Efficiency and quality in local government management: the case of Spanish local authorities

This study analyses efficiency levels in Spanish local governments and their determining factors through the application of DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) methodology. It aims to find out to what extent inefficiency arises from external factors beyond the control of the entity, or on the other hand, how much it is due to inadequate management of productive resources. The results show that on the whole, there is still a wide margin within which managers could increase local government efficiency levels, although it is revealed that a great deal of inefficiency is due to exogenous factors. It is specifically found that the size of the entity, per capita tax revenue, the per capita grants or the amount of commercial activity are some of the factors determining local government inefficiency.

Social capital and government in the production of public goods

As a response to the rapidly growing empirical literature on social capital and the evidence of its correlation with government performance, we build a theoretical framework to study the interactions between social capital and government's action. This paper presents a model of homogeneous agents in an overlapping generations framework incorporating social capital as the values transmitted from parent to child. The government's role is to provide public goods. First, government expenditure is exogenously given. Then, it will be chosen at the preferred level of the representative agent. For both setups the equilibrium outcomes are characterized and the resulting dynamics studied. Briefly we include an analysis of the effect of productivity growth on the evolution of social capital. The results obtained caution caution against both the crowding out effect of the welfare state and the impact of sustained economic growth on social capital.

Auctions for government securities: a laboratory comparison of uniform, discriminatory and spanish designs

The Bank of Spain uses a unique auction format to sell government bonds, which can be seen as a hybrid of a uniform and a discriminatory auction. For winning bids above the average winning bid, buyers are charged the average winning bid, otherwise they pay their respective bids. We report on an experiment that compares this auction format to the discriminatory format, used in most other countries, and to the uniform format. Our design is based on a common value model with multi-unit supply and two-unit demand. The results show significantly higher revenue with the Spanish and the uniform formats than with the discriminatory one, while volatility of prices over time is significantly lower in the discriminatory format than in the Spanish and uniform cases. Actual price dispersion is significantly larger in the discriminatory than in the Spanish. Our data also exhibit the use of bid-spreading strategies in all three designs.

The role of central bank operating procedures in an economy with productive government spending

The choice of either the rate of monetary growth or the nominal interest rate as the instrument controlled by monetary authorities has both positive and normative implications for economic performance. We reexamine some of the issues related to the choice of the monetary policy instrument in a dynamic general equilibrium model exhibiting endogenous growth in which a fraction of productive government spending is financed by means of issuing currency. When we evaluate the performance of the two monetary instruments attending to the fluctuations of endogenous variables, we find that the inflation rate is less volatile under nominal interest rate targeting. Concerning the fluctuations of consumption and of the growth rate, both monetary policy instruments lead to statistically equivalent volatilities. Finally, we show that none of these two targeting procedures displays unambiguously higher welfare levels.

The Key party in the catalan government

This paper analyzes the different compositions of the catalan governing coalitions during the current democratic period, and offers some predictions about the coalitions that can be expected in the future. During this period, in catalan politics, there have been two main political issues over which the different parties have taken positions: rightist versus leftist with respect to economic policy, and sovereign versus centralist with respect to the power distribution within the state. I find that for any allocation of parliament seats there is a key party: a party that has a clear advantage in terms of being able to decide the composition of the governing coalition. I show the features that allow a party to become the key party and those that affect the size of the advantage of the key party.

Fiscal sustainability across government tiers

This paper analyses how fiscal adjustment comes about when both central and sub-national governments are involved in consolidation. We test sustainability of public debt with a fiscal rule for both the federal and regional government. Results for the German Länder show that lower tier governments bear a relatively smaller part of the burden of debt consolidation, if they consolidate at all. Most of the fiscal adjustment occurs via central government debt. In contrast, both the US federal and state levels contribute to consolidation of public finances.

Comment comprendre les émotions morales

Cet article a pour objet de questionner la possibilité de l'existence des émotions morales et d'en déchiffrer la notion. Je commence par relever brièvement les faiblesses de différentes lectures philosophiques des émotions morales avant de poursuivre sur une voie à première vue prometteuse qui consiste à en fournir une explication fonctionnaliste évolutionnaire : les émotions morales auraient pour fonction évolutive de soutenir les relations sociales coopératives. Après analyse, il apparaît cependant que cette approche présente également d'importantes faiblesses. En fin de compte, je propose d'abandonner l'idée d'émotion intrinsèquement morale au profit d'une solution «minimale» : la «moralité» est une appellation attribuée aux émotions (ou plus justement aux épisodes émotionnels) lorsqu'elles apparaissent dans des contextes moralement pertinents.

Balanced Budget Government Spending in a Small Open Regional Economy

This paper investigates the impact of a balanced budget fiscal policy expansion in a regional context within a numerical dynamic general equilibrium model. We take Scotland as an example where, recently, there has been extensive debate on greater fiscal autonomy. In response to a balanced budget fiscal expansion the model suggests that: an increase in current government purchase in goods and services has negative multiplier effects only if the elasticity of substitution between private and public consumption is high enough to move downward the marginal utility of private consumers; public capital expenditure crowds in consumption and investment even with a high level of congestion; but crowding out effects might arise in the short-run if agents are myopic.

Taxation and Total Government Take from the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) Following Phase 3 of the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS)

NORTH SEA STUDY OCCASIONAL PAPER No. 117