Search results for "H70"
showing 8 items of 8 documents
Reforms and decentralization: friends or foes
2013
Systemic concerns about markets, capitalism and the role of the state in the economy are salient again. Relatively large-scale reforms of economic and social arrangements are seriously considered. Historical experience suggests that reforms of that kind are sometimes associated with important changes in institutional arrangements pertaining to political decentralization. To explore the relationship between economic reforms and decentralization, the paper argues that a reform has two dimensions. It is a process and it is a design. The organization of the paper is inspired by that distinction. For economists, it seems natural to reason in terms of design -- that is, to perceive reform as the …
Decentralization as an incentive scheme when regional differences are large
2010
It has been suggested that large regional differences could be an obstacle to that part of the political accountability of office-holders which is based on yardstick competition among governments. The paper addresses that question and concludes that the obstacle is not too serious in general. The second part of the paper is devoted to the persistent economic underperformance of some regions in countries such as Germany, Italy and (with regard to regions overseas) France. How is it that the mechanism of yardstick competition induces a convergence of economic performance among European Union member countries, even those particularly poor initially, but fails to induce all the underperforming …
Decentralization and growth: what if the cross-jurisdiction approach had met a dead end?
2013
International audience; The relationship between decentralization and economic growth is generally studied from a perspective stressing universal or quasi-universal regularities across jurisdictions. That approach has generated many insights but seems to reach its limits. The paper explains why it allows contrasting positions with regard to the benefits of decentralization even among proponents of free and competitive markets. And it seems from the empirical literature that no robust and economically significant cross-jurisdiction relation between decentralization and economic performance or growth, except perhaps their independence, has been found. The absence of a relation valid across ju…
Horizontal competition in multilevel governmental settings
2013
28 pages; Governments situated on the same level of a multi-level governmental system compete with each other as well as with governments placed higher or lower. This paper is concerned with horizontal competition only. It discusses both competition based on the mobility of agents and competition based on comparisons of performance across jurisdictions - i.e., yardstick competition. With regard to the first kind, the focus is on the capacity of governments and voters to decide policies in spite of the mobility of agents. Some attention is also given to non-standard mechanisms in which mobility is manipulated so as to change the structure of the electorate. The paper considers two forms of h…
How significant is yardstick competition among governments? Three reasons to dig deeper
2013
22 pages; The significance of yardstick competition among governments is now confirmed with regard to fiscal variables. This is an important result but the significance of the mechanism must also be sought in a context broader than that of fiscal federalism and without limitation to relations and processes fully observable. Three points are made. Even in the case of governments trying to mimic each other over a single variable, additional variables are involved in an important way. Yardstick competition can be latent without being ineffective. Its major effect, then, is to set bounds to the choices that office-holders could think of making. Finally, the mechanism is a hidden albeit essentia…
Administrative Capacity as a Constraint to Fiscal Decentralization. The Case of Romania and Poland
2020
This paper considers the problem of administrative capacity as one of the main requirements that the accession countries seeking EU membership had to meet, and as a prerequisite to the decentralization of their public sectors and public finances. The selected decentralization problems are analyzed using the cases of two countries: Romania and Poland. The results of a theoretical and practical evaluation of administrative capacity as a likely obstacle to fiscal decentralization are presented taking account of the different levels of decentralization in Poland and Romania. A comparative analysis of Romania and Poland shows that administrative capacity can be a constraint for fiscal decentrali…
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION-A COMMUNICATING ORGANIZATION. THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATION AND ORIENTATION TOWARDS THE CITIZENS
2015
Public organizations are complex structure, which are continuously changing, a "meeting point" for resources, be they human, material, technological or of a different nature. In terms of the Romanian public system, the last few years have seen some major changes across the board, the way state institutions are organized and function, the attributions and responsibilities of public workers, and the needs and expectations of the citizens which benefits from these services being but a few of these aforementioned changes. Communication is essential for any intervention which aims to change something, especially when it comes to the public domain, where the success of any action is based on inte…
Overview and prerequisites of well-functioning Latvian national innovation system
2013
Analysis and understanding of the national innovation system can help policy-makers to identify strategies for improving innovative performance and overall competitiveness of the national economy. Nowadays we know too little about how to identify and measure specific problems in the system (if at all possible), despite several attempts to define them. Until now, little analysis on the Latvian innovation system was made. The paper aims to analyse the Latvian national innovation system and to provide a factors of well-functioning Latvian national innovation system. This research gives a possibility to researchers and policy-makers to investigate the mismatch between policies and problems and …