State Revenue Forecasts and Political Acceptance: The Value of Consensus Forecasting in the Budget Process

Concerns about political biases in state revenue forecasts, as well as insufficient evidence that complex forecasts outperform naive algorithms, have resulted in a nearly universal call for depoliticization of forecasting. This article discusses revenue forecasting in the broader context of the political budget process and highlights the importance of a forecast that is politically accepted—forecast accuracy is irrelevant if the budget process does not respect the forecast as a resource constraint. The authors provide a case illustration in Indiana by showing how the politicized process contributed to forecast acceptance in the state budget over several decades. They also present a counterfactual history of forecast errors that would have been produced by naive algorithms. In addition to showing that the Indiana process would have outperformed the naive approaches, the authors demonstrate that the path of naive forecast errors during recessions would be easily ignored by political actors.     

处理劳动争议问题的几点建议

近几年 ,深圳劳动纠纷问题较突出 ,劳动争议案件数量的增加。所产生的劳动纠纷中 ,拖欠、克扣员工工资、劳动合同争议、私招乱雇员工的问题较严重。劳动纠纷主要集中在建筑、制衣、酒楼、电子等行业 ,其中又以私营、外资企业居多。造成这种现象的原因 ,一是东南亚金融风暴的影响 ,使深圳市企业亏损量加大 ,部分企业老板把危机转嫁到员工身上 ,拖欠、克扣工资 ,甚至老板欠债逃避。二是企业、各镇 (办事处 )劳动争议调解组织不健全 ,劳动争议无人处理。目前 85 %外资、私营、镇办企业没有劳动争议调解机构和人员 ,95 %的劳动争议都是发生在没…     

Coping with Budget Deficits in Sweden

During the late 1970s and early 1980s Sweden's budget deficits grew more rapidly than in probably any other country of Western Europe. Government policy responses developed in three phases. In the late 1970s there was very little action taken to cope with run-away deficits. From 1980 to 1982 a strategy was formulated and partly implemented which heavily emphasized austerity measures through expenditure cuts. From late 1982 a 'mixed' strategy has been pursued which combines less drastic cuts with selected revenue increases. The virtual lack of response in the late 1970s and the turn-about in 1980 may be explained by reference to four major categories of factors: the severity and longevity of the economic crisis itself and the prevailing interpretations of its root causes; the dynamics of public sector growth and the understanding of the processes involved; the ideological and policy predispositions prevalent among policy-makers, economists, major interest groups and the public at large; and, finally, a set of 'organizational' factors mainly associated with the parliamentary situation in Sweden.     

突发性公共事件的治理与制度创新

突发性公共事件既考验一国政府能否充分利用本国以及全球公共资源履行公共服务的能力,又成为政府转变功能、由善政转向善治的机遇。在全球化背景下,政府只有将功能从以经济为中心转向经济与社会协同发展,建立政府——社会、中央——地方、国家——国家间多中心的公共事务治理结构,才能实现本国公共利益最大化,增进政府统治竞争力。     

The OMB Budget Examiner and The Congressional Budget Process

This is the second of a two-part retrospective on the evolving role of the OMB budget examiner. The examiner has become more active in negotiations with the legislative branch and tracking the legislative status of various fiscal measures. A new central budget management system was created to monitor appropriation bills. The OMB budget examiner has also been increasingly used to provide information for advocacy purposes before Congress and the public. The institutional effect on OMB of these changing roles is examined and suggestions for organizational reform are made.     

Perennial Budget Reform Proposals: Budget Staff versus Elected Officials

This article defines budget reform perennials at the national level as those that reoccur multiple times, with little chance of passage and little change from one iteration to the next. The literature has seldom examined proposals that do not pass or the staff effort that goes into keeping flawed proposals from passing. The article describes the sources of such proposals and what can conceivably be done to lessen the tension they cause. The research is based primarily on qualitative interviews and legislative testimony. Examples of reform perennials include biennial and capital budgeting.     

处理好几组关系有效遏制黑土地退化

东北黑土区是中国重要的商品粮产地,关系着国家的粮食安全。但由于种种原因出现了黑土地退化的现象,黑土地退化危害粮食生产、加深黑土区的人地矛盾,妨碍农民增收,影响了区域经济的协调发展。为了保证国家粮食安全和经济社会的可持续发展,需要处理好科技投入与制度建设、政府扶持与农民主体、黑土地治理与农民增收、中央政府与地方政府、国家投入与社会投入以及治理与保护几组关系。     

Forecasts and Preferences in the 1992 General Election

Little attention has been paid to the influence of expectations for victory on the formation of general election preferences in U.S. presidential races. There is good reason to believe, however, that under certain conditions citizens' forecasts of who will win the fall election may influence their preference and their vote. We model preferences during the course of the fall 1992 campaign as a function of two kinds of expectations. First we attempt to identify a component of expectations that is independent of political projection. We discover that expectations based only on information about the race play a prominent role in preference formation early in the fall but decline later as the cost of information drops. Similar results obtain when we include projection in the model of expectations. We conclude that general elections may have some of the same dynamic properties that are observable in primaries. Since early momentum in the fall campaign may influence subsequent preference formation, we contend that leads in early polls are valuable.     

Budget institutions and taxation

While a number of different studies have explored the effects of budgetary procedures and the centralization of the budget process on government debt, deficits and spending, few of them have explored whether such fiscal institutions matter for public revenue. This article argues that centralizing the budget process raises the levels of taxation by limiting the ability of individual government officials to veto tax increases in line with common-pool-problem arguments regarding public finances. Using detailed data on budgetary procedures from 15 EU countries, the empirical analysis shows that greater centralization of the budget process increases taxation as a share of GDP and that both the type of budget centralization and level of government fractionalization matter for the size of this effect. The results suggest that further centralizing the budget process limits government debt and deficits by increasing public revenues as well as constraining public spending.     

The 1983 Federal Budget

Editors' Note: The following material is taken, with permission of the author, from the first chapter of The Brookings Institution's Setting National Priorities: The 1983 Budget.     

Reflections on Budget Systems

Several prominent budget systems of past years, such as the Planning Programming Budget System and Zero-Base Budgeting, are no longer popular as comprehensive systems, each system has had a continuing effect on current practices. This article comments on the usefulness of several features of budget systems particularly from a management perspective. It also offers several criteria for design of budget systems which, it is hoped, would help prevent some of the problems that have been encountered in the past.