Credit Claiming Research Articles

Re-election: Different Skills for Different Roles

The current research examines the ability of legislators to be re-elected through fulfilling their three roles: legislation, oversight and representation. This study also re-examines Mayhew's claim (1974) that most legislators are motivated by a desire to be re-elected, and that this desire drives their legislative activity through its utility in advertising, credit claiming and position taking. We argue that the skills required for selection and re-election are different from those required for enacting legislation. Thus, we distinguish between two types of legislators – those who are electable and those who are successful in the legislature.

TARGET 2 and Settlement Finality

This article examines how TARGET 2 as system implements the idea of settlement finality regulated by Directive 98/26 EC of the European parliament and of the Council of 19 May 1998 on settlement finality in payment and securities settlement systems (Settlement Finality Directive) and Directive 2009/44/EC of the European parliament and of the Council of 6 May 2009 amenidng Directive 98/26/EC on settlement finality in payment and securities settlement systems and Directive 2002/47/EC on financial collateral arrangements as regards linked systems and credit claims (Directive 2009/44/EC). As the title of the article states two points are the cornerstone - TARGET 2 and finality of the settlement in this system.

Between credit claiming and blame avoidance: The changing politics of priority-setting for Korea's National Health Insurance System

Priority-setting involves diverse parties with intense and often conflicting interests and values. Still, the political aspects of priority-setting are largely unexplored in the literature on health policy. In this paper, we examine how policy makers in Korea changed their strategies as the policy context for priority setting changed from only expanding benefits to a double burden of benefit expansion plus cost containment.This analysis shows that priority-setting is a profoundly political process. The policy context shapes how policy makers choose their political strategies. In particular, we find that policy makers sway between “credit claiming” and “blame avoidance” strategies. Korean policy makers resorted to three types of political strategies when confronted with a double burden of benefit expansion and cost containment: delegating responsibility to other institutions (agency strategies), replacing judgment-based decisions with automatic rules (policy strategies), and focusing on the presentation of how decisions are made (presentational strategies). The paper suggests implications for future studies on priority-setting in the Korean health care system and in other countries that face similar challenges, and concludes that Korean policy makers need to put more effort into developing transparent and systematic priority-setting processes, especially in times of double burden of benefit expansion and cost containment.

Think Tanks’ Dirty Little Secret: Power, Public Policy, and Plagiarism

In academics, idea plagiarism is a sin of the first magnitude, whereas in business and politics, it is considered, well, academic - of no practical significance. Where do think tanks fit on that spectrum? Are they fish or fowl, or neither? Compared to academic scholars, think tank scholars have a greater incentive to plagiarize ideas. The pressure to claim credit in both scholarly communities is great, but the pressure to give credit is relatively weak in think tanks. One reason is that the problem-solution structure of think tank work doesn’t include a contribution-to-literature section. Another reason is that think tanks don’t publish their work in peer-reviewed publications, which are well-designed for cost-effectively weeding out idea plagiarism. Think tanks may claim to respect original work as much as universities. But that doesn’t mean it’s in their self-interest to act in accordance with those values. This paper provides eight case studies related to such behavior. The paper assumes that if think tank scholars, like academic scholars, claim to provide original work, then they should be held accountable for proving that they in fact do so. The author hopes that others will investigate the limitations of such an assumption.Unfortunately, the two traditional approaches to discouraging idea theft, passing intellectual property law (primarily used in commerce) and relying on private institutions to cultivate social sanctions (primarily used in academics) are not well suited for think tanks. An alternative approach is a hybrid policy where law is used to strengthen social sanctions. For example, libel and transparency laws pertaining to think tanks could be reformed to encourage a more robust market in evaluations of public policy credit claims.

How to Enforce Value-Added Tax? The Role of Inter-Sectoral Linkages

In the VAT system, formal traders report their purchases to the administration for a deduction in their tax bill. I model this third-party reporting feature of the VAT in an input-output economy and quantify it among different activities using a forward linkages index. The administration can reduce the size of shadow economy by reallocating visiting audits to backwardly linked activities and cross-checking VAT payments with input credit claims in forwardly linked activities. Empirical evidence from Indian service sector justifies the assumptions and suggests a significant increase in the tax compliance of forwardly linked activities following VAT adoption in 2003.

The Use of Credit Claims as Collateral for Eurosystem Credit Operations

Credit claims (or bank loans) represent a large share of the collateral accepted by the Eurosystem in its credit operations in recent years. Hence the techniques and procedures used in the use of credit claims as collateral have become significant elements of the monetary policy implementation mechanism in the euro area. The procedures involved in credit claim collateralisation, however, are generally more complex than those for marketable assets traded in regulated markets or in other markets accepted by the Eurosystem. While several types of credit claims are eligible as Eurosystem collateral, each type of credit claim has different characteristics which require specific considerations in the eligibility assessment. This paper provides an overview of the issues involved in the use of credit claims as collateral and relates these to some measures taken by both the public and the private sector aimed at facilitating their use in the euro area. The paper also elaborates on the syndicated loan market in the euro area as this market is sizeable, while it appears that the use of such loans as collateral remains limited. JEL Classification: G10, G12, G13

Social Protection and the Politicization of Class Cleavages During Latin America’s Left Turn

Why and how do class cleavages become politicized in party systems? The recent tenure of left governments in South America has seen the party system realigned along the class cleavage in Venezuela but not in Brazil or Chile. This article argues that different approaches to expanding social protection—“mobilizational” in Venezuela and “technocratic” in Brazil and Chile—explain divergent outcomes. Mobilizational policies incentivized social organization among beneficiaries and allowed for linkages between these organizations and left parties, facilitating credit claiming and recruitment by the left. Technocratic policies targeted atomized beneficiaries with no room for partisan involvement, making credit claiming and recruitment difficult. Case-based evidence illustrates these mechanisms whereas survey analysis using genetic matching confirms that mobilizational and technocratic programs exerted strikingly different effects on support for left parties. The broader contribution is to theorize a new form of class-based political mobilization in Latin America, also being implemented in other countries.

How Words and Money Cultivate a Personal Vote: The Effect of Legislator Credit Claiming on Constituent Credit Allocation

Particularistic spending, a large literature argues, builds support for incumbents. This literature equates money spent in the district with the credit constituents allocate. Yet, constituents lack the necessary information and motivation to allocate credit in this way. We use extensive observational and experimental evidence to show how legislators’ credit claiming messages—and not just money spent in the district—affect how constituents allocate credit. Legislators use credit claiming messages to influence the expenditures they receive credit for and to affect how closely they are associated with spending in the district. Constituents are responsive to credit claiming messages—they build more support than other nonpartisan messages. But contrary to expectations from other studies, constituents are more responsive to the total number of messages sent rather than the amount claimed. Our results have broad implications for political representation, the personal vote, and the study of U.S. Congressional elections.

How Words and Money Cultivate a Personal Vote: The Effect of Legislator Credit Claiming on Constituent Credit Allocation

Particularistic spending, a large literature argues, builds support for incumbents. This literature equates money spent in the district with the credit constituents allocate. Yet, constituents lack the necessary information and motivation to allocate credit this way. We use extensive observational and experimental evidence to show how legislators' credit claiming messages --- and not just money spent in the district --- affect how constituents allocate credit. Legislators use credit claiming messages to influence the expenditures they receive credit for and to affect how closely they are associated with spending in the district. Constituents are responsive to credit claiming messages--they build more support than other non-partisan messages. But contrary to expectations from other studies, constituents are more responsive to the total number of messages sent rather than the amount claimed. Our results have broad implications for political representation, the personal vote, and the study of U.S. Congressional elections.

Early telephone credit claims

Early telephone credit claims

Early telephone credit claims

Patrick Boucher’s interesting article, “Recent developments in US patent law” (Physics Today, January 2012, page 27), aptly begins by referring to the infamous controversy between Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray over who should have patent rights to the telephone. However, Boucher neglects the other, more significant telephone patent controversy involving Bell: the one with Antonio Meucci (1808–89), the true and first inventor of the telephone, if not its ultimate patent holder.Meucci was an opera stage engineer of modest means. Born and raised in Florence, Italy, he immigrated to the US in 1850, after several years in Cuba. Through a sequence of implausible accidents that started with his attempts to treat headaches using electricity, he developed from scratch a true and complete telephone system between 1849 and 1870. He made the first complete prototype in 1856 and used it to communicate with his disabled wife: His laboratory was in the basement and she was in seclusion on the upper floor. His invention, which he called a “telettrofono,” led to the fabrication and operation of a small functioning but short-lived telephone network in his village of Clifton in Staten Island, New York. In the 1850s he also developed a working microphone and a process to produce adequate electrical copper wires.In the following years, Meucci relentlessly sought investors to commercially develop his invention; to that end he delivered a complete set of blueprints and prototypes to American District Telegraph, with which Bell was connected. Later, when Meucci requested the return of the papers, ADT officials claimed they had gone missing.Meucci established a company that in December 1871 filed for a caveat—a one-year provisional patent—because he did not have enough money for a full patent application. In July 1871 he had been severely injured during the fire on the Westfield ferry in New York Harbor and was hospitalized for several months. His impoverished wife had to sell off even the prototype telephone samples for the sum of $6. Bell filed his patent application in 1876 and had it granted. Meucci fought Bell’s patent in the courts for many years, but he lacked the financial resources to confront the powerful Bell Telephone Co. He was defeated in what many consider an unjust and corrupt trial. The case was “discontinued as moot,” and the matter legally unresolved, because of his death and the expiration of Bell’s patent.The history outlined here is amply documented at, for example, the Garibaldi–Meucci Museum—Meucci’s former home in Staten Island. In Italy, Meucci is acknowledged as the inventor of the telephone, regardless of who the patentee may have been. In 2002 the US Congress recognized his role with House Resolution 269 (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107hres269ih/pdf/BILLS-107hres269ih.pdf).The Meucci versus Bell versus Gray affair clearly demonstrates how, for centuries, the patent legal system in the US and elsewhere, far from protecting the rights of individual inventors and promoting innovation, has served the interests of well-organized, capital-backed corporations. The new direction for the patent system—“first to file” rather than “first to invent”—can only exacerbate the wrong.© 2012 American Institute of Physics.

Diskussionsbeitrag / Discussion. Paper David Hume und die Target-Salden

Summary According to David Hume, the specie flow mechanism allows a stabilisation effect in the case of diverging current account imbalances in a gold standard system. Likewise in EMU, trade deficits and capital flight in GIPS countries generate a transfer of euro reserves into surplus countries. Positive Target balances do not represent credit claims on deficit countries. Money creation on behalf of GIPS national central banks contradict wise principles of monetary policy making, but it may contribute to the necessary restoration of price competitiveness.

Expanded, but not regulated: ambiguity in home-care policy in Ireland

This article argues that home-care policy in Ireland was ambiguous throughout the first decade of the 21st century: policy-makers expanded home care, but failed to develop policies to govern this expanded provision. As a result, home care became more widely available in the absence of a framework to govern access to services and to regulate care providers. We analysed official policy documents, statistics and policy critiques published between 2000 and 2010 in order to understand this incongruity between the expansion of home-care services and the failure to develop policies to govern access to and quality of services. The key factors that motivated home-care expansion in the Irish case were: (1) problems in the acute hospital sector and the perception of home care as a partial solution to these (political blame avoidance) and (2) significant GDP growth (until 2007) that provided politicians with the means to fund expansion in home-care services (political credit claiming). The key factors that inhibited the development of a policy framework to govern home-care services were: (1) weak governance structures in health services and decision-making at national level based on short-term political gain; (2) Ireland's adherence to the liberal welfare state model and concern about uncontrollable care costs in the face of population ageing; (3) until 2010, paucity of attention to home-care issues in the Irish media and (4) weak provider interest representation. The recent budgetary cutbacks in Ireland bring into sharp relief the political expediency of an unregulated domiciliary care sector and absence of entitlements to home care. We conclude that the forces that drive expanded provision are different from drivers of policy to govern home care and that weakness of governance structures and political advantages of the absence of regulation are the main reasons for the lack of standards and entitlement rules.

The blame game: spin, bureaucracy, and self-preservation in government

List of Illustrations vii Preface ix Part One: Blame, Credit, and Trust in Executive Government Chapter One: Credit Claiming, Blame Avoidance, and Negativity Bias 3 Chapter Two: Players in the Blame Game: Inside the World of Blame Avoidance 24 Part Two: Avoiding Blame: Three Basic Strategies Chapter Three: Presentational Strategies: Winning the Argument, Drawing a Line, Changing the Subject, and Keeping a Low Profi le 47 Chapter Four: Agency Strategies: Direct or Delegate, Choose or Inherit? 67 Chapter Five: Policy or Operational Strategies 90 Chapter Six: The Institutional Dynamics of Blameworld: A New Tefl on Era? 112 Part Three: Living in a World of Blame Avoidance Chapter Seven: Mixing and Matching Blame-Avoidance Strategies 135 Chapter Eight: Democracy, Good Governance, and Blame Avoidance 157 Chapter Nine: The Last Word 181 Notes 187 References 201 Index 219

Financial collateral – an opportunity missed

The Financial Collateral Arrangements (No 2) Regulations 2003 have recently been amended to include credit claims as financial collateral, to provide a partial definition of “possession” and to allow the claims of a person holding floating security on financial collateral to rank ahead of claims ranking as administration and liquidation expenses. This article analyses the effects of these changes and identifies other changes which were not made – the opportunity missed.

Evaluation Outcomes Resulting from an Internet-Based Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Asthma Program: Its Impact on Participants' Knowledge and Satisfaction

Introduction. Previous studies have focused on the evaluation of Internet-based continuing professional development (CPD), but few have focused on the clinical area of asthma. Our purpose was to examine the evaluation outcomes related to knowledge and satisfaction that resulted from the provision of an Internet-based CPD program focusing on this clinical area. Methods. Evaluation methodologies included a pre-/post-knowledge assessment (multiple choice) and a satisfaction survey. Completion of all assessments was voluntary, with the exception of the post-knowledge assessment for which completion was required for credit claim. Results. There were a total of N = 457 unique registrants in the course over 1 year. A total of N = 125 course participants completed both pre- and post-knowledge assessments. An overall mean pre-knowledge score of 11.54 and a post-knowledge score of 16.04 were reported. Paired samples t-test analyses indicated a significant pre- to post-knowledge gain overall and for the majority of professions; 95.8% of the N = 46 satisfaction survey respondents reported that the program addressed their learning needs; 89.1% reported that it was relevant to practice. Discussion. Recent studies focusing specifically on asthma were non-Canadian pilot studies with small sample sizes. The study findings highlight a similar initiative in Canada, which provided health professionals who care for patients with asthma access to relevant CPD with a Canadian perspective. The findings show that course participants were extremely satisfied and that they increased their knowledge in this clinical area. Further development of such Internet-based programs may encourage health professionals to improve their knowledge in a variety of therapeutic areas.

The electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment: Blame avoidance or credit claiming in the era of permanent austerity?

This article challenges the dominant assumptions in the literature that cutting social policy incurs voter wrath and that political parties can efficiently internalise electoral fallout with blame avoidance strategies. Drawing on the diverse literature on the role of partisanship in the period of permanent austerity, several partisan hypotheses on the relationship between social policy change and electoral outcomes are posited. The results indicate that religious and liberal parties gain votes, and thereby are able to ‘claim credit’, for retrenching social policy. None of the other coefficients for the effect of social policy cuts reach significance, raising the question of whether parties excel at blame avoidance or the public fails to place blame in the first place.

Securitisation of leases of port areas and installations in Brazil

The Brazilian Federal and State Governments’ lack of funds for investing in port infrastructure is notorious. Accordingly, there is a need to seek out other sources of finance to address the needs of Brazilian ports. One of the options available in the financial market is securitisation whereby credit rights over future cash flows can be associated to regularise financial assets. In the case of ports, the leasing of the port areas generates the credit claims. This article proposes the securitisation of future cash flows stemming from the leasing of port areas and installations as an alternative source of finance for the authorities. It introduces the proposal, portrays the model for leasing port areas and the main concepts concerning the securitisation of credit claims and also simulates an operation based on credit claims on proceeds from port leasing using data from a hypothetical bulk-grain shipping terminal.

Vote-seeking incentives and investment environments: The need for credit claiming and the provision of protectionism

Incentives to cultivate a personal reputation encourage legislators to generate policy outcomes for which they can claim credit. We show that these incentives make themselves felt in international agreements – a domain that might typically be considered within the purview of the executive branch. Through a cross-national analysis and brief case studies, we show that countries with electoral systems that encourage personal vote seeking are more likely to negotiate exceptions to treaties meant to liberalize their investment environments. Legislators benefit by being able to claim credit for having protected their constituents from the competition an unrestricted agreement would entail.

Executive veto power and credit claiming

The line-item veto has often be heralded as an effective tool in reducing pork barrel spending. A model of veto bargaining over public goods and pork barrel spending in the presence of credit claiming incentives demonstrates that the item veto does not necessarily reduce pork barrel spending and reduces the executive’s ability to attain his preferred level of spending on public goods. The item veto also has an ambiguous effect on the balance of power between the executive and the legislature while strengthening the position of the legislative agenda setter within the legislature.