This paper uses U.S. city-level data on five public expenditure categories to test empirically whether the form of local government affects the amount of public good provision. This also serves as an empirical test of a theory of national politics that predicts higher provision of public good in parliamentary than in presidential regimes. The robust results indicate that: at the city level, the mayor-council form of government provides significantly more public good than the council-manager form of government for two of the public expenditure categories; and, at the national level, presidential regimes provide more public good than do parliamentary regimes. Adapted from the source document.
This paper aims to test empirically the predictions of a theory that deals with the effect of different democratic regimes on public good provision. The theory predicts higher provision of public good in proportional electoral systems and parliamentary political regimes in comparison to majoritarian systems and presidential regimes respectively. The tests are performed using cross-country data from the 1990s on health and education quantity indicators of public good. Use of quantity indicators instead of expenditure data, previously used by other researchers, enables a cleaner test of the theory as a higher amount of any quantity measure clearly indicates a higher supply of public good. Overall, the robust results in this paper do not provide enough support for the theory. Electoral system has no effect on any of the public good indicators while except for two indicators under education, the nature of the political regime has no significant effect either.
All dictatorships provide public goods, but levels of provision generally differ from those found in otherwise similar democracies. Some theoretical treatments of this phenomenon emphasize differences in the degree of monopoly power enjoyed by dictators versus leaders of governments, while others stress differences in the size of the group a dictatorial versus democratic government leader must satisfy in order to remain in office. Empirical analysis is still at an early stage and has been oriented mainly toward determining the magnitude of the governance effect on public good provision, rather than devising tests that would distinguish between alternative theories of dictatorial behavior. While the empirical record is far from unanimous, the weight of evidence indicates that dictatorships under-provide public goods relative to democracies and that the estimated effects are both large in magnitude and statistically significant. JEL Classifications: H1, D72, H11
"This book analyses different perspectives around sustainable development, risk management, and managing demand across various industry sectors in India. Diverse theories and analytical methods from various disciplines as well as case studies are brought together to present an in-depth study. The book discusses the challenges of achieving sustainability, the role of quantitative research to assess current scenarios, and the role of policymaking to bring improvements in the Indian context. It examines the socio-economic impacts of pursuing sustainable development in the areas of agriculture, climate change and energy, the use of environment and natural resources, health, and society and policy. It also analyses important quantitative models for sustainability policy analysis and provides case studies to understand the practical implementations of the models. This book will be a great reference manual that covers a whole gamut of analytical techniques that are useful for students, research scholars, and practitioners of economics, environmental studies, development studies, sociology, South Asian studies, and public policy among others."
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the factors associated with three modes of firms' exit (voluntary liquidation, involuntary liquidation and acquisition) in a mutually exclusive environment. In particular, three modes of exit are treated as independent events given that different causes and consequences exist for each exit mode. The data set is a panel of 4,408 US manufacturing firms spanning over the period 1976–1995.Design/methodology/approachThe discrete choice model is used to establish a relationship between modes of exit and a set of explanatory variables, which are specific to the firm, industry and macroeconomic conditions. Use of panel data encourages us to estimate a random effects multinomial logistic regression model, which allows exit modes as mutually exclusive events and at the same time controls the firm-specific unobserved heterogeneity in the sample.FindingsThe analysis suggests that the determinants of voluntary liquidation are age, size, profitability, technology intensity and inflation level. The determinants of involuntary liquidation are size, leverage, profitability and inflation level. For acquisition, determinants are age, size, advertising intensity, Tobin'sq, GDP growth, inflation level and interest rate. The findings suggest that exit modes have a different set of determinants and the scale of effects of some common determinants such as age, size and profitability differs between exit modes.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis presented in this study relies on data from US manufacturing firms only. Thus, there is a need to explore the determinants of exit modes in other countries as well using the proposed econometric model.Practical implicationsThe findings presented in this paper are useful for managers and policymakers to design strategies/actions for avoiding particular mode of exit.Originality/valueThis study provides empirical evidence on the differences in factors associated with exit modes and confirms the existence of mutually exclusive nature of exit modes. Findings suggest that for future empirical studies on firm exit, the exit modes must be treated as a heterogeneous event.
