scholarly journals Government Spending and Legislative Organization: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Germany

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 200-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Egger ◽  
Marko Koethenbuerger
Keyword(s):  
Government Spending ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Endogeneity Bias ◽  
German State ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Positive Effect

This paper presents empirical evidence of a positive effect of council size on government spending using a dataset of 2,056 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria over a period of 21 years. We apply a regression discontinuity design to avoid an endogeneity bias. In particular, we exploit discontinuities in the legal rule that relate population size of a municipality in order to council size to identify a causal relationship between council size and public spending, and find a robust positive impact of council size on spending. Moreover, we show that municipalities primarily adjust current expenditure in response to a rise in council size. (JEL D72, H72, R51)

The effectiveness of government expenditure on economic growth in Botswana

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kafayat Amusa ◽  
Mutiu Abimbola Oyinlola
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Government Expenditure ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Short Run

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between government expenditure and economic growth in Botswana over the period 1985‒2016. The study employed the auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach in investigating the nexus. The study makes the argument that the effectiveness of public spending should be assessed not only against the amount of the expenditure but also by the type of the expenditure. The empirical findings showed that aggregate expenditure has a negative short-run and positive long-run effect on economic growth. When expenditure is disaggregated, both forms of expenditures have a positive short-run effect on economic growth, whereas only a long-run positive impact of recurrent expenditure is observed. The study suggests the need to prioritize scarce resources in productive recurrent and development spending that enables increased productivity. Design/methodology/approach This study examined the effectiveness of government spending in Botswana, within an ARDL framework from 1985 to 2016. To achieve this, the analysis is carried out on both an aggregate and disaggregated level. Government spending is divided into recurrent and development expenditures. Findings This study examined the effectiveness of government spending in Botswana, within an ARDL framework from 1985 to 2016. To achieve this, the analysis hinged on both the aggregate and disaggregated levels. The results of the aggregate analysis suggest that total public expenditure has a negative impact on economic growth in the short run; however, its impact becomes positive over the long run. On disaggregating government spending, the results show that both recurrent and development expenditures have a significant positive short-run impact on growth; however, in the long run, the significant positive impact is only observed for recurrent expenditure. Practical implications The results provide evidence of the diverse effects of government expenditure in the country. In the period under investigation, 73 percent of total government expenditure in Botswana was recurrent in nature, whereas 23 percent was related to development. From the results, it can be observed that although the recurrent expenditure has contributed to increased growth and must be encouraged, it is also pertinent for the Botswana Government to endeavor to place more emphasis on productive development expenditure in order to enhance short- and long-term growth. Further, there is a need to strengthen the growth-enhancing structures and to prioritize the scarce economic resources toward productive spending and ensuring continued proper governance over such expenditures. Originality/value The study provides empirical evidence on the effectiveness of government spending in a small open, resource-reliant middle-income SSA economy and argues that the effectiveness of public spending must be assessed not only against the amount of the expenditure but also on the type or composition of the expenditure. The study contributes to the scant empirical literature on Botswana by employing the ARDL approach to cointegration technique in estimating the long- and short-run impact of government expenditure on economic growth between 1985 and 2016.

The effect of fiscal transparency on government spending efficiency

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (7) ◽  
pp. 1365-1379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elina De Simone ◽  
Mariangela Bonasia ◽  
Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta ◽  
Lorenzo Cicatiello
Keyword(s):  
Government Spending ◽  
Financial Management ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Fiscal Transparency ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Positive Effect

Purpose Making citizens able to monitor and evaluate public spending activities is a fundamental issue in public financial management literature. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether fiscal transparency, measured by the Open Budget Index, has an effect on public spending performance, measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report data. Design/methodology/approach Research methods rely on random-effects panel regression models on a country-level panel data set of 82 world countries observed in the 2008–2015 time interval. Findings Results show that the potential positive effects of fiscal transparency are mediated by the level of democracy of the country. In detail, in democratic countries, a higher degree of disclosure of fiscal information is correlated with a higher efficiency of government spending while, in non-democratic countries, fiscal transparency does not seem to provide any effect. Social implications The results suggest that fiscal transparency can be a powerful device where politicians can be held accountable for their actions, while it could fail to provide positive results where a strong and effective vertical accountability is missing. Originality/value The novelty of the paper is twofold. First, it provides new additional evidence about the positive effect that fiscal transparency has on public spending efficiency by advancing previous research on this topic (Porumbescu, 2017; Montes et al., 2019). Second, the paper investigates conceptually and empirically how the positive effect on public spending efficiency determined by fiscal transparency depends on the degree of democracy present in the institutional environment in which fiscal information disclosure is implemented.

Bypassing the Enemy: Distributive Politics, Credit Claiming, and Nonstate Organizations in Brazil

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natália S. Bueno
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Credit Claiming ◽  
Original Survey

How do incumbents prevent the opposition from claiming credit for government programs? The received scholarly wisdom is that central government authorities favor copartisans in lower tiers of government to reward allies and punish opponents. Yet this depiction ignores the range of strategies available to incumbents at the center. I argue that another effective strategy is to channel resources through nonstate organizations, thus bypassing the opposition and reducing “credit hijacking.” Using a regression-discontinuity design with data from Brazil, I show that mayors from the president’s party receive more resources, but that the election of an opposition mayor induces the central government to shift resources to nonstate organizations that operate in the locality. Original survey data, fieldwork, and data on organizations’ leaders support the claim that opposition mayors do not hijack credit from government spending through nonstate organizations.

scholarly journals The malleability of intelligence: the effects of schooling, genetic factors, socioeconomic status, and their interplay in children.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Judd ◽  
Bruno Sauce ◽  
Torkel Klingberg
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Genetic Factors ◽  
Fluid Intelligence ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Independent Effects ◽  
Main Effects ◽  
The Impact

Schooling, socioeconomic status (SES), and genetics all play large roles in intelligence differences. However, it is unclear to what extent their contributions are unique and if they interact. Here we used a multitrait polygenic score for cognition (cog-PGS) with a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity design to isolate how months of schooling relate to intelligence in 7,853 children (aged 9-11). We found large, independent effects of schooling, cog-PGS, and SES on working memory, crystallized (cIQ), and fluid intelligence (fIQ). Intriguingly, we found evidence for gene-by-environment interplay between cog-PGS and SES for cIQ, and a trend in the same direction for fIQ. This interaction was negative meaning that the intelligence of the highest SES children was the least affected by genetic differences, while the lowest SES children were most affected by genetic variability. Schooling showed no interaction with cog-PGS or SES for the three intelligence domains tested. While schooling had strong main effects on intelligence, it did not lessen, nor widen the impact of these preexisting SES or genetic factors.

scholarly journals Does Electoral Competition Curb Party Favoritism?

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 378-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Curto-Grau ◽  
Albert Solé-Ollé ◽  
Pilar Sorribas-Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Large Margin ◽  
Spanish Regions ◽  
Previous Election

We study whether incumbents facing uncontested elections channel public spending toward co–partisan officials more than is the case of incumbents that are worried about reelection. We draw on data on capital transfers allocated by Spanish regions to local governments during 1995–2007. Using a regression discontinuity design, we document strong and robust effects. We find that a mayor belonging to the party of the regional president obtains twice the amount in grants received by an opposition’s mayor. This effect is much greater for regional incumbents that won the previous election by a large margin, but it disappears for highly competitive elections. (JEL D72, H76)

scholarly journals Direct democracy and government size: evidence from Spain

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 630-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Sanz
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Government Size ◽  
Similar Amount ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Budget Deficits ◽  
Effect Regression

AbstractI study the effects of direct democracy on economic policy in a novel setting. In Spain, national law determines that municipalities follow either direct or representative democracy, depending on their population size. Using a fixed-effect regression discontinuity design, I find that direct democracy leads to a smaller government, reducing public spending by around 8 percent. Revenues decrease by a similar amount and, therefore, there is no effect on budget deficits. These findings can be explained by a model in which direct democracy allows voters to enforce lower special-interest spending. I provide several additional results and discuss alternative mechanisms.

scholarly journals Evaluating the Effectiveness of Vaccines Using a Regression Discontinuity Design

2019 ◽  
Vol 188 (6) ◽  
pp. 987-990
Author(s):  
Nicole E Basta ◽  
M Elizabeth Halloran
Keyword(s):  
Randomized Clinical Trials ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Control Strategies ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Vaccination Programs ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Psychology Literature ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The regression discontinuity design (RDD), first proposed in the educational psychology literature and popularized in econometrics in the 1960s, has only recently been applied to epidemiologic research. A critical aim of infectious disease epidemiologists and global health researchers is to evaluate disease prevention and control strategies, including the impact of vaccines and vaccination programs. RDDs have very rarely been used in this context. This quasi-experimental approach using observational data is designed to quantify the effect of an intervention when eligibility for the intervention is based on a defined cutoff such as age or grade in school, making it ideally suited to estimating vaccine effects given that many vaccination programs and mass-vaccination campaigns define eligibility in this way. Here, we describe key features of RDDs in general, then specific scenarios, with examples, to illustrate that RDDs are an important tool for advancing our understanding of vaccine effects. We argue that epidemiologic researchers should consider RDDs when evaluating interventions designed to prevent and control diseases. This approach can address a wide range of research questions, especially those for which randomized clinical trials would present major challenges or be infeasible. Finally, we propose specific ways in which RDDs could advance future vaccine research.

scholarly journals When Running for Office Runs in the Family: Horizontal Dynasties, Policy, and Development in the Philippines

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110242
Author(s):  
Dean Dulay ◽  
Laurence Go
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Family ◽  
Growth Economic

Political dynasties exist in practically every type of democracy, but take different forms in different places. Yet the types of dynastic structures have remained unexplored. We argue that horizontal dynasties—multiple members from the same political family holding different political offices concurrently—affect policymaking by replacing potential political rivals, who may oppose an incumbent’s policy choices, with a member of the family. But in developing countries, the policy change that accrues from dynastic status may not lead to higher levels of economic development. We test this argument’s implications in the Philippines. Using a close elections regression discontinuity design on a sample of mayors, we show that (i) horizontally dynastic mayors have higher levels of government spending, (ii) direct institutional constraints are the mechanism that drives this core result, and (iii) horizontally dynastic mayors do not lead to higher economic growth economic growth or lower poverty.

scholarly journals English Listening Lesson Library Online (ELLLO) as a Supporting Media in Learning Listening

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Sukmawati Tono Palangngan ◽  
Haryanto Atmowardoyo ◽  
Sukardi Weda
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
Random Sampling ◽  
Listening Comprehension ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Academic Year

This research aims to find out: (1) whether the use of English Listening Lesson Library Online (ELLLO) affects the students’ Listening comprehension achievement and (2) students’ perception tow Engish Listening Lesson Library Online (ELLLLO). This research employed Quan-Qual method with a type of quasi-experimental design namely regression discontinuity design. The population was the second year students of SMAN 3 Palopo which  consisting of nine classes in 2014/2015 academic year. The total number of population was 270 students. This research used the combination of random sampling and nonrandom sampling technique, random sampling to decide the sample of the quantitative analysis and nonrandom sampling to decide the qualitative analysis. The data were collected by two instruments namely a listening test  and interview. The description of data collected through the listening comprehension test showed that ELLLO (English Listening Lesson Library Online) is significantly affecting the students listening comprehension. All students agree that English listening Lesson Library Online (ELLLO) is a good supporting media since they have used it for about six weeks and their favourite activity is game activities. Keywords: effect, ELLLO, listening

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