Revisiting the determinants of local government performance

Managing financial resources efficiently is a requirement for all levels of government. However, measuring the performance of governments or other public authorities is usually highly complex. The results of this type of assessment are likely to be biased or perverse. This study attempts to identify non-discretionary or exogenous variables that are associated with better/worse economic performance of local governments (the determinants of efficiency). Based on past research, the paper starts by providing a classification for the different types of determinants of local government performance. Afterwards, using data from all Portuguese municipalities, the relationship between a large number of factors and the efficiency scores is assessed. To accomplish this, several Tobit, OLS and double-bootstrap models were implemented. The efficiency scores are computed through non-parametric frontier methodologies. The results indicate that analysts must be prudent while interpreting the economic results achieved by each municipality. To be impartial and robust any performance evaluation model should (at least) consider the effects of the determinants of cost efficiency identified in this paper.     

Use of Redundant Industrial Buildings as Injections into the Cultural Sector in Norway

Prime aim is to examine the way the culture sector reuses industrial buildings to instigate cultural activities in the municipalities. The discussion of various actors’ motivation for engagement is based on results from a case study, supplemented with findings from a coarse-meshed telephone survey. At national level overarching political guidelines can be traced back to white papers concerning cultural policy, urban transformation and cultural heritage, and the municipalities’ cultural policies mirror these guidelines. What tends to decide if such initiatives are considered successful are local abilities to cross sectorial divisions and instigate cooperation between municipal planners, private entrepreneurs and NGOs.     

地方政府对集聚租征税了吗?——基于中国地级市企业微观数据的经验研究

本文基于新经济地理学理论,利用1999~2007年中国地级市工业企业层面的面板数据,检验了城市集聚经济和产业集聚经济与企业税收负担之间的关系。我们发现,中国的地方政府并没有对集聚经济创造的集聚租征税,向下的税收竞争仍然是地方政府之间策略性反应的常态。这意味着通过集聚经济创造的集聚租来引导地方政府实现自发的税收协调机制在中国并不存在。中国式分权与以GDP为主的官员绩效考核机制相捆绑的制度安排形成了地方政府之间为增长而竞争、地方保护主义和国内市场分割、中国城市集聚经济不足、不稳定与趋同以及依靠"政策租"而形成的虚假产业集聚可能是阻碍这种自发协调机制运行的原因。我们认为,通过相应的政策和制度安排,这种自发的协调机制理应成为中央政府通过地区间均等化转移支付制度进行协调之外的一种有益补充。     

中国式财政分权与地方经济增长目标管理——来自省、市政府工作报告的经验证据

本文将实际经济增长分解为政府直接调控的"经济增长目标"和主要受市场因素影响但同时也受到政府间接干预的"计划外增长"两项,通过多层级政府框架的一般均衡模型模拟分析发现,财政分权在实际经济增长、经济增长目标和计划外增长方面的效应并不同步,而且还呈现地区差异性。在此基础上,系统搜集中国省、市两级政府2000~2016年政府工作报告里的GDP计划增长目标并进行系统GMM估计。实证结果表明:整体而言,财政分权对省、市实际经济增长的影响皆显著为正,但对其两个分解指标存在非对称性影响:从全国范围来看,财政分权对实际经济增长的正向影响主要体现为对经济增长目标的拉动作用,而对计划外增长影响较弱且不甚显著;分地区回归发现,东部地区财政分权对实际经济增长的正向影响更多地体现为对计划外经济增长的驱动,而西部地区则主要是通过影响由政府直接调控的经济增长目标来实现的。机制分析显示,财政分权通过不同程度地推动基建投资、房地产投资以及工业化进程,促进了经济增长目标的实现,进而推动实际经济增长。     

大气污染府际间合作治理联盟的达成与稳定——基于演化博弈分析

地方政府的大气污染治理模式主要有属地治理和合作治理模式,合作治理逐渐成为当前大气污染治理的共识。从演化博弈的视角,分析地方政府在大气污染治理中的行为演化路径与稳定策略,探究地方政府间达成并巩固合作治理联盟的因素。比较有中央约束和无中央政府约束下地方政府属地治理和合作治理四种演化博弈结果表明：在属地治理背景下,无论中央政府是否对地方政府进行约束,地方政府均倾向于“搭便车”行为,而中央政府对地方政府的约束在属地治理中面临失灵;在合作治理场景中,地方政府的稳定策略均向达成合作治理或均不治理的方向演进,但在中央政府约束下,地方政府的稳定策略能快速有效得向合作治理的方向演进。为实现大气污染的有效治理,地方政府间必须形成有效的合作治理联盟,合作收益是达成大气污染合作治理联盟的必要条件,而合作成本与中央政府约束的程度决定了合作治理联盟的稳定性。     

基本养老保险系统集成度的演化博弈分析及仿真研究

我国现行城镇职工基本养老保险制度面临提升统筹层次、提高待遇充足性等问题，而现阶段养老保险体系改革困境的制度根源正是由于中央政府、地方政府和企业三方的竞争、制衡。论文针对这一问题，运用改进的捕食者-猎物R-M模型，刻画这三个利益主体之间的动态博弈，设计实验分析基本养老保险系统的保费博弈。理论分析发现：提高养老保险统筹层次、积极应对人口老龄化、提高基金管理效率，多样化退休收入，不仅能提高养老保险待遇充足性，还能促进经济增长，但集成速度过快也会超出市场承载力而导致政策失效。实验结果与理论相符，此外，通过适度提升系统集成度来提高统筹层次能够降低最终保费，且使保费博弈更快达到稳定。     

Measuring and explaining the cost efficiency of municipal solid waste collection and processing services

This paper proposes an adjusted version of the popular efficiency measurement technique data envelopment analysis (DEA) that makes it possible (1) to evaluate the cost efficiency of municipalities in the collection and processing of multiple household waste fractions, (2) robustifying the cost efficiency evaluations for the impact of measurement errors in the data or municipalities with outlying and atypical performances (if present in the sample set), and (3) to correct the evaluations for differences in the operating environments of municipalities (e.g., factors such as demography and median income of the municipality population). The paper illustrates the usefulness of the methodology by carrying out and analyzing a cost efficiency evaluation using data on 293 municipalities in Flanders, Belgium, for the year 2008.     

考虑地区间环保投入策略互动的高质量发展研究

在考虑地区环保投入具有策略互动特征的基础上,模型分析了禀赋和财政能力差异对地方政府政策目标的影响,并讨论了平衡地区资源禀赋的生态转移支付政策对地区间环保联合产出水平的影响。研究结果表明：地区间环保投入策略互动特征的引入,使得环保联合产出最大化对应于适度的地方政府资源禀赋差异程度,差异程度过大或者过于平均,都不利于激发地方政府活力,为高质量的经济持续发展提供稳定条件。此外,专项转移支付政策相比于总量转移支付政策,能够更有效地激励地方政府在生态环境方面投入努力;而减少专项转移支付在实践中的信息对称要求,建立市场化运作资金池的横向转移支付制度安排是进一步加大地区环保投入水平的可行政策。从协调地区经济发展差异、确保环保投入发挥成效,测度地区生态外溢效应、优化专项转移支付政策,建立市场化运作资金池、提升横向转移支付占比等方面,提出提升我国环保投入资金使用效率的对策建议。     

Non‐dominated Time‐Window Policies in City Distribution

Urban freight contributes significantly to pollution, noise disturbance, traffic congestion, and safety problems in city centers. In many cities, local governments have introduced policy measures, in particular time‐access restrictions, to alleviate these problems. However, setting time windows is very challenging due to the conflicting interests and objectives of the stakeholders involved. In this article, we examine whether it is possible to develop time‐window policies that enhance environmental sustainability and distribution efficiencies, while meeting the objectives of the municipalities. We develop a framework for balancing retailer (costs), municipality (satisfaction), and environmental (emissions) objectives, using data envelopment analysis, under different urban time‐window policies. The approach is illustrated by a case study of three Dutch retail organizations, with a large number of stores affected by such time windows. On the basis of an evaluation of 99 different time‐window policies, our results show that harmonizing time windows between neighboring cities leads to the best overall performance. The currently used time‐window policy appears to perform reasonably well, but can be improved on all dimensions . However, harmonizing time‐window policies may be difficult to realize in practice.     

“政策领域-时间维度”双重视角下新能源汽车产业政策央地协同研究

本文以2009—2018年间中央及地方（以北京市等四个地区为例）颁布的263项新能源汽车产业政策为研究样本,从实施领域角度,将产业政策分为财税支持、行业规范、规划引导、监督保障、其他措施等五类,经政策分解,将政策片段与新能源汽车产业链五个环节进行匹配;在此基础上,测度不同时期产业政策央地总体协同度与政策实施领域间的协同度,并通过逐步回归法,确定影响政策协同的各政策效力指标灵敏度。研究表明："中央-北京"和"中央-深圳"的政策措施协同趋势基本一致,产业价值链各环节发展较均衡,而"中央-上海"和"中央-江苏"的政策措施协同趋势基本一致,存在"重使用、轻研发、轻市场"等失调现象;四地区与中央政策措施的协同差异主要体现在研发、生产和回收环节,提升"政策引导"和"保障措施"指标的政策效力有助于提升央地协同水平。根据政策分析,未来政策制定需从优化中央政策推广方式和加强监管保障等政策措施着手,根据产业链不同环节状况适时调整政策措施。     

Changing Public Service Organizations: Current Perspectives and Future Prospects

As governments and public service organizations across the globe engage in strategies of institutional and organizational change, it is timely to examine current developments and a future research agenda for public governance and management. The paper commences with reflections on the state of the field, based on an analysis of papers published in the British Journal of Management over the last decade. While there was some variation apparent across the set, the ‘typical’ article was found to be influenced by the discipline of organizational behaviour, set within the health‐care sector, using case‐study methods within field‐based studies, and investigating shifts in roles and relationships and the management of change. It has also in the past been UK‐centric, though the journal editorial policy and our own article call for a stronger international and comparative focus in the future. The second section of the article summarizes the articles and themes contained in this collection of papers on public service organizations. The third section explores a possible research agenda for the future, arguing for the significance of public sector research for the understanding of management more generally, and for examining the interface between private and public organizations (an increasingly common phenomenon). We suggest the need to set public services research in policy and political contexts, and suggest this may reveal organizational processes of wide interest. We call for a wider set of disciplines to engage in public management research, and to engage in moving the agenda from the study of efficiency to effectiveness as defined by a variety of stakeholders. We address the issue of how far public management researchers should become directly engaged with the world of policy and suggest that whether researchers engage in Mode 1 or Mode 2 research, their work would benefit from a stronger theoretical base.     

环境分权、地方政府竞争对绿色技术创新影响的“本地—邻地”效应

随着绿色发展成为五大发展理念之一,各地政府推进绿色技术创新成为降低环境污染和提高增长质量的主要途径。为了考察地方政府环境分权和竞争对绿色技术创新影响的“本地—邻地”效应,本文利用非期望产出EBM模型测度绿色技术创新程度,并将绿色技术创新指数引入动态空间杜宾模型。最后,结合2003-2017年中国省级面板数据进行实证分析。研究发现：(1)绿色技术创新具有显著的路径依赖、空间集聚以及邻近地区的策略竞争效应;(2)环境分权对本地和邻地绿色技术创新的影响呈“U型”变动特征,且现阶段并未跨越分权驱动创新的临界点;(3)环境分权与地方政府竞争的交互效应整体为负,环境行政分权、环境监察分权和环境监测分权等不同类型环境分权采取的策略并不相同;(4)区域环境分权产生的绿色技术创新激励效应存在异质性,中西部地区环境分权对绿色技术创新的激励效果更强。     

Big data in family firms: A socioemotional wealth perspective

Since about 2010, big data analysis has drastically changed the landscape of information management by becoming a central topic in the academic literature of several fields. Despite the significant contribution of family firms to the economic fabric worldwide and their unique decision-making processes, there is a lack of research investigating big data in family-owned businesses. To address this gap, this article draws on the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective and its FIBER model to conceptually investigate its role in family firms’ decision to implement big data. We introduce a set of propositions and a framework linking the FIBER dimensions to the likeliness of implementing big data in family firms. Our research thus contributes to a more fine-grained understanding of the decision-making process in family firms.     

A WHITER SHADE OF PALE: ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF REGULATORY INSTRUMENTS

We consider an intertemporal policy game between changing governments that differ in their attitudes towards a particular feature of market outcomes, exemplified with environmental pollution. When in power, a government will choose policy instruments and set strictness of regulation with a view to influencing the policy of future, possibly different, governments. We demonstrate that a “brown” government favours emission quotas over effluent taxes, as quotas establish property rights that are costly to reverse. Conversely, a “green” government prefers to regulate by taxes, in order to limit the incentives of future brown governments to ease regulations. Strategic behaviour tends to exaggerate policy differences (making green governments greener and brown governments browner) compared to when such strategic considerations were not an issue. (JEL: D81, D9, H23, L51, Q28, Q38)     

中央政府、地方政府和国有企业利益分歧下的多重博弈与管制失效——宇通客车管理层收购案例研究

本文通过研究宇通客车的管理层收购事件,发现现行国有产权分级管理制度、国有资产处置收益权利划分制度导致中央政府和地方政府间目标利益的不一致,具体表现在国有企业管理层收购的管制方面,地方政府与国资委、财政部、证监会等中央级政府部门间有着不同的管制策略,充当了不同的行为角色,甚至出现了地方政府与地方国有企业合谋采用“司法高于行政”策略巧妙规避中央级政府部门相关管制政策的引人深思现象。案例研究同时发现,宇通客车管理层在与地方政府合谋的同时,还存在多种途径攫取包括地方政府在内的公司全部股东利益的迹象,以实现管理层自身利益的最大化。因此,当前如何科学合理地划分各级政府责、权、利及其政绩考核以实现各级政府管制目标的统一,以及如何合理协调行政与司法在国家经济管理方面的关系问题是完善国有企业管理、规范公司运作的前提和基础。     

县域间土地供给竞合关系演化博弈模型

基于经济发达县域与经济不发达县域在土地供给中的竞合关系,构建演化博弈模型;在模型求解基础上,根据不同典型情形分析演化稳定策略的走向与收敛趋势。研究结果表明,县域政府在土地供给中是否采取相互合作的策略,很大程度上取决于上级政府的监察力度、自身的产业增值收益和基础设施建设成本。     

DO PARTIES MATTER FOR ECONOMIC OUTCOMES? A REGRESSION‐DISCONTINUITY APPROACH

A long‐standing issue in political economics is to what extent party control makes a difference in determining fiscal and economics policies. This question is very difficult to answer empirically because parties are not randomly selected to govern political entities. This article uses a regression‐discontinuity design, namely, party control changes discontinuously at 50% of the vote share, which can produce “near” experimental causal estimates of the effect of party control on economic outcomes. The method is applied to a large panel data set from Swedish local governments with a number of attractive features. The results show that there is an economically significant party effect: Left‐wing governments spend and tax 2–3% more than right‐wing governments. Left‐wing governments also have 7%lower unemployment rates, which is partly due to that left‐wing governments employ 4% more workers than right‐wing governments. (JEL: C21, D72, D78, H71, H72)     

政府治理、产权偏好与资本投资

本文从投资机会和融资约束视角分析了地方政府治理水平影响企业投资行为的机制,认为地方政府通过提供高质量的公共治理水平,帮助企业获得更多的投资机会和融资渠道,扩大企业投资规模,提高投资效率。以我国2005-2007年间上市公司为研究样本,本文实证检验的结果表明,较高的地方政府治理水平会提高公司的资本投资规模;政府治理影响企业资本投资与投资机会的敏感度在民营企业中更为显著,政府治理对国有企业资本投资的影响随着实际控制人的行政级别提高而降低。进一步研究发现,政府治理能够降低企业的融资约束,提高企业投资效率。     

The Governance of Voluntary Work in the Public Sector: Institutional Differences and Invariant Traits

In response to fiscal constraint and the introduction of quasi-market mechanisms into the public sector, in public policy there appears to be the acceptance of the increased use of voluntary labour in the delivery of public services. Traditional forms of governance have tended to ignore the use of voluntary labour in the public sector. The paper builds on an earlier (Hellshorm and Collins, 1999) model of concurrence between voluntary and municipal labour, by focusing onthe demand side of voluntary work. Our exploratory study uses this model to analyse two municipal organisations' mix of voluntary and municipal labour, one Italian and the other a Swedish context.The research method used to collect empirical data was semi-structured interviews of local government employees within the two sites. Thisis linked with an analysis of the institutional context of the two municipalities to inform and test the proposed model of demand for volunteer labour in local government. Resource scarcity, presence of agency for voluntary work, type of production and state rules and norm are used to analyse the institutional invariant traits. The study concludes that traditional institutional theory has ignored voluntary activities. Our case studies of actual practice indicate that different state norms and ruleson citizen rights and equal opportunities are stronger influential factors than the resources situation, in determining the demand for voluntary activities in municipalities.     

The Origin and Role of Trust in Local Policy Elites’ Perceptions of High‐Voltage Power Line Installations in the State of Arkansas

The debate over an installation of high‐voltage power lines (HVPLs) has been intense, particularly in northwest Arkansas. Detractors claim that the installation will negatively affect both the natural environment and the local economy, which contains a large tourism component. By contrast, those in favor of installing HVPLs claim that the installation is necessary in order to reliably support the increasing demand for electric power. Using original data collected from a recent statewide Internet survey of 420 local policy elites in Arkansas, this article focuses on two key aspects. First, we examine how local policy elites’ perceptions of risks versus benefits of HVPL installation in their communities are influenced by their levels of trust toward information provided by various sources (e.g., energy industry, environmental groups, and government). Second, we utilize cultural theory to explain how the cultural worldviews of policy elites––specifically, egalitarianism, individualism, hierarchism, and fatalism––shape these levels of trust and HVPL benefit‐risk perceptions, while controlling for other factors claimed by previous literature, including levels of knowledge on energy‐related issues and demographic characteristics. In general, our analysis indicates that policy elites’ value‐oriented formation of HVPL benefit‐risk perceptions is partially due to the influence cultural values have on trust in information sources. We conclude this article by discussing broader implications for the origin and role of trust in policy elites’ decisions throughout the policy‐making process.