Suchergebnisse

Governments' use of debt as a political instrument has been widely studied from the perspective of partisan and electoral cycles, mainly concerning central government. On the whole, previous studies have attempted to determine the effects of political ideology and the proximity of elections on the opportunistic use of public spending. The current study aims to broaden the scope of attention to the effect of partisan and electoral cycles on debt, by means of a broader consideration of the motives that lead politicians to take on a deficit and that are usually linked to the associated electoral risk. More particularly, we examine whether, during the electoral period, greater confidence in re-election can modify party behaviour concerning the use of public spending, and if so, whether the change is greater or smaller depending on the ruling party's ideology. The results obtained show that local administrations need to incur debt, although politicians take on more liability than is appropriate to their demographic and economic characteristics, especially in an election year. It was also found that political stability favours a reduction in the public deficit, a pattern that is maintained in electoral periods. This effect was found to be independent of the partisan cycle. Adapted from the source document.

In the last decades, there has been a spectacular increase in the number of entities providing public services in Spain. Functional decentralisation and externalisation processes became relevant and they made it possible to modernise the Spanish public sector, which was out of touch with new ideas in the rest of the Europe. In this study, we expose the evolution of these processes from 1999 to 2010, through a qualitative analysis using the biplot technique. The results show a trend toward functional decentralisation that is more important in the largest cities, especially through the creation of public companies and autonomous organisations. Adapted from the source document.

Functional decentralization is aimed at increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of public services, among other advantages, by simplifying the organizational structure and by achieving greater proximity to the end user. Nonetheless, the creation of these entities has been criticized because of the potential to make political use of them to avoid the debt limits imposed on sub-national administrations, as debt would then be transferred to the accounting statements of these agencies. The empirical evidence found in the current study shows that the use of these companies as a mechanism for obtaining external financing is determined by the accounting regulations applicable in relation to the consolidation of accounts. Decentralization processes oriented toward increasing debt are more common among left-wing local governments and are strongly linked to fiscal pressure. Points for practitioners Our results show that foundations are now displacing public companies in decentralization processes in order to obtain external funds, since these agencies are not included in the consolidated accounts. Thus, more rigorous regulation should be established in Spain. This opportunistic use of decentralized agencies is developed on the whole by left-leaning political ideologies as a means of incurring more debt that they need. Thus, it is necessary that external auditing offices ( Cámaras de Cuentas) reinforce the monitoring process over local governments in order to circumvent their managerial discretion.

PurposeFor almost half a century, society has been aware of the existence of a glass ceiling, a term that describes the invisible barriers that hinder women's access to power positions despite having equal or greater qualifications, skills and merits than their male counterparts. Nowadays, although there are signs of slow progress, women are still underrepresented in the upper echelons of large corporations and the risk of reversing the progress made in gender parity has increased because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper contributes to previous literature by analysing the impact that the uncertainty and cognitive effects associated with COVID-19 in 2020 had on the presence of women on the board of directors and whether this impact has been moderated by the regulatory and policy system on gender quotas in place at the time.Design/methodology/approachTo test the authors' research hypotheses, the authors selected the major global companies worldwide with economic-financial and non-financial information available in the Thomson Reuters EIKON database over the 2015–2020 period. As a result, the authors' final sample is made up of 1,761 companies from 52 countries with different institutional settings that constitute an unbalanced data panel of 8,963 observations. The nature of the dependent variables requires the use of logistic regressions. The models incorporate the terms to control for any unobservable heterogeneity and the error term. Any endogeneity issues were addressed by considering the explanatory variables with a time lag.FindingsThe authors find that almost 30% of the companies downsized their boards in 2020. This decision resulted in more female than male directors being made redundant, causing a reversal in the fulfilment of gender quotas focussed on ensuring balanced boards with a female presence of 40% or more. This effect was enhanced in countries with hard-law regulation because the penalty for non-compliance with gender quotas had led to a significant increase in the size of these bodies in previous years through the inclusion of the required number of female directors. In contrast, the reduction in board size in soft-law countries does not differ from that in laissez-faire countries, lacking any moderating effect or impact on the number of female board members dismissed as a result of the pandemic.Originality/valueThis paper aims to contribute to current knowledge by analysing the impact that the countries' regulatory and normative systems on gender parity on boards of directors have had on the decisions made in relation to leadership positions, moderating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender equality at a global level.