Public administration,context and innovation: A framework of analysis

Innovation in public administration (PA) has played a pivotal role in building good governance and has attracted significant attention in the academia. The literature on PA innovation is burgeoning; however, this article argues that there is ‘a missing link’ in the extant literature in that the impacts of variation in context on PA innovation have not been sufficiently investigated. This article elaborates the analytical perspectives on the influences of various contexts over PA innovation and the mechanisms through which impacts may take place. Both theoretical and methodological complexities and challenges are apparent in disentangling contextual influences from other factors. The article proposes a research agenda for a context‐orientated comparative analysis of PA innovation and offers a brief illustration regarding contextual differences between China and the European Union in existing studies. The article calls for further studies in this direction.     

Cycles in Crime and Economy: Leading, Lagging and Coincident Behaviors

In the last decades, the interest in the relationship between crime and business cycle has widely increased. It is a diffused opinion that a causal relationship goes from economic variables to criminal activities, but this causal effect is observed only for some typology of crimes, such as property crimes. In this work we examine the possibility of the existence of some common factors (interpreted as cyclical components) driving the dynamics of Gross Domestic Product and a large set of criminal types by using the nonparametric version of the dynamic factor model. A first aim of this exercise is to detect some comovements between the business cycle and the cyclical component of some typologies of crime, which could evidence some relationships between these variables; a second purpose is to select which crime types are related to the business cycle and if they are leading, coincident or lagging. Italy is the case study for the time span 1991:1–2004:12; the crime typologies are constituted by the 22 official categories classified by the Italian National Statistical Institute. The study finds that most of the crime types show a counter-cyclical behavior with respect to the overall economic performance, and only a few of them have an evident relationship with the business cycle. Furthermore, some crime offenses, such as bankruptcy, embezzlement and fraudulent insolvency, seem to anticipate the business cycle, in line with recent global events.     

On the finance-growth nexus: additional evidence from Central and Eastern Europe countries

We investigate the finance-growth nexus for a sample of thirteen transition economies over the period 1995–2007 using panel cointegration tests and a panel error-correction model. By combining results for models with alternative dependent variables and several measures of financial development, we find that the relationship between financial deepening and real growth is largely positive in the long-run, and it develops its full potential when funds are directed towards private enterprises. In the short-run, however, the growth effects of an expansion of financial markets are weaker and negative, supporting the idea that financial development has also a dark side, as it exacerbates fragility and destabilizes the economy through recurrent crises.     

Is EU Administrative Law Failing in Some of Its Crucial Tasks?

Beneath the surface of steady changes in EU administrative law lurk a number of long‐term, structural problems. In this article, I argue that, because of these structural problems, EU administrative law is failing in some of its crucial tasks: (1) finding a balance between administrative convergence and administrative diversity within the EU legal system, (2) structuring administrative power and its exercise, (3) governing administrative instability. EU administrative law, however, is not necessarily trapped in the status quo. By identifying and articulating a number of long‐term problems, this article aims at providing some tools that future research could use in the discussion on the possible ways forward. More generally, it suggests that EU administrative law should be reshaped as a project of institutional design.     

European Agencies' Rulemaking: Powers,Procedures and Assessment

This article aims at identifying European agencies' rulemaking powers, mapping the procedures through which such powers are exercised and assessing the existing procedural arrangements. The first section analyses the main forms of European agencies' rulemaking. It shows, on the one hand, that not all European agencies are actually engaged in the adoption of administrative rules, on the other hand, that European agencies carrying out rulemaking activities tend to converge on two specific forms of rulemaking, namely participation in the adoption of binding implementing rules and regulation by soft law. The second section, devoted to mapping the procedures through which rulemaking powers are exercised, argues that the two main types of European agencies' rulemaking cannot be said to be subject to a really common procedural framework. In both cases, the emerging procedural rules implement the same principles of transparency and participation and rely on the same consultation mechanism, sometimes complemented by regulatory impact assessment. Yet, proceduralisation has an uneven development: while the establishment of a procedural discipline is quite common with reference to participation in the adoption of binding implementing rules, regulation by soft law remains largely under‐proceduralised. The last section proposes an assessment of the European agencies' rulemaking procedures. Two main shortcomings are identified: the asymmetry between the tendency to proceduralise the adoption of binding implementing rules and the parallel tendency to keep informal the process of adoption of soft law measures; and the too rudimental development of consultation.