A note on the coincidence between Stackelberg and Nash equilibria in a differential game between government and firms

[cat] A Navas i Marín Solano es va demostrar la coincidència entre els equilibris de Nash i de Stackelberg per a una versi´o modificada del joc diferencial proposat por Lancaster (1973). Amb l’objectiu d’obtenir una solució interior, es van imposar restriccions importants sobre el valors dels paràmetres del model. En aquest treball estenem aquest resultat, en el límit en que la taxa de descompte és igual a zero, eliminant les restriccions i considerant totes les solucions possibles.

Planning for disaster : local government's role in civil preparedness,1975

This handbook deals with the duties and responsibilities of a mayor of a city, a member of a county board of supervisor or a sheriff of a county from the standpoint of their relationship with a county/municipal civil defense and emergency planing administration.

Water planning law and government.

Water planning efforts typically identify problems and needs. But simply calling attention to issues is usually not enough to spur action; the end result of many well-intentioned planning efforts is a report that ends up gathering dust on a shelf. Vague recommendations like “Water conservation measures should be implemented” usually accomplish little by themselves as they don’t assign responsibility to anyone. Success is more likely when an implementation strategy — who can and should do what — is developed as part of the planning process. The more detailed and specific the implementation strategy, the greater the chance that something will actually be done. The question then becomes who has the legal authority or responsibility to do what? Are new laws and programs needed or can existing ones be used to implement the recommendations? ... This document is divided into four main parts. The first, “Carrots and Sticks” looks at two basic approaches — regulatory and non-regulatory — that can be, and are, used to carry out water policy. Both have advantages and disadvantages that need to be considered. The second, “The powers of federal, state and local governments…,” looks at the constitutional powers the federal government and state and local governments have to carry out water policy. An initial look at the U. S. Constitution might suggest the federal government’s regulatory authority over water is limited but, in fact, its powers are very substantial. States have considerable authority to do a number of things but have to be mindful of any federal efforts that might conflict with those state efforts. And local governments can only do those things the state constitution or state legislature says they can do and must conform to any requirements or limitations on those powers that are contained in the enabling acts. Parts three and four examine in more detail the main programs and agencies at the federal level as well as Iowa’s state and local levels and the roles they play in national and state water policy.

Water Planning Law and Government, November 2008

Water planning efforts typically identify problems and needs. But simply calling attention to issues is usually not enough to spur action; the end result of many well-intentioned planning efforts is a report that ends up gathering dust on a shelf. Vague recommendations like “Water conservation measures should be implemented” usually accomplish little by themselves as they don’t assign responsibility to anyone. Success is more likely when an implementation strategy — who can and should do what — is developed as part of the planning process. The more detailed and specific the implementation strategy, the greater the chance that something will actually be done.

Shrouded costs of government: The political economy of state and local public pensions

Why do public-sector workers receive so much of their compensation in the formof pensions and other benefits? This paper presents a political economy model inwhich politicians compete for taxpayers' and government employees' votes by promising compensation packages, but some voters cannot evaluate every aspect of promisedcompensation. If pension packages are "shrouded", so that public-sector workers better understand their value than ordinary taxpayers, then compensation will be highlyback-loaded. In equilibrium, the welfare of public-sector workers could be improved,holding total public-sector costs constant, if they received higher wages and lowerpensions. Centralizing pension determination has two offsetting effects on generosity:more state-level media attention helps taxpayers better understand pension costs, andthat reduces pension generosity; but a larger share of public-sector workers will votewithin the jurisdiction, which increases pension generosity. A short discussion of pensions in two decentralized states (California and Pennsylvania) and two centralizedstates (Massachusetts and Ohio) suggests that centralization appears to have modestlyreduced pensions, but, as the model suggests, this is unlikely to be universal.

Fiscal Year 2015 Report on the Condition of Affirmative Action, Diversity, and Multi-cultural Programs in State Government and Fiscal Year 2016 Plan, September 30, 2015

Each agency is invited and encouraged to send a representative to a quarterly Department of Administrative Services State Recruitment Coordinating Committee “Committee” meeting. This Committee conducts strategic planning sessions to identify top goals and initiatives for the next 2-3 years.

Political centralization and government accountability

This paper studies fiscal federalism when regions differ in voters' ability to monitor publicofficials. We develop a model of political agency in which rent-seeking politicians providepublic goods to win support from heterogeneously informed voters. In equilibrium, voterinformation increases government accountability but displays decreasing returns. Therefore,political centralization reduces aggregate rent extraction when voter information varies acrossregions. It increases welfare as long as the central government is required to provide publicgoods uniformly across regions. The need for uniformity implies an endogenous trade off between reducing rents through centralization and matching idiosyncratic preferences throughdecentralization. We find that a federal structure with overlapping levels of government canbe optimal only if regional differences in accountability are sufficiently large. The modelpredicts that less informed regions should reap greater benefits when the central governmentsets a uniform policy. Consistent with our theory, we present empirical evidence that lessinformed states enjoyed faster declines in pollution after the 1970 Clean Air Act centralizedenvironmental policy at the federal level.

The influence of the quality of government institutions on entrepreneurial motivation: exploring the variance across countries

Despite the increasing understanding of the relationships between institutions and entrepreneurship, the influence of the quality of government institutions on entrepreneurship is less addressed. This paper focuses on this critical determinant of entrepreneurship in developing and developed countries. Drawing from institutional theory we hypothesize and empirically assess the role of the quality of institutions in entrepreneurial activity. We examine how the quality of government institutions influences the rate of necessity-based entrepreneurial activity across countries and over time by using a cross-sectional time-series approach on data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database covering the years 2001–2011. Our results suggest that higher economic development associated with better quality of institutions reduces the prevalence of necessity-based entrepreneurship. Our findings imply that developing countries must rationally organize their functions, and seek to remove unnecessary barriers, decrease political instability, and controls that hamper entrepreneurial activity

Effects of Government Ownership on Firm Performance: Evidence from Finnish Companies

Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää, miten valtionomistajuus vaikuttaa yrityksen suorituskykyyn suomalaisissa pörssinoteeratuissa valtionyhtiöissä, joissa valtio toimii pää- tai osaomistajana. Suorituskykyä tutkitaan kandella eri menetelmällä. Ensin tutkitaan osaketuottoja Jensenin alfan avulla, jonka jälkeen suoritetaan tilinpäätöstunnuslukujen toimialavertailu. Tutkimuksen teoriaosuudessa esitetään yksityistämisen tuottamia etuja yrityksen taloudelliseen suorituskykyyn, sekä myöskin valtionomistajuuden tuottamia etuja. Lisäksi teoriaosuudessa käsitellään aikaisempien empiiristen tutkimusten tuloksia valtionomistajuuden vaikutuksista. Tämän tutkimuksen empiirisessä osiossa käytettävä data on saatu osakedatan osalta Datastreamista ja tilinpäätöstunnuslukujen osalta Balance Consulting Oy:ltä. Kokonaisosakedataa koskeva tutkimus Jensenin alfalla ei osoittanut valtionyhtiöiden toimivan tehottomasti, vaan osoitti yritysten kyenneen tuottamaan epänormaaleja tuottoja riskitasoonsa nähden. Vuositasolle pilkotun datan analysointi sen sijaan tuotti useita negatiivisia alfoja yrityksille eli merkkejä tehottomuudesta tiettyinä vuosina. Lisäksi tilinpäätöstunnuslukujen analysointi osoitti osan valtionyhtiöistä olleen pääosin omaa toimialaansa tehottomampia, kun taas osa kykenipäihittämään toimialansa.

Europeanization or Party Politics? Explaining Government Choice for Corporatist Concertation

This article assesses whether changes in government choice for policy concertation with trade unions and employers are better explained by international or domestic factors. We compare patterns of corporatist governance in a strongly Europeanized policy domain (labor migration policy) and in a weakly Europeanized policy domain (welfare state reforms) over the last 20 years in Austria and Switzerland. We show that there is no systematic difference in patterns of concertation between the two policy sectors and that factors linked to party politics play a bigger role in the choice of governments for concertation. If the base of party support for policies is divided, governments are more prone to resort to corporatist concertation as a way to build compromises for potentially controversial or unpopular policies. By contrast, ideologically cohesive majority coalitions are less prone to resort to concertation because they do not need to build compromises outside their base of party support.