FISCAL FEDERALISM,DECENTRALIZATION, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: A META‐ANALYSIS

The theoretical literature on fiscal federalism has identified several channels through which government decentralization could affect economic growth. Much of the literature focuses on the efficiency aspects of a decentralized provision of public services, but decentralization may also increase growth by raising the ability of the political system to innovate and carry out reforms. In contrast, some authors argue that decentralization increases corruption and government inefficiency, and thus may diminish growth. Given this theoretical ambiguity, several studies have attempted to identify the effect of decentralization on economic growth empirically over the last two decades. We review and conduct a meta‐analysis of this empirical literature. Based on our analysis, we point out open questions and discuss possible ways to answer them. (JEL H77, O43, C52)     

RESERVE PRICE EFFECTS IN AUCTIONS: ESTIMATES FROM MULTIPLE REGRESSION‐DISCONTINUITY DESIGNS

We present evidence from 260,000 online auctions of second‐hand cars to identify the impact of public reserve prices on auction outcomes. We exploit multiple discontinuities in the relationship between reserve prices and vehicle characteristics to present causal regression‐discontinuity estimates of reserve price impacts. We find an increase in reserve price decreases the number of bidders, increases the likelihood the object remains unsold, and increases expected revenue conditional on sale. We then combine these estimates to calibrate the reserve price effect on the auctioneer's ex ante expected revenue. This reveals the auctioneer's reserve price policy to be locally optimal. (JEL D44, L11, L62)     

Psychological Weil-Being Among Unemployed and Employed People After a Company Closedown: A Longitudinal Study

In a three-year longitudinal study, we examined the effects of unemployment and the fear of becoming unemployed on the psychological well-being of 1153 employees at a shipyard that was closed down, and a control group of 441 employees from another, operative shipyard. On all three questionnaires, unemployed people were significantly lower in psychological well-being than employed people. Change to or from employment was significantly associated with changes in psychological well-being, whereas remaining employed or unemployed did not lead to any systematic changes in psychological well-being. Among employed people, the fear of unemployment was strongly associated with reduced psychological well-being. Thus, the health-related consequences of unemployment affect not only the unemployed but also employed people who have little job security. Consequently, we stress the need to create new workplaces and to implement reforms that can reduce job insecurity in the labor market.     

Finite-Sample Properties of Some Alternative GMM Estimators

We investigate the small-sample properties of three alternative generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators of asset-pricing models. The estimators that we consider include ones in which the weighting matrix is iterated to convergence and ones in which the weighting matrix is changed with each choice of the parameters. Particular attention is devoted to assessing the performance of the asymptotic theory for making inferences based directly on the deterioration of GMM criterion functions.     

Rationing in the presence of baselines

We analyze a general model of rationing in which agents have baselines, in addition to claims against the (insufficient) endowment of the good to be allocated. Many real-life problems fit this general model (e.g., bankruptcy with prioritized claims, resource allocation in the public health care sector, water distribution in drought periods). We introduce (and characterize) a natural class of allocation methods for this model. Any method within the class is associated with a rule in the standard rationing model, and we show that if the latter obeys some focal properties, the former obeys them too.     

Diversity,dialogue, and identity in designing globally relevant social work education

This article reflects on how to design social work education for internationally diverse cohorts of students. It draws on insights from a Master program for social work practitioners from around the world that has been delivered by a partnership of five European universities since 2013. Three particular issues are explored: developing curricula that achieve a local–global balance and emphasize the significance of context sensitivity in social work; the need for teaching approaches that promote dialogue, critical analysis, and student well-being; the importance of providing students with a strong identity, value base, and connection to the global social work profession. The article is targeted at social work educators involved in international and cross-country teaching as well as scholars interested in debates about the balance of local–global dimensions in social work.     

News: University prizes

Abstract

Stressful working environments are often assumed to create conditions that may lead to bullying. However, few studies have investigated how factors experienced in the work environment may trigger perpetrators to engage in bullying of others. Drawing on Spector and Fox's (2005) stressor–emotion model of counterproductive work behaviour, the present study investigated the predictive effects of both individual and situational factors as predictors of being a perpetrator of workplace bullying, as applied to a representative sample of the Norwegian workforce (N=2359). Results from logistic regression analysis show that being oneself a target of bullying, regardless of the frequency, and being male strongly predicted involvement in bullying of others. Among the situational factors, only role conflict and interpersonal conflicts significantly predicted being a perpetrator of bullying. The present findings support the notion that bullying will thrive in stressful working environments and thus yield an important contribution in identifying antecedent conditions to counteract the development of bullying at workplaces.