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Redistribution Through Public Employment
This paper examines the regional distribution of public employment in Italy and documents two sets of facts. The first is the use of public employment as a subsidy from the North to the less wealthy South. We calculate that about half of the wage bill in the South of Italy can be identified as a subsidy, with both the size of public employment and wage levels used as a redistributive device. The second set of facts concerns the negative effects of subsidized public employment on individuals’ attitudes toward job search, education, and “risk-taking” activities. We conclude that heavy reliance on public employment distorts incentives and discourages the development of market activities in the South.
Austerity and Elections
Conventional wisdom holds that voters punish governments that implement fiscal austerity. Yet, most empirical studies, which rely on ex-post yearly austerity measures, do not find supportive evidence. This paper revisits the issue using action-based, real-time, ex-ante measures of fiscal austerity as well as a new database of changes in vote shares of incumbent parties. The analysis emphasizes the importance of the ‘how’—whether austerity is done via tax hikes or expenditure cuts—and the ‘who’—whether it is carried out by left- vs. right-leaning governments. Our main finding is that tax-based austerity carries large electoral costs, while the effect of expenditure-based consolidations depends on the political-leaning of the government. An austerity package worth 1% of GDP, carried out mostly through tax hikes, reduces the vote share of the leader’s party by about 7%. In contrast, expenditure-based austerity is detrimental for left- but beneficial for right-leaning governments. We also find that the electoral cost of austerity—especially tax hikes—can be contained if it is implemented during good economic times.
Budget Deficits and Budget Institutions
By discussing the available theoretical and empirical literature, this paper argues that budget procedures and budget institutions do influence budget outcomes. Budget institutions include both procedural rules and balanced budget laws. We critically assess theoretical contributions in this area and suggest several open and unresolved issue. We also examine the empirical evidence drawn from studies on samples of OECD countries, Latin American countries and the United States. We conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of this literature and with some concrete proposals.
Fiscal Adjustments in OECD Countries
This paper studies how the composition of fiscal adjustments influences their likelihood of “success”, defined as a long lasting deficit reduction, and their macroeconomic consequences. We find that fiscal adjustments which rely primarily on spending cuts on transfers and the government wage bill have a better chance of being successful and are expansionary. On the contrary fiscal adjustments which rely primarily on tax increases and cuts in public investment tend not to last and are contractionary. We discuss alterative explanations for these findings by studying both a full sample of OECD countries and by focusing on three case studies: Denmark, Ireland and Italy.
The Political Economy of Budget Deficits
This paper provides a critical survey of the literature on politico-institutional determinants of the government budget. We organize our discussion around two questions: Why did certain OECD countries, but not others, accumulate large public debts? Why did these fiscal imbalances appear in the last 20 years rather than before? We begin by discussing the “tax smoothing” model and conclude that this approach alone cannot provide complete answers to these questions. We will then proceed to a discussion of political economy models, which we organize in six groups: (i) models based upon opportunistic policymakers and naive voters with “fiscal illusion;” (ii) models of intergenerational redistributions; (iii) models of debt as a strategic variable, linking the current government with the next one; (iv) models of coalition governments; (v) models of geographically dispersed interests; and (vi) models emphasizing the effects of budgetary institutions. We conclude by briefly discussing policy implications.
The Economist
None
Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions
We present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public good the city supplies. We test the implications of the model with three related datasets: US cities, US metropolitan areas, and US urban counties. Results show that productive public goods -- education, roads, libraries, sewers and trash pickup -- in US cities (metro areas/urban counties) are inversely related to the city's (metro area's/county's) ethnic fragmentation, even after controlling for other socioeconomic and demographic determinants. Ethnic fragmentation is negatively related to the share of local spending on welfare. The results are mainly driven by observations in which majority whites are reacting to varying sizes of minority groups. We conclude that ethnic conflict is an important determinant of local public finances.
Why is Fiscal Policy Often Procyclical?
Many countries, especially developing ones, follow procyclical fiscal polices, namely spending goes up (taxes go down) in booms and spending goes down (taxes go up) in recessions. We provide an explanation for this suboptimal fiscal policy based upon political distortions and incentives for less-than-benevolent government to appropriate rents. Voters have incentives similar to the "starving the Leviathan" classic argument, and demand more public goods or fewer taxes to prevent governments from appropriating rents when the economy is doing well. We test this argument against more traditional explanations based purely on borrowing constraints, with a reasonable amount of success.
Budget Deficits and Budget Institutions
By discussing the available theoretical and empirical literature, this paper argues that budget procedures and budget institutions do influence budget outcomes. Budget institutions include both procedural rules and balanced budget laws. We critically assess theoretical contributions in this area and suggest several open and unresolved issues. We also examine the empirical evidence drawn from studies on samples of OECD countries, Latin American countries and US states.
