictions using survey experiments conducted with nearly 9,000 citizens and local officials in Uganda. We find that citizens and officials allocate more responsibility to politicians when they are perceived as having more power relative to bureaucrats. The allocation of responsibility has electoral consequences: When respondents believe that bureaucrats are responsible for performance, they are less likely to expect that government performance will affect incumbent vote share.     

Education and economic growth in the United States: cross-national applications for an intra-national path analysis

Do the leading predictors of economic growth found in the cross-national research have a capacity to predict economic growth at the state level in the United States (US)? Are the effects of education spending on economic growth underestimated because research fails to examine the indirect effects of spending on economic growth? This article presents the findings from a study investigating the relationship between education and economic growth in US states while controlling for the effects of the leading predictors of economic growth from the cross-national research. It also utilizes a path model to examine direct and indirect relationships between education spending and economic growth measured as per capita income growth. The results indicate that spending on higher education and highway expenditures demonstrate a positive association with growth in per capita income, while K12 (kindergarten through 12th grade) spending and K12 pupil–teacher ratios demonstrate a negative association with income growth from 1988 to 2005. Moreover, K12 spending and population growth indirectly affect income growth through their relationship with K12 pupil–teacher ratios, and spending on higher education indirectly affects income growth through college attainment rates. Overall, all but one variable from the cross-national research demonstrates a significant direct or indirect relationship with income growth during at least one time-period investigated. Treating K12 pupil–teacher ratios and college attainment as mediating variables also enhances our understanding of the dynamics that explain growth in per capita income at the sub-national level in the US. However, some unexpected findings emerge when the data are analyzed on the basis of two eight-year sub-periods.     

On the (relative) unimportance of a balanced budget

This paper explores the reasoning underlying Milton Friedman's preference for a small, unbalanced budget over a large, balanced one. Because the marginal return from government spending is less than the marginal cost (measured in terms of the amount of income private individuals remain free to spend), government expenditures have more of an adverse impact on the economy in his view than does the method of financing that spending. Using a panel data set comprising the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, we report evidence from the years 1967 through 1992 that growth rates in income per capita tend to be higher in states with smaller public sectors. Moreover, we find that while both deficits and taxes reduce the rate of income growth in a state, the negative impact of government spending is considerably larger at the margin.     

Legislature size and government spending in Italian regions: Forecasting the effects of a reform

We analyze the effect of different legislature size on per capita regional expenditure in Italy. According to the theory, legislature size has an indefinite effect on government spending because logrolling and transaction costs may have canceling effects. We find a large and significantly positive effect of the number of legislators. We use these findings to forecast the effects of the increase in the number of legislators that is taking place in some regions: a 10% increase in legislature size commands on average a 12% increase in per capita regional expenditure.     

A political theory of intergovernmental grants

This paper formulates a political theory of intergovernmental grants. A model of vote-maximizing federal politicians is developed. Grants are assumed to buy the support of state voters and the ‘political capital or resources’ of state politicians and interest groups which can be used to further increase the support of state voters for the federal politician. The model is tested for 49 states. Similarity of party affiliation between federal and state politicians and the size of the Democrat majority in the state legislature increases the per capita dollar amount of grants made to a state. Likewise, increases in both the size of the state bureaucracy and union membership lead to greater grants for a state. Over time, the importance of interest groups (bureaucracy and unions) has increased relative to political groups (state politicians).     

Politician preferences, law-abiding lobbyists and caps on political contributions

The effect of a contribution cap is analyzed in a political lobbying game where the politician has a policy preference. In contrast to the previous literature without politician policy preferences, more restrictive binding caps always reduce expected aggregate contributions. However the initial imposition of a cap increases contributions if the politician mildly favors the low-valuation lobbyist’s policy. The introduction of policy preferences permits analysis of monied interests’ policy influence. A more restrictive cap makes it more likely that the politician enacts the policy he would have enacted in the absence of lobbying, even in cases where expected aggregate contributions increase.     

Does India's growth matter? Evidence from the SAARC nations

The study estimates the extent of spillover effects that India's real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate has on the growth rates of other countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region for the period 2003–2016. It also identifies whether the conventional trade channel is the means through which growth is transmitted from India to her neighboring countries. Using a random effects model, we conclude that on average, a 1 percentage point increase in India's real per capita GDP growth rate results in 0.46 percentage point increase in the per capita GDP growth rates of other SAARC nations. However, this does not occur through the trade channel primarily due to low levels of intraregional trade. Also, using time dummies, the paper analyzes whether there has been any significant change in the degree of spillover effects in the postfinancial crisis period, where countries have been observed to insulate themselves to a certain extent.     

Democracy,Government Spending,and Economic Growth: A Political-Economic Explanation of the Barro-Effect

The paper develops a political economicargument for the recently observed inverseu-shaped relation between the level ofdemocracy and economic performance. A modelis constructed that shows why and howpolitical participation influences thespending behavior of opportunisticgovernments that can choose an optimalcombination of rents and public goods toattract political support. If the level ofdemocracy remains comparably low,governments rationally choose rents as aninstrument to assure political support.With increasing democratic participation,however, rents become an increasinglyexpensive instrument while the provision ofpublic goods becomes more and moreefficient in ensuring the incumbentgovernment's survival in power. As a consequence, an increase in democracy tends toraise growth rates of per capita income.However, the beneficial impact of democracyon growth holds true only for moderatedegrees of political participation. If –in semi-democratic countries – politicalparticipation increases further,governments have an incentive toover-invest in the provision of publicgoods. This model allows to derive and testthree hypothesis: Firstly, based on asimple endogenous growth model, weempirically substantiate our hypothesis ofa non-linear, inverse u-shaped relationbetween the level of democracy and growthof per capita income. Secondly, we showthat the impact of government spending oneconomic growth is higher in moredemocratic countries. Thirdly, wedemonstrate that the level of democracy andgovernment share of GDP are correlated in au-shaped manner.     

Campaign spending and office-seeking motivations: an empirical analysis

This paper presents econometric evidence on the relationship between campaign spending and office seeking motivations. Our results, using Spanish data, show that campaign spending per capita increases with the stakes for the winner, measured by the appointment power of the office. Moreover we find that campaign spending per capita increases with the level of self-government of the region. Our results concord with those reported for other countries with very different systems of campaign funding.     

The Political Determinants of Federal Expenditure at the State Level

It has been shown that states with higher per capita senate representation have higher federal spending per capita (Atlas, C. M., Gilligan, T. A., Hendershott, R. J. and Zupan, M. A. (1995). American Economic Review 85: 624–629). With a more recent data sample, more highly disaggregated data and a different set of political control variables, we are able to confirm the main result of Atlas et al. that per capita senate representation is positively related to federal expenditure. This effect is strongest for procurement expenditures. By contrast, we do not find support for their result that spending increases with per capita representation in the House of Representatives. Several other political variables are found to be significant in a subset of the expenditure equations.     

Language policy and political strategy in India

The official language policy of India is described as a 3 ± 1 language outcome. The central question that guides this paper is to explain why, when Congress leaders attempted to provide for India a single indigenous language for official communication, have they suffered more opposition than have rulers of states that consolidated in earlier centuries? Standard explanations for the different outcome, relying on special attributes of Indian culture and history, are found to be inadequate. A game theoretic analysis of political strategy helps to highlight two variables that best explain India's language outcome: the world historical time of state consolidation; and the nature of politician/bureaucrat relations for postcolonial states.     

Democratization and the size of government: evidence from the long 19th century

We study the consequences of franchise extension and ballot reform for the size of government in Western Europe between 1820 and 1913. We find that franchise extension exhibits a U-shaped association with revenue per capita and a positive association with spending per capita. Instrumental variables estimates, however, suggest that the U-shaped relationship may be non-causal and our fixed effects estimates point to substantial cross-country heterogeneity. Further, we find that the secret ballot did not matter for tax revenues per capita but might have expanded the size of government relative to GDP.     

Do politicians’ preferences correspond to those of the voters? An investigation of political representation

This paper investigates political representation by exploring the relationship between citizens' preferences and the preferences of their elected representatives. Using Swedish survey data, the empirical analysis shows that voters and politicians have significantly different preferences for local welfare services, implying that voters do not elect representatives with the same preferences as their own. The results show that when comparing a politician of a certain age, gender, educational level and marital status, with a voter with identical characteristics, the politician still has preferences for a significantly higher level of spending on the locally provided services. Hence, our results indicate that the representation of different socio-economic groups does not necessarily lead to a larger degree of representation of these groups' agendas. Moreover, we find the observed difference to be largest for the least salient expenditure item. We do, however, not find any evidence for differences in preferences between the two groups being associated with a decline in trust for politicians among voters.     

The Dilemmas of Frontline Staff Working With the Homeless: Housing First,Discretion, and the Task Environment

This article examines staff discretion in permanent supportive housing facilities run by a nonprofit agency claiming to use a Housing First approach. Field observation, archival data, and individual and group interviews with staff and clients were examined to better understand agency processes involved in intake, sanctions, and disposal of clients to evaluate Housing First fidelity. In their day-to-day interactions with clients, frontline workers' discretion is affected by working conditions such as lack of resources and heavy workloads, as well as by demands placed on the agency by members of its task environment. Implications for Housing First programs and homeless clients are discussed.