Amalgamation in action: Participant perspectives on the Armidale regional council merger process

Under its Fit for the Future reform programme, in May 2016 the New South Wales (NSW) government forcibly merged a number of municipalities, including the Armidale Dumaresq Council and the Guyra Shire Council in the New England region of northern NSW. Whilst scholarly attention has focused on the likely impact of municipal mergers on council performance at the system‐wide level (Bell, Dollery & Drew 2016; Economic Papers: A journal of applied economics and policy, 35, 99), much less effort has been devoted to the analysis of the perspectives of council managers and employees involved in forced consolidation. In order to address this gap in the literature, in this paper we present a case study of compulsory council consolidation of the Armidale and Guyra councils based on interviews with senior managers as well as a survey of council workers.     

Community Heterogeneity: A Burden for the Creation of Social Capital?*

Objective. This study examines the relationship between community heterogeneity and social capital on the local government level. Method. We apply both OLS and interval regression techniques to objective macro data of 307 Flemish municipalities for the year 2000. Results. Our results show that, after controlling for various socioeconomic characteristics of the municipality, income inequality is not significantly correlated with the municipality's level of social capital. We do find a significant negative relation between social capital and the number of nationalities within a municipality. Yet, contrary to the prevailing argument in the literature, it is not the presence of people with a clearly different ethnic‐cultural background that drives this negative relation. Conclusions. In accordance with previous international findings, municipalities with large groups of differing nationalities among its citizenry are confronted with a lower level of social capital. Importantly, however, our findings emphasize the need to distinguish between different groups of nationalities and argue for explanations beyond “simple” ethnic‐cultural disparities.     

Examining the variation in local water sustainability practices

As sustainable development is becoming more important to ensure the economic success and social well-being of any government, without regard to its level, the efficient use and protection of natural resources has increased in importance. And local governments are at the forefront of developing sustainability policy in many ways. This study investigates the factors that influence the variation in local sustainability practices in one critical area, water conservation. The variation in adoption of water sustainability programs in municipalities across the U.S. is hypothesized to rely on three key factors: environmental condition, form of government, and fiscal condition. Our findings from an ordered logistic regression model indicate that municipalities with high drought level, high environmental policy priorities, and high community wealth are likely to adopt more water conservation programs.     

Can Quasi‐market and Multi‐level Governance Co‐exist? Insights from the Case of Lombardy's Employment Services System

This article explores the functioning of Lombardy's networked employment services system, inspired by quasi‐market and horizontal subsidiarity principles, and specifically addresses a gap in the quasi‐market literature, where little attention is devoted to the role played by institutions at lower levels of government. A qualitative study of the Lombardy system, with a focus on the municipality of Milan, is relied upon in order to explore the extent to which the principles of quasi‐market and multi‐level governance pursued by the regional government are allowed to co‐exist in practice. Here, sub‐regional levels of government are directly involved in services provision, but enjoy a more privileged condition relative to the private providers, thereby jeopardizing the implementation of an effective quasi‐market. The article contributes to existing theories by suggesting that horizontal subsidiarity and marketization cannot neglect multi‐level governance in those sectors where public bodies at various levels of government are directly involved in implementation.     

挤出还是促进——地方财政分权、市场化与低保救助水平差异

利用2013年全国市级有关数据,采用回归方法构建两个递进实证计量模型,考察地方财政分权、市场化对城乡低保救助水平的影响.实证结果表明,地方财政自给度和市场化水平均对低保救助有非常显著的促进作用,农村低保救助相对城市对地方财政分权和市场化的敏感度更高,科教文卫支出对低保救助支出存在非常显著的良性互动关系.建议进一步完善事权与财政支出责任相匹配的机制,提高地方财政自给度,同时转变政府职能,厘清政府权责边界,提升地方市场化水平.     

Geographies of Local Government Stress after the Great Recession

Local governments in the USA are facing increased levels of fiscal stress after the Great Recession. We conducted a national survey in 2012 to assess differences in sources of stress and service delivery responses (privatization, inter‐municipal co‐operation, and public delivery) across places. Our discriminant analysis on 1,889 US cities and counties contributes to the literature on state rescaling. We differentiate three types of stress: fiscal, housing market decline and demographic. Fiscal stress and demographic stress are linked and highest in metro core and rural places, while housing market decline is associated with population density and revenue diversification. Diverse revenue sources can ameliorate some of the fiscal challenges brought on by housing market decline. Regarding service delivery, we find privatization and co‐operation are higher in suburbs. State aid dependence is highest in rural and metro core areas with greater need, but decrease in state aid is highest in the South and West, where fiscal stress is also highest. Decentralization has exacerbated spatial inequality in the wake of the Great Recession challenging the efficiency claims of fiscal federalism. More redistributive state policies are needed.     

Family support services buffer the effect of child welfare notifications on child removals

Previous studies have found mixed results about the effects of family support services within the child protection system. The purpose of the study is to examine whether family support services are associated with the need for child removals at the community level. The material of the study consists of Finnish municipalities (N = 292) and their child protection indicators. Linear regression analysis was conducted to analyse the associations between the dependent variable (child removals) and the main predictors (child welfare notifications and family support services). It was found that family support services are associated with child removals. The more children there are in family support services, the more there are also child removals in a municipality. The key finding of the analysis is that a higher rather than lower proportion of clients in family support services buffers the increased effect of demand (child welfare notifications) on child removals better. In this sense, the demand for child removals is not only associated with the characteristics of children and families but may be partly explained by the role of family support services in a municipality. The present study underlines the significance of a system-level approach to child protection.     

Market Transition and Gender Segregation in Urban China*

Objectives. This article analyzes the impact of the new form of economic segmentation, which emerged in urban China during the market transition, on gender segregation and earnings differentials. Methods. I compare both over‐time and across‐city change in gender segregation, and use a series of multi‐level cross‐classified models based on data at three levels: a 1995 national sample of individual workers, industry‐sector data for 1990 and 1995, and city‐level data for 1995. Results. Gender segregation by ownership sector has declined over time now that the state sector has become differentiated and its relative economic advantages wanes. Both earnings differentiation and gender segregation among industries have increased with marketization. In the most marketized cities, the earnings of workers of both sexes in jobs with high rates of female entry are penalized, indicating that marketization exacerbated the negative effect of job feminization on earnings. Conclusions. These findings lend support for the “queuing” perspective that a decline in jobs' relative wages leads to feminization. The making of the Chinese market economy has created a new set of institutional arrangements, which includes that between job feminization and wages.     

Income redistribution in 20 countries over time

In most OECD countries, the gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decades. The present study analysed whether and to what extent direct taxes and social transfers contribute to this trend. The study contributes to the literature by disentangling several parts of fiscal redistribution in a comparative setting. We used micro‐data from the Luxembourg Income Study to examine household market inequality and redistribution from transfers and taxes for 20 countries from the mid‐1980s to the mid‐2000s. The contribution of each programme was estimated using a sequential accounting budget incidence decomposition technique. We observed a sizeable increase in primary household inequality, but tax‐benefit systems have offset two thirds of the average increase in primary income inequality. The public old‐age pensions attributed 60 per cent to the increase in redistribution, while social assistance accounted for 20 per cent. Direct taxes slowed down redistribution by 16 per cent.     

Local autonomy,municipal size and local political participation in Europe

Local autonomy in Europe has, on average, increased since 1990 and has decreased (a little) since 2009. The average population size of a European municipality has increased continuously during the last two decades. European countries with larger municipalities do not have more local autonomy. Citizens of large municipalities are less interested in local political matters. Inhabitants of small municipalities tend to be more interested in local political matters when their municipalities have more local autonomy while a similar strong correlation between local autonomy and local political interest cannot be established for larger municipalities. Finally, a discrepancy exists between the stated policy objectives of many European countries that support both decentralization and (more) local political participation on the one hand and actual policy results on the other hand that are not necessarily in line with increasing local autonomy and stimulating local political participation.     

Considering economic stress and empathic traits in predicting prosocial behaviors among U.S. Latino adolescents

The goal of the current study was to examine two competing models focusing on the roles of empathy‐related traits in the relation between economic stress and prosocial behaviors. First, we examined the mediating roles of perspective taking and empathic concern in the association between economic stress and adolescents’ prosocial behaviors. Second, we examined the moderating role of perspective taking in the association between economic stress and empathic concern, as well as the links between empathic concern and prosocial behaviors. Participants consisted of 307 (46.2% girls; M age = 15.05) U.S. Latino adolescents (77.5% U.S. Mexicans) and their primary caregivers (87.9% mothers). Primary caregivers reported on family‐level economic stress, and adolescents reported on their own perspective taking, empathic concern, and their tendency to engage in six forms of prosocial behaviors. Results demonstrated support for the moderating role of perspective taking on the link between economic stress and empathic concern, which in turn, was associated with multiple forms of helping behaviors. Economic stress was also directly associated with selfless and selfish helping behaviors. The discussion focuses on the multiple roles of empathic traits in understanding the links between economic stress and prosocial outcomes in U.S. Latino youth.     

Geographical Distribution of Some Young Offenders

Youthful offending rates for municipalities in metropolitan Melbourne have earlier been calculated, and those rates have been interpreted by some as indicating the seriousness of the problem from one municipality to another. However, that approach wrongfully presumes some social uniformity across the municipality. In this paper, three municipalities with quite different offending rates are broken into more socially homogeneous areas, and offending rates are calculated for those smaller areas. Each municipality is shown to have areas of both very high and very low offending rates, plainly indicating that a rate for the municipality alone masks the specific areas where problems may or may not occur. It is suggested that the benefits in providing such specific information based on other than historically determined boundaries, are obvious for social planning and funding purposes.     

Bridging the Implementation Gap in Poor Areas: A Study of How Municipal Socio‐economic Characteristics Impact Intergovernmental Policy Implementation

This article examines the relationship between local socio‐economic characteristics and implementation performance by analyzing the performance of Brazilian municipalities implementing the Bolsa Família Program, the largest conditional cash transfer programme in the world. Counterintuitively, poor municipalities were found to outperform wealthy ones. Analysis of the interactions between local socio‐economic characteristics and municipal administrative capacity, willingness and intergovernmental relations help to explain why this was the case.     

Macroeconomic stabilization of primary commodities price cycles in developing economies

This paper proposes a strategy for stabilizing macroeconomic policy to address jointly the effects of changes in the prices of food, minerals and energy (oil). Our approach differs from the general literature, which analyzes the effects of a commodity boom or bust and therefore the solutions in terms of economic policy separately, that is, by type of commodity. The stabilization strategy that we propose considers a key fact affecting many open economies, namely, that they not only are affected by increases or decreases in commodity prices, but also benefit from them. Consequently, we use a structural model for an open economy with restricted households to show that welfare could be improved with a fiscal rule incorporating transfers to stabilize household consumption. This strategy noticeably dominates an aggressive monetary policy focused only on stabilizing inflation and a fiscal policy that has an excessive bias toward saving income from exports.     

经济增长:内生增长理论与中国人力资本投资

内生增长理论是现代经济增长理论中的一个核心内容.从长期经济增长率所依赖的路径来看,人力资本和技术进步作为经济增长的内生因素,可以弥补因其他要素收益递减而带来经济增长停滞这一局面.技术进步是由人力资本投资所形成的有效机制而演化成增长动力的一种必然结果.中国技术进步贡献度低下的最主要原因,是由于人力资本投入不足(人力资本积累不足)造成的.在国家财政政策干预下,以内生增长为动力,逐步形成有利于经济增长的物质资本投资向人力资本投资转换的机制.     

Equality and Income Security in Market Economies: What's Wrong with Insurance?

This article critically assesses the marketization of income security, and identifies links between equality, self‐reliance and welfare reform. Marketization in emergent economies is distinguished by a strong separation between the use of insurance for the mainstream economy and relief for the poor. The impact of this model on the shaping of working lives and on market rigidity is discussed through a review of implications in the areas of subsistence, integrity interests and employment transitions. The broad faith in insurance solutions is argued to derive from a highly abstract approach to welfare reform and to result in a lack of attention to uneven and unstable markets, and to self‐government as a motive to work. Evidence of this emerges from a comparison of insurance in its more ideal form (in Chile) with modified models (Brazil and Korea). In the last two cases a developmental orientation has aided in the provision of broad‐based security. Other factors that appear to enhance the importance of direct assistance are also discussed, including aspects of state administration and labour services that limit work opportunity and individual autonomy in uneven economies. The segregated dual approach to income security is argued to be broadly deficient, but not because insurance is inherently wrong. Countries as diverse as Barbados and Denmark show that more cohesive economies are a better foundation for integrating insurance with general welfare and for income security and individual enterprise broadly conceived.     

Towards a convergence of European social models?

The European Union (EU) has chosen to construct itself through its currency. The social dimension has been left at a secondary level, based on the principle that economic progress will end up "pulling" social models "upwards" This optimism now looks somewhat misplaced. For a whole series of reasons, European social protection systems are threatened by regression: the emergence of liberal economic ideas, the need to be competitive, the implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact, the fact that the differences in the levels of remuneration and social benefits in Euroland are more evident owing to the single currency and, as a result, the harsher social and fiscal competition. If Europe wishes to avoid the risks of social fragmentation due to the "leveling down" of social protection, it will have to organize a minimum threshold of EU solidarity.     

The effects of income transfers on poverty reduction in people with disabilities in South Korea

Using a nationally representative sample dataset from the 2016 Korean Welfare Panel Study, we examined the anti‐poverty effects of income transfers in people with disabilities. Our findings indicate that in households with a person with a disability, income transfers decreased by 55.9% and 84.8% of the pre‐transfer poverty rate and poverty gap, respectively. Before income transfers, households with a person with a disability were 1.94 times more likely to be poor compared to those without a person with a disability. When income transfers were offered, the chance of being poor in the disability group was only 1.11 times higher than that in the non‐disability group. Findings from the aggregated data suggest that means‐tested income transfers were more effective in reducing poverty levels than social insurance or private income transfers. At the individual level, the provision of means‐tested programs was also more likely to decrease the likelihood of experiencing poverty than social insurance and private income transfers.     

Race,Roll‐Off,and Racial Transition: The Influence of Political Change on Racial Group Voter Roll‐Off in Urban Elections*

Objectives. Many cities in the United States have undergone or are undergoing racial transition from a majority white to a majority black population. Accompanying this is a change in the racial makeup of elections and officeholders. This article seeks to explain racial patterns in voter roll‐off as a city undergoes racial transition. Methods. Using a fixed‐effects regression model, we analyze the level of voter roll‐off (from the top‐of‐the‐ballot mayoral contest) among black and white voters across Memphis City Council elections, from 1967 through 2003. Results. The level of voter roll‐off among racial groups is sensitive to the racial aspect of political change. Black voters are most likely to continue to vote in council contests when there is a racial choice among candidates, when blacks have previously been elected, and when blacks occupy the mayoralty and a majority of council seats. Whites are most likely to vote in racially competitive council contests, as well as when there are a large number of white candidates, and when whites hold a majority of the council seats. Conclusions. In settings such as Memphis, where race has played a pronounced historic role, the racial context of political empowerment has a strong influence on electoral participation. Elections below the top‐of‐the‐ballot become more salient, and political efficacy grows among racial group members when that cohort occupies institutional positions, particularly the majority of positions in a governing institution.     

财政体制变迁对西部地区政府财力的影响

根据1978~2007年西部地区12个省、直辖市、自治区政府财力和GDP数据,把财政体制作为虚拟变量,构建五线段回归计量模型,实证分析1978~2007年期间我国四次财政体制变迁对西部地方财力变动的影响,结果发现,财政体制变迁在不同程度上影响了西部地方政府财力的变动。