Budgetary Influence Research Articles

Local Government Forecast Practices: Time Horizon and Budgetary Influence

Over the past thirty years, four surveys have analyzed local government forecast practices, with the most recent being over a decade old. This article builds on the prior surveys with a novel 2018 survey dataset from the Government Finance Officers Association to examine the factors related to the adoption of a particular forecast time horizon and the perceived influence of forecasts on the final adopted budget. Estimates of ordered logistic regressions with predictive margins indicate that certain budget processes and the length of time since a government adopted a new budget process are associated with forecast practices.

Solving Collective Action Problems under Separated and Shared Powers: The Benefits of Consolidating Executive Budgetary Powers, 1895–1940

The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 consolidated executive budgetary powers within the presidency and Congress. I evaluate how the Act reforms altered the nature of executive budgetary influence, using an original historical database from fiscal years 1895 to 1940. I show that these reforms were not only consistent with both political branches’ objective to empower presidents to rein in profligate executive budget proposals under the decentralized budgetary system but also afforded presidents greater budgetary influence when seeking higher funding levels relative to Congress. This mutually beneficial power-sharing arrangement between the president and Congress stands in contrast with existing accounts that these reforms favored one branch at the expense of the other. Finally, I offer evidence that this arrangement was made possible by solving collective action problems within the executive branch that reduced the capacity of seasoned agency heads to shape budgetary outcomes during the postreform era.

Budgetary influence under information asymmetries: Evidence from Nigeria’s subnational agricultural investments

Abstract With emerging recognition of changing climates’ impact on agricultural productivity, a sharper lens is focused on how to target agricultural public investments for development. This paper contributes to an understanding of budget decision-making processes in agricultural development, by examining to what extent those with superior information and expertise on a sector have sway over how public resources to the sector are allocated. The empirical qualitative analysis of this paper employs process tracing with an embedded case study design, based on interviews of 79 senior public sector key-informants in Nigeria. We also analyzed quantitative public expenditure data in the study areas. We draw insights from theories of information asymmetries in the public sector along three dimensions. Within the first type of information asymmetry, we find that, despite the higher agricultural technical expertise that sector bureaucrats have vis-a-vis the elected non-sector-specific chief executives, it is the latter who heavily influence agricultural resource allocation. In the second form of information asymmetry, the benefits from superior lower-tier information are only exploited at one subnational (state) level but not at the other (local government) level. Within the third kind of information asymmetry, public leaders prioritize funding for those types of public investments that are more visible by their nature, and outputs of which materialize relatively rapidly; this disfavors agriculture. Going beyond the literature on the impact of information interventions, this study sheds light on the extent to which information already in the public sector is tapped into to guide the provision of public goods and services.

A Pharmaco-Economic Analyzis of Treating Severe Uncontrolled Child Asthma with Omalizumab — Actual Russian Clinical Practice Data

Background:Omalizumab is the first and yet the only biopreparation for asthma which combines high efficiency and high cost. The clinical-economic expediency of using omalizumab in asthmatic children has not been previously studied in Russia.Objective:Our aim was to evaluate the clinical and economic expediency of using omalizumab as additive treatment (to basic or supporting therapy) in children with severe uncontrolled atopic asthma under the Russian economic conditions.Methods:We conducted a mathematical simulation of asthma treatment in children with an increased frequency of hospitalization (9 times per year) with an average monthly omalizumab requirement of 558 mg. The model is based on the Markov chain. The model includes direct and non-direct costs. The planning horizons were 2 and 5 years. We analyzed the efficiency and utility of the costs and their influence on the budget. The stability of received data is proven by sensitivity analyzis.Results:Over a 5-year planning horizon the cost of an additional year of quality life (due to using omalizumab) was 1,259,185 roubles, while the “society’s solvency” is 1 341 308 roubles (cost utility analizis). It takes 39,820 rubles to prevent one hospitalization with omalizumab over a 5-year planning horizon (cost efficiency analizis), which is comparable to the cost of hospitalization (43,141 rubles). Total costs for treating 100 children with asthma, 7 of which would be treated with omalizumab, were equal to the amount of money which is enough to treat 105 children without omalizumab (analysis of budgetary influence).Conclusion:The analyses of cost efficiency and utility have shown that the strategy of using omalizumab together with standard treatment is economically expedient. Budgetary influence analysis has not detected a significant burden on the budget.

Examining Relationships Between Legislative and Presidential Influences and Organizational Probity: Evidence from South Korean Central Government Agencies

ABSTRACTIn public management, few empirical studies have been conducted on the effects of the most influential political authorities—the legislature and the president—on government organizations, despite the theoretical and practical significance of these effects. This study tests the relationships between legislative and presidential influences and organizational probity in South Korean central government agencies, on the basis of political transaction-cost and principal–agent theories. We use three measures of legislative influence—inspectional influence (total annual days of legislative inspection), statutory influence (rules-to-laws ratio), and budgetary influence (ratio of reprogramming budget to total budget), and one measure of presidential influence (annual number of substantive meetings with the president). Then, these independent variables are linked to the organizational probity measure from audited archival data. The two-time-point panel data analysis reveals a positive link between legislative inspectional influence and probity but a negative relationship between the presidential influence measure and probity; the results support theoretical arguments for control over administrative agencies. Thus, the evidence suggests that governments should be cautious of implementing reforms that increase organizational or managerial autonomy.

Sub-national Tax Autonomy and Deficits: Empirical Results for 27 OECD Countries

Van Rompuy P. Sub-national tax autonomy and deficits: empirical results for 27 OECD countries, Regional Studies. This paper explores the impact of the revenue mix on the budgetary performances of regions and local governments in 27 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1995 to 2010. The main data are obtained from the OECD fiscal decentralization database that distinguishes tax income according to the degree of sub-national control over own resources. The empirical results point to a positive impact of autonomous tax income on sub-national fiscal balances in contrast to tax sharing agreements. However, the positive budgetary influence of tax autonomy only prevails from a minimum share of autonomous taxes in sub-national own revenue.

Partisan Presidential Influence over US Federal Budgetary Outcomes: Evidence from a Stochastic Decomposition of Executive Budget Proposals

Can American presidents use their budget proposal authority to achieve their own partisan policy priorities? This is an important, yet challenging, question to answer since formal executive authority is ambiguous, and budgetary powers are shared in the US separation of powers system. Indeed, the question remains open since prior empirical designs conflate external constraints (arising from political and policy conditions) with those that reflect executive partisan policy priorities. This study advances a novel stochastic decomposition of executive budget proposals in order to analyze the extent to which presidents can shape the legislative funding of US federal agencies consistent with their own partisan policy priorities. Statistical evidence reveals that presidents exert partisan-based budgetary influence over appropriations that cannot be ascertained from previous empirical studies that rely on either the observed gap between presidential requests and congressional appropriations or standard instrumental variable estimation methods. The statistical evidence also indicates that presidents are marginally more effective at converting their partisan policy priorities into budgetary outcomes under divided party government. Contrary to theoretical predictions generated from bilateral veto bargaining models, presidents are also shown to exert effective partisan budgetary influence even when their budget requests exceed congressional appropriations.

State-Level Measures of Institutional Budgetary Influence from the American State Administrators Project: 1964–98

AbstractThe American State Administrators Project is a half-century long research program surveying the attitudes and behavior of state agency leaders. The project has produced a voluminous number of publications and conference papers. At the same time it has also faced several difficulties in making its data more widely available to the scholarly community. This paper describes the Project, some of the data difficulties it has faced, and the portion of the data being distributed with this article.

Governors, Legislatures, and State Budgets across Time

Prior research by Abney and Lauth concluded that governors were losing ground to legislatures in shaping the state budget. Goodman examined Abney and Lauth’s explanations for this change and found empirical support for some but not others. This article’s findings reveal that governors, as a group, have not declined in budgetary influence, although some have gained and others lost during recent decades. The longitudinal analysis arrives at two major conclusions: (1) executive—legislative influence changes that take place stem primarily from political rather than structural changes, and (2) budgetary influence is not unidimensional as governors and legislatures compete in a non-zero-sum game in pursuit of different budgetary outcomes.

Determinants of Perceived Gubernatorial Budgetary Influence among State Executive Budget Analysts and Legislative Fiscal Analysts

Recent scholarship points to governors losing budgetary influence to legislatures. A survey of executive and legislative budget analysts from thirteen western states is used to test hypotheses derived from Abney and Lauth's theoretical propositions regarding the end of executive dominance over the budgetary process. This article finds that the legislature's ability to independently access budgetary information, a separate legislative budget agenda from the governor, the addition of detailed language in appropriation bills, and consensus revenue forecasting all decrease the likelihood of gubernatorial budgetary influence. Pork barrel additions and the ability to item veto appropriation language increase the likelihood of gubernatorial influence.

Majority Rule in Consensual Democracies: Explaining Political Influence in Norwegian Local Councils

Norwegian local government has traditionally been strongly rooted in the consensus ideal. When the new Local Government Act of 1992 allowed the municipalities to introduce parliamentary models and abolished the statutory requirement of qualified majority decisions in the councils, this therefore implied a significant change in the local government ideal. Even though the municipalities have been reluctant to formally adopt a parliamentary model, this paper argues that in practice a majority system is replacing the traditional consensual model, with functional roles for a governing majority and an opposition. The empirical analysis employs data on local politicians from 1994 and 1998 to test the proposition that representatives of the governing parties exert more influence on local policies than members of the opposition. Two different indicators of political influence are used: (1) the councillors' budgetary influence measured as the distance between the councillors' ideal point and the actual decision outcome, and (2) the councillors' ability to have initiatives accepted in the various local political bodies. In addition to the variable representing membership of the governing majority or the opposition, the model also controls for factors such as the representatives' formal institutional affiliation, individual characteristics and community context. Even when controlling for these determinants, the empirical results strongly support the hypothesis.

Demographic and Budgetary Influence on the Geography of the Poll Tax: Alarm or False Alarm?

"The paper examines the influence of demographic change and the adaptation of local authority budgets on the level of poll tax between local authorities. The changes introduced by the Local Government Finance Act [in the United Kingdom] are argued to make almost all the possible variation between areas depend upon demography and local decisions on expenditure. Means of assessing local expenditure need are outlined and a consistent measure is developed which is used to estimate the relative contributions of changing need, tax base, new expenditures and grants over the period 1974-85 and up to 1991. 'New realism' in local authority spending is argued to combine with demographic change to allow radically reduced potential poll tax levies to be estimated than have been forecast by other sources. The reductions are particularly significant in inner London and many metropolitan districts."