In Search of True Public Arts Support

Most of the debate over government arts support focuses on direct subsidies to nonprofit arts organizations. In this article, however, I show that a much larger amount of public sector money comes from indirect aid, in the form of tax revenues forgone on tax-deductible contributions by individuals. Specifically, every dollar in direct federal arts funding is accompanied by about $14 in indirect aid. Analysis of the 1996 General Social Survey shows that private givers and supporters of direct government aid fit different demographic profiles, meaning that direct and indirect funding owe to distinct constituencies. These findings lead to a number of implications for nonprofit and public arts managers.

It is sometime proper for the state to encourage and protect dishonorable but useful professions, without those who exercise them being more highly considered for that.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau ¹

     

Public Opinion and the Role of Government Arts Funding in Spain

While several studies have probed the determinants of public support for government funding of arts and culture in the United States, little work to date has addressed the question in Europe. Yet as private cultural funding increases in magnitude in most Western European countries, the answer to this question has policy implications. This article formalizes the theory of the determinants of this public support in a model, employs public opinion data from Spain to estimate this model, and compares the results with those from the U.S. I find that support in Spain increases strongly with age, but is insignificant in most other variables. The article's empirical results yield several lessons for cultural policy design.     

Charitable giving in the German welfare state: fiscal incentives and crowding out

There are two ways that government activities influence private charitable giving: (1) government spending on the provision of public goods may cause crowding out of private charitable contributions; and (2) tax incentives may boost private charitable giving. From a sample of German income tax returns, we estimate the elasticity of charitable giving relative to tax incentives, income, and government spending. Using censored quantile regression analysis, we derive results for different points of the underlying distribution of charitable giving. Evaluating overall treasury efficiency, the tax deductibility of charitable donations fosters enough private giving to offset foregone tax revenues.     

The Impact of Public Funding on Contemporary Visual Arts

Public policy for supporting the visual arts has historically followed different traditions in France and the United Kingdom. In an environment of fiscal austerity that impacts upon public funding as well as private patronage, and given the tensions between artistic freedom on the one hand, and market constraints on the other, this article examines how these two traditions of financing artists has influenced the direction of the work itself. A brief historical presentation of the two forms of public support and their evolution in recent decades provides a framework for understanding government attitudes and policies on both sides of the Channel. A closer examination of selected artists, chosen here for their representativeness and their international renown, is used to illustrate the changing nature of public support for visual art creation.     

Public Subsidies for Private Schooling: A Comparative Analysis of Argentina and Chile

Argentina and Chile have long-standing policies that award public subsidies to private schools. This article compares the academic outcomes of seventh- and eighth-graders in public and private schools in each country. Three types of private schools are analyzed: Catholic schools that are subsidized by the government, nonreligious schools that are subsidized, and private schools that receive no subsidies. Ultimately, the analyses suggest a mixed portrait of private school effectiveness, in which Catholic schools have the most consistent links to achievement. Nonreligious subsidized schools in Chile, often operated by for-profit corporations, produce outcomes no different from public schools.     

Collateral Damage: The Impact of Mortgage Debt on U.S. Savings

This article contributes to the literature on saving by empirically investigating the determinants of the saving rate in the United States, with a special focus on the role of mortgage debt. Using data from 1987 to 2013, we find that mortgage payments have a substantial negative impact on both personal and private saving rates in the United States. An increase of 10 percentage points in mortgage payments leads to a 9.1-percentage-point drop in the personal saving rate and a 12.4-percentage-point drop in the private saving rate. In addition, including mortgage debt as an explanatory variable leads to significant changes in the impact of other variables, which further reinforces our claim that mortgage debt is important for the analysis of the saving rate. Comparing mortgage payments with nonmortgage consumer debt payments, we find that mortgage payments have a larger impact on the private saving rate whereas nonmortgage consumer debt payments have a larger impact on the personal saving rate. We also find a partial but robust crowding-out effect of public saving rate on the two saving rates. Our results have implications for monetary policy and government policies that encourage mortgage borrowing.     

Public Capital Investment and Economic Growth in Forth Worth: The Implications for Public Budgeting and Infrastructure Management

There is a common assumption that local government investment in infrastructure stimulates private development. This article examines relationships in one southwestern city between public capital spending and city infrastructure assets and private economic activity as measured by building permit activity, permit values, and assessed property valuations. Two research questions are examined: (1) Is public investment in new capital associated with private capital formation? and (2) Is public investment associated with improvements in the property tax base? The findings hold implications for infrastructure planning, budgeting, and management. First, public and private capital spending patterns varied in tandem across several cycles, and tracking such cycles may help public managers predict short- and mid-term infrastructure needs. Second, utility capital spending is critically related to private capital formation, and may offer higher fiscal returns than other public infrastructure. Third, infrastructure capital had a strong significant effect on the assessed value of urban property, and will therefore influence the property tax base.     

Is There a Dark Side to Government Supportfor Nonprofits?

The relationship between government social spending and private donations to the nonprofit sector is an issue that is relevant to both public administrators and nonprofit managers. Does government funding displace philanthropy, or encourage it? This article introduces the debate into the public administration literature. First, I survey and interpret the empirical work performed to date in this area by economists. Second, I retest this question across four nonprofit subsectors using data on both federal and state/local spending. My survey of the literature shows mixed results, although a broad pattern indicates that “crowding out” tends to dominate, particularly in the areas of social service provision and health. My empirical results are consistent with these findings, although they must be interpreted cautiously from a policy perspective: While results are statistically significant, the degree of crowding out is generally small. On the other hand, the claim that government funding stimulates giving seems to lack both statistical and policy significance.     

Public Attitudes Toward Social Spending in the United States: The Differences Between Direct Spending and Tax Expenditures

This paper uses a survey experiment to examine differences in public attitudes toward ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ government spending. Federal social welfare spending in the USA has two components: the federal government spends money to directly provide social benefits to citizens, and also indirectly subsidizes the private provision of social benefits through tax expenditures. Though benefits provided through tax expenditures are considered spending for budgetary purposes, they differ from direct spending in several ways: in the mechanisms through which benefits are delivered to citizens, in how they distribute wealth across the income spectrum, and in the visibility of their policy consequences to the mass public. We develop and test a model explaining how these differences will affect public attitudes toward spending conducted through direct and indirect means. We find that support for otherwise identical social programs is generally higher when such programs are portrayed as being delivered through tax expenditures than when they are portrayed as being delivered by direct spending. In addition, support for tax expenditure programs which redistribute wealth upward drops when citizens are provided information about the redistributive effects. Both of these results are conditioned by partisanship, with the opinions of Republicans more sensitive to the mechanism through which benefits are delivered, and the opinions of Democrats more sensitive to information about their redistributive effects.     

Public pension reform in Japan

The March 2000 pension reform in Japan focused on the long-term financial sustainability of the country's two-tiered public pension system. The government opted for incremental changes in order to maintain pension solvency through 2060. Those changes could reduce future pension funding liability by an estimated one-third. Further, the decision to avoid structural reforms of its pension programs was based on fiscal considerations. Expanding general revenue funding for the first tier from the current share of one-third to cover the entire cost would require increases in the consumption tax that proved to be politically unacceptable. Fully privatizing the second, earnings-related tier would entail transition costs too great to bear at a time of rising budget deficits. In addition, the Japanese public generally supported the sharing of financial burden for public pension programs through a combination of benefit cuts, a raise in the pensionable age, and contribution rate increases. If current cost projections prove to be inaccurate, future pension reviews (scheduled every 5 years) will give the government further opportunity to fine-tune program changes.     

Government Support Programs and Private Investments in PPP Markets

ABSTRACT:

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become an important tool for investing in and developing public infrastructure and services. However, many developing countries have failed to attract sufficient private investment from the PPP market. This article uses data from 4,484 PPP projects across 130 developing countries to investigate if and how distinct types of government support can attract more private investment. Results showed that capital, revenue, and in-kind subsidies directly provided from governments attract more private capital, while indirect supports through government guarantee policies do not. The institutional quality of a country enhances the positive relationship between direct government support and private PPP investments. Further, risk allocation plays a mediating role between government supports and private investment.     

Religion, Spirituality, and the Workplace: Challenges for Public Administration

The relationship between religion and politics in the United States is a much-studied academic area, particularly evident in political institutional and behavioral venues such as interest groups, electoral behavior, and political culture. One academic area that has not received much attention is the influence of religion on public administration. Recently, however, public administration scholars have begun to mimic their counterparts in the business world by examining the role of religion and spirituality in the public workplace, especially with regard to organizational performance, ethical behavior patterns, decision making, and the personal spiritual health of employees. This article examines the role and impact of religion and spirituality in the workplace, reviews court cases and political measures regarding religious expression in the public sector, explores a private sector model to explain the interrelationship between religion and spirituality in the public workplace, and challenges public administrators to consider the positive role that religion and spirituality can play in the public workplace.     

The Role of Philanthropy in Local Government Finance

Nonprofit organizations thrive on the altruism of citizens, and actively court donors for major gifts. Yet individual gifts to government agencies are often unexpected, sporadic, and initiated by the donor. This article introduces the phenomenon of private giving to local governments and tests hypotheses regarding the expected forms of giving to public agencies. Results indicate that philanthropy is and will likely remain a minor and highly variable source of revenue, making it an ill‐suited replacement for broad‐based tax revenue. However, deliberate government efforts to provide a suitable environment for private donations appear to succeed in attracting more gifts per capita.     

Public affairs: an American perspective

This paper explores the development and broadening scope of public affairs practice within the United States of America and charts the factors that have influenced its current development. To understand the scope of how public affairs has developed in the United States, it is necessary to examine the historical evolution of the function in the USA and the early 20th century influence of the US government on defining and regulating its definition of public relations and public affairs, which resulted in the still‐in‐effect Gillett Amendment. Since then, public affairs has expanded into the private as well as the public sectors as corporations and organisations recognise the need to gain public trust for their ventures. In the US today, public affairs practitioners perform duties that range from issues management to environmental scanning to legislative affairs. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

The Health Care Safety Net and the Affordable Care Act: Implications for Hispanic Immigrants

There are currently more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States; the majority of them are of Hispanic origin. This article shows that Hispanic immigrants in the Greater Richmond, Virginia, area rely heavily on free clinics for basic health care services. Free clinics do not receive any public funding and thus face reduced government regulation. As a result, these clinics typically present fewer barriers to undocumented immigrants seeking care. Although free clinics function outside the mainstream of government funding for health care services, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 is so broad and far‐reaching in its scope and potential application that free clinics cannot escape its grasp once the new law is fully implemented. Because the ACA does not provide insurance coverage to undocumented immigrants, free clinics will remain their primary sources of care and treatment. Consequently, those responsible for implementing the ACA should consider the impact on free clinics.     

Effectiveness of fiscal incentives for innovation: Evidence from meta‐regression analysis

This article examines the microeconometric evidence on the impact of government support for R&D and innovation. Our meta‐regression analysis uses a dataset of empirical evidence on the effects of government R&D policies on innovation and investigates the factors that may explain the differences in the estimated effects. The meta‐analysis is structured to include both the direct and indirect government support for R&D and innovation. The estimated results reveal the heterogeneity of empirical studies with respect to the type of incentive, data, and econometric methodology used. The results indicate that the output additionality effect is on average stronger for R&D tax incentives than subsidies. Studies that use the subsample of high technology sector show a stronger additionality effect of fiscal incentives on innovation. Moreover, small and medium enterprises have a stronger input additionality effect. The results also suggest that studies considered endogeneity issues have on average stronger additionality effect.     

Tax Harmonization and Tax Competition: Contrasting Views and Policy Issues in Three Federal Countries

This article contrasts divergent attitudes toward tax competitionand tax harmonization in Australia, Canada, and the United States.Despite strong arguments on each side, competition and harmonizationare not necessarily conflicting goals except at the extremes.The most troublesome issue is the tradeoff between promotingefficiency in the public sector and in the private sector. Dueto the difficulty of measuring and comparing efficiency in bothsectors, this issue is not likely to be resolved objectively.However, tax-base harmonization appears to be the best compromisein pursuing both goals. Some fundamental problems remain regardlessof the policy direction taken, including limiting "micro-level"competition and addressing environmental and redistributiveconcerns in regional and local arenas. Improved intergovernmentalcooperation and experimentation are viewed as the key to resolvingthese issues.     

Public Pension Funds and Operating Budgets: A Tale of Three States

This article provides a normative framework for understanding the important link between public pension fund management and government operating budgets. Three aspects of pension fund management are discussed that have a significant impact on the operating budget: pension contribution, investment strategy, and the funding of pension liabilities. Three cases concerning West Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City are discussed to illustrate these three important aspects. The normative framework and the case studies demonstrate two important principles in prudently managing public pension funds: ensuring intergenerational equity and protecting the long-term health of government budgets.     

It's (Change in) the (Future) Economy,Stupid: Economic Indicators,the Media,and Public Opinion

Economic perceptions affect policy preferences and government support. It thus matters that these perceptions are driven by factors other than the economy, including media coverage. We nevertheless know little about how media reflect economic trends, and whether they influence (or are influenced by) public economic perceptions. This article explores the economy, media, and public opinion, focusing in particular on whether media coverage and the public react to changes in or levels of economic activity, and the past, present, or future economy. Analyses rely on content‐analytic data drawn from 30,000 news stories over 30 years in the United States. Results indicate that coverage reflects change in the future economy, and that this both influences and is influenced by public evaluations. These patterns make more understandable the somewhat surprising finding of positive coverage and public assessments in the midst of the Great Recession. They also may help explain previous findings in political behavior.     

Public Opinion on Federalism in Canada, Mexico, and the United States in 2003

This research reports on public opinion surveys on intergovernmentaland federal issues conducted in Canada, Mexico, and the UnitedStates in March and April 2003. In all three countries, respondentsmost often see their federal government as being the least effective,least efficient, and least trustworthy. Respondents from Canadaappear least supportive of their federal government and mostsupportive of their local governments; those from Mexico appearmost supportive of their state governments; respondents fromthe United States appear more "balanced" in their support ofthe various orders of government. Also, far greater regionaldifferences in opinion exist in Canada than in Mexico or theUnited States. Support for more decentralized federalism isfound to be strong in all these federal countries. This researchalso updates long-term trend data for the United States. Comparedwith respondents from previous years, U.S. respondents in 2003showed a measurable uplick in support for the federal government,compared with state and local governments. This support seemsto be a carryover from the terrorist attacks of 11 September2001.