Government Resource Allocation Research Articles

Are pilot experiments random? Social connections and policy expansion in China

This paper provides new evidence of how political regimes and social connections determine participation in pilot experiments. Using data from China’s national pilot experiments of New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), we show that county-level characteristics and political regime have explanation power in the early stage of county pilot decision. Local party secretaries connected to Central Committee (CC) members, a political body that comprises the top leaders of the Communist Party, are discouraged to enroll. In contrast, counties that are send-down movement destinations of CC members during Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) are more likely to enroll. We also find that counties with lower cost, higher benefits, and more government revenue are more likely to enroll. Local government leaders may face trade-off between economic performance and social welfare, and connected officials have more incentives to allocate resources in economic growth rather than social welfare. These findings are characterized by a theoretical model that describes how connections change local leaders’ allocation of government resources under a multitask problem.

A Discussion on the Realization Path of Rural Reconstruction under the Background of Rural Revitalization—Taking Zhangou Village of Youjun Town in Xichang City as an Example

Based on the background of rural revitalization, taking Zhangou Village of Youjun Town in Xichang city as an example, this paper analyzes the achievements of the village reconstruction under the government resource allocation and the construction of ecological civilization demonstration village. It holds that there are still some problems in rural governance, such as non-standard rural governance, non-obvious characteristics of traditional rural industries, conservative rural civilization and lack of rural construction talents, and puts forward a rural reconstruction strategy with rural talent team construction as the main body and rural space reconstruction, economic and industrial reconstruction, social governance and rural civilization reconstruction as the core means.

The Effect of COVID-19 on Mental Health and Wellbeing in a Representative Sample of Australian Adults.

There is minimal knowledge about the impact of large-scale epidemics on community mental health, particularly during the acute phase. This gap in knowledge means we are critically ill-equipped to support communities as they face the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to provide data urgently needed to inform government policy and resource allocation now and in other future crises. The study was the first to survey a representative sample from the Australian population at the early acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Depression, anxiety, and psychological wellbeing were measured with well-validated scales (PHQ-9, GAD-7, WHO-5). Using linear regression, we tested for associations between mental health and exposure to COVID-19, impacts of COVID-19 on work and social functioning, and socio-demographic factors. Depression and anxiety symptoms were substantively elevated relative to usual population data, including for individuals with no existing mental health diagnosis. Exposure to COVID-19 had minimal association with mental health outcomes. Recent exposure to the Australian bushfires was also unrelated to depression and anxiety, although bushfire smoke exposure correlated with reduced psychological wellbeing. In contrast, pandemic-induced impairments in work and social functioning were strongly associated with elevated depression and anxiety symptoms, as well as decreased psychological wellbeing. Financial distress due to the pandemic, rather than job loss per se, was also a key correlate of poorer mental health. These findings suggest that minimizing disruption to work and social functioning, and increasing access to mental health services in the community, are important policy goals to minimize pandemic-related impacts on mental health and wellbeing. Innovative and creative strategies are needed to meet these community needs while continuing to enact vital public health strategies to control the spread of COVID-19.

Brian Turnbull Robson, 1939–2020

Brian Turnbull Robson, 1939–2020

Campaign-Style Implementation and Affordable Housing Provision in China

The existing literature identifies campaigns as an important tool of policy implementation for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, scholars have yet to reach agreement about the effects of campaigns on policy outcomes. This article helps to provide answers through an analysis of an affordable housing campaign adopted by the central government between 2011 and 2015. My findings are confirmed using regression analysis of a large original data set that I compiled. The article finds that the campaign strengthened the political incentives for local officials and that they responded to the campaign by building more affordable housing. But the campaign’s effects varied across different types of localities, which led to a significant mismatch between the allocation of government resources and the actual needs of local residents. These findings point to the defects of campaign-style implementation and China’s need for more institutionalized mechanisms to implement policies prioritized by the national government.

A spatial analysis of corruption, misallocation, and efficiency.

Political corruption is considered one of the major obstacles to achieving high-quality economic development in developed and developing countries. This study first calculates the ecological footprints of 29 provinces in China based on China's provincial panel data from 2006 to 2015. The provinces' ecological efficiencies were then calculated. The relationship between government corruption and ecological efficiency is researched, and the result shows that such a relationship is not linear. At different levels of ecological efficiency, government corruption has different effects on ecological efficiency. Finally, the resource misallocation index is introduced, and the spatial error model is used to further test the impact of government corruption and resource misallocation on ecological efficiency. The regression results show that high levels of government corruption and resource allocation distortion will cause a decrease in regional ecological efficiency, which adversely affects the sustainable development of the economy.

Risk taking sexual behaviors among young adults – findings from a cross sectional population based survey in Barbados

Background: The National Strategic Plan for HIV Prevention and Control 2014-2018 recognized the need for the utilization of research findings to guide the development of HIV policies, programs and interventions for the general population and key population groups and to inform the allocation of government resources to the areas of greatest impact and need. To this end, a Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs and Sexual Practices Survey (KABP) was conducted among adults’ ages 15 to 49 years

Policy evolution and effect evaluation of new-energy vehicle industry in China

As China is faced with the double dilemmas of environmental pollution and energy security, new-energy vehicles (NEVs) come with high expectations, which need to be guided by an “invisible hand”. To analyse the optimal functioning power of policies and determine the direction of future policy implementation, this paper utilizes the COPA framework (i.e., analysis from four dimensions of contents, outlook, power, and authorities) to analyse policy evolution in respect of the new-energy vehicle industry (NEVI). In addition, a quantitative table of policy power is designed to construct the policy effects in various periods. Furthermore, this paper employs threshold model and quantile regression model to explore the threshold effect of policy power on the policy implementation effects and the transformation of policy implementation effects at different development stages, respectively. The results are as follows. (1) The Chinese NEVI policy continues to attach importance to government-guided consumption and government-supported technical development, with the major issuing form still being “notices”. Although “moderate” industrial policies are adopted as the main policies, the issuance strength has been rising periodically, and the functioning strength has been maintaining a steady rise year by year. The non-definition of the competent authorities is one of the key factors that affect the development of the NEVI. (2) The policy power has a significant threshold effect on its functioning strength. When the policy strength exceeds the threshold value of 69, the effect of the policy will nearly double; thus, to promote the technological innovation of NEVs, it is necessary to formulate high-intensity policies. (3) The effect of industrial policy will differ greatly at different development stages. Along with the gradual formation of market orientation of the NEVI, the effect of industrial policies has weakened gradually. Properly reducing the subsidy of NEVs will achieve the optimal allocation of government resources.

Influence of External Business Environment on the Success of Health Projects in Nyandarua County, Kenya

Globally, project success is an important topic since the number of projects that are failing is extremely high with more than a third of projects failing to meet their objectives. There are two major strands of addressing project success, namely, how success is judged (success criteria) and the factors that contribute to project success. The successful implementation of projects is affected by several factors both in the internal and external environments. External environmental factors are those conditions that are not in the control of the project team and those that influence, constrain or direct the project. These factors include, political, economic, social and technological factors. Nyandarua County aims at improving access to quality healthcare to the community by upgrading local health facilities and building new ones. However, in spite of the efforts being made, it is evident that of the many health projects implemented by the Nyandarua County before and after 2013, many of them have been reported to have stalled. The broad objective of this study was to establish the influence of the external environment on the success of health projects in Nyandarua County. The following specific objectives were addressed; to establish the influence of government resource allocation on the success of health projects, to assess the influence of change in political leadership on the success of health projects, to find out the influence of finance on the success of health projects, to determine the influence of stakeholder involvement on the success of health projects and to establish the influence of technology adoption on the success of health projects. Theories reviewed in this study were the systems theory and project implementation theory. The study adopted a descriptive survey design with the target population being the project managers of health projects that are ongoing in the county. There were a total of 40 projects and therefore a census inquiry was used since the number is manageable. Data was conducted using a questionnaire and data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to yield frequency tables, mean, mode, median and standard deviation. Multiple linear regression model was used to measure the relationship between the independent and the dependent variables. Data was presented using charts, tables and graphs. The study established a positively and significant relationship between government resource allocation, political leadership, finance, stakeholder involvement and technology adoption on the success of health projects. The study concludes that the budget provides a means to monitor the project’s financial activities over the life of the project and provides a framework for expenditure to achieve the objectives of the project in an efficient manner. Realistic planning of finances is key to proper implementation of a project. Usually projects fail due to struggle because of the inattention of a project manager to the political environment. Finance provides numerous benefits such as risk management incentives, leverage flexibility extension and free cash flow creation. Stakeholder involvement develops a confidence atmosphere by requiring shareholders ' voices to be heard and their issues to be identified and technology-based project management can help companies to streamline business operations, reduce overhead costs, and improve equipment tracking. The study recommends that project managers in the County should identify the right resources towards the success of health projects being implemented in the County. Project leaders stay out in front of the County health projects through the political landscape of the County. A project managers seeking finance for a new health project should preferably seek the services of a financial advisor to assist with the feasibility study of the project and appoint sponsors to raise the funding. Project managers should engage stakeholders early and often in order to ensure project progress. The County should have good project management software that allows project teams to centralize documents, work on schedules and budgets together, and tag each other in updates and requests.

Are Pilot Experiments Random? Evidence from China’s Social Security Expansion

This paper provides new evidence of how political regimes and social connections determine participation in pilot experiments. Using data from China’s national pilot experiments of New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), we show that county-level charac- teristics and political regime have explanation power in the early stage of county pilot decision. Local party secretaries connected to Central Committee (CC) members, a po- litical body that comprises the top leaders of the Communist Party, are discouraged to enroll. In contrast, counties that are send-down movement destinations of CC members during Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) are more likely to enroll. We also find counties with lower cost, higher benefits, and more government revenue are more likely to enroll. Local government leaders may face trade-off between economic performance and social welfare, and connected officials have more incentives to allocate resources in economic growth rather than social welfare. These findings are characterized by a theoretical model that describes how connections change local leaders’ allocation of government resources under a multitask problem

Improving Local Governments’ Financial Sustainability by Using Open Government Data: An Application of High-Granularity Estimates of Personal Income Levels in Romania

The availability of open government data has expanded considerably in recent years. This expansion is expected to generate significant benefits not just for increasing government transparency, but also for the economy. The aim of this study is to illustrate the use of open government data in estimating personal income levels for all 3181 municipalities, towns, and communes in Romania. The novelty of our work comes from the high granularity of the estimates obtained. We use tax revenues collected by local governments in Romania on vehicles and buildings owned by natural persons, as well as data on energy subsidies. The classification is conducted using the k-means clustering algorithm. We find three distinct clusters of communities, which we map. The results can benefit both businesses and policymakers. The former can use the income level estimates for market intelligence purposes, while for the latter, these may aid in determining the financial sustainability of local governments and a better allocation of central government resources at the subnational level.

Research on relationship between government innovation funding and firms value creation using clustering-rough sets

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reveal the pattern between government innovation funding and enterprise value creation. Many factors, including government innovation funding, R&D ability, corporate governance and some company characteristics significantly affected the efficiency of firm value creation.Design/methodology/approachThis paper proposed a novel methodology based on clustering-rough sets to explore the characteristics of enterprise value creation behavior, and map the relationship between government innovation funding and enterprise value creation. The agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC) algorithm were used to classify firm performance and get two types of value creation efficiencies and to discretize condition attributes because the rough set theory cannot deal with continuous attributes. This paper utilized the rough sets method to realize data mining and get rules of government innovation funding and enterprise value creation.FindingsR&D ability, proportion of independent directors, remuneration of directors, operating revenue, number of employees, price-earnings ratio, quick ratio, capital intensity and ROA were important to identify firm value creation efficiency when government funded the firms. Firms of high level of government innovation funding, high lagged R&D ratio, high remuneration of directors, low price-earnings ratio, low quick ratio, moderate capital intensity and high ROA were more likely to have high efficiency of value creation.Originality/valueSince China implemented the innovation-driven development strategy, facilitating enterprise innovation has become an important way to achieve high-quality economic growth. With constantly increasing of Chinese government innovation funding, studying on the effect of government innovation funding on firm’s value creation is significant to improve the efficiency of government resource allocation. It is valuable to reveal the pattern between government innovation funding and enterprise value creation based on the value added theory. The rules obtained could be used to provide decision-making support to improve the efficiency of government innovation funding and prevent waste of government resources effectively.

Fine-Grained Dynamic Resource Allocation for Big-Data Applications

Many big-data applications are batch applications that exploit dedicated frameworks to perform massively parallel computations across clusters of machines. The time needed to process the entirety of the inputs represents the application's response time, which can be subject to deadlines. Spark, probably the most famous incarnation of these frameworks today, allocates resources to applications statically at the beginning of the execution and deviations are not managed: to meet the applications' deadlines, resources must be allocated carefully. This paper proposes an extension to Spark, called dynaSpark, that is able to allocate and redistribute resources to applications dynamically to meet deadlines and cope with the execution of unanticipated applications. This work is based on two key enablers: containers, to isolate Spark's parallel executors and allow for the dynamic and fast allocation of resources, and control-theory to govern resource allocation at runtime and obtain required precision and speed. Our evaluation shows that dynaSpark can (i) allocate resources efficiently to execute single applications with respect to set deadlines and (ii) reduce deadline violations (w.r.t. Spark) when executing multiple concurrent applications.

Examining Rental Housing Affordability Among Eastern Ethiopian Cities

The rental sector had been neglected in government housing policy as well as in the local government's resource allocation, though it apprehended a large number of urban dwellers and which will undoubtedly continue in the future. The objective of this study is to examine the rental housing affordability and its implication for low-income households. Specifically, it tried to critically evaluate the characteristics of rental housing, examined how affordable rental housing is and identify the legal and regulatory frameworks governing the rental housing market and finally based on the findings tried to devise a possible alternative that can enhance rental housing affordability. Questionnaires were distributed to 1162 rental households and officials were interviewed to capture their experience on regulatory and administrative issues. Global and local experiences on government housing policy and strategies revealed that the rental housing was less emphasized or in some cases, it was totally ignored. However, inter-census results population of confirmed that rental sectors had contributed a lot in addressing the residential needs of the urban poor and the contribution of the sector in addressing the housing needs are raised from 45percent to 54percent and the reverse is true for the case of home ownership. Results from the survey report confirmed that the rental levels in the sample cities were at the threshold levels. However, this does not mean that rent is affordable; rather the lessee had compromised with the adequacy of housing in order to avoid high rental price. Therefore, government should devise alternatives to promote rental sectors through regulation and policy interventions. Among the possible measures, getting rental housing on the larger urban policy is the first and most important intervention. Government should regulate the rental market through regulatory and policy measures by making balance the interests of both landlords and renters. Keywords: Rent, need for a rental housing, private renters, affordability measures DOI : 10.7176/JPID/50-05 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Examining Rental Housing Affordability Among Eastern Ethiopian Cities

The rental sector had been neglected in government housing policy and in the local government's resource allocation, though it apprehended a large number of urban dwellers and which will undoubtedly continue in the future. The study aimed to examine the rental housing affordability, assess rental housing characteristics, identify factors which determined rental affordability and devised alternatives to promote rental housing affordability. About 651 questionnaires were distributed to rental households and government officials were interviewed to capture experience on rental regulatory and administrative issues. Global and local experiences on government housing policy and strategies revealed that the rental housing was less emphasized or sometimes, it was totally ignored. However, results from inter-census survey report revealed that the rental sectors had contributed much in addressing the residential needs of the urban poor and the contribution of the sector in addressing the housing needs were raised from 45 percent to 54 percent. Results from the logistic regression analysis indicated us the rental levels in the sample cities were in the threshold at least for 60 percent of the households. However, this event does not mean that rent is affordable; rather the lessee had a compromised adequacy of housing with monthly rental price to be in acceptable range. Therefore, the government should devise alternatives to promote rental sectors through regulation and policy interventions. Among the possible measures, getting rental housing on the larger urban policy is the first and central intervention. The government should regulate the rental market through regulatory and policy measures by making balance the interests of both landlords and renters. Keywords : need for rental housing, rent affordability, housing condition, measures of affordability DOI : 10.7176/DCS/9-6-01 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Distance and government resource allocation: from the perspective of environmental information disclosure policy change

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the relationship between environmental information and government resources and focuses on the moderate effect of distance. The results show that (1) the promulgation and implementation of the Measures for the Disclosure of Environmental Information (MDEI) can improve the level and quality of environmental information and then increase resource allocation and (2), after the MDEI are issued, distance has a significant negative moderate effect on the positive impact of MDEI, and the negative moderate effect of distance is more significant in low GDP and marketization regions, high-polluting industries and firms audited by the non-Big 4 accounting firms.

How much should Hong Kong spend on its healthcare?

Healthcare spending in Hong Kong has been the subject of much discussion in recent years. This article analyses the determinants of Hong Kong's optimal health spending, including the city's health status, its demographic and epidemiological profiles, the existing health input, and the allocation of government resources. Hong Kong's healthcare system suffers from underinvestment as reflected by insufficient manpower, inadequate medical resources, and technical and allocation inefficiency of the health input. An international comparison of healthcare spending also shows Hong Kong's total healthcare expenditure per capita is lower than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's average, leading to health inequities on the poor who have limited funds to pay for healthcare. Suggestions not only focused on the need to increase healthcare spending, but also promoted healthcare reform including health financing pooling, and the emphasis on disease prevention, primary care and a gatekeeping system.

Political Connections and Government Subsidies: State-Level Evidence

We examine whether economic incentive awards by U.S. state governments to corporations are affected by political connections, and importantly whether a relation is cause for constituent concern. Consistent with findings examining international and U.S. federal-level political connections, we find that U.S. state governments also allocate resources disproportionally to politically connected firms. A firm is nearly four times more likely to receive an award, and the award is 63 percent larger, when the firm makes campaign contributions to state politicians. To determine if this relation distorts or enhances government resource allocation effectiveness, we focus on three key stakeholders: politicians, taxpayers, and shareholders. The positive relation between incentive awards and political connections is stronger when politicians’ motives appear self-serving. Although the stock market reacts more positively to connected award announcements, these awards generate less local job growth and less aggregate local economic growth, suggesting a wealth transfer from taxpayers to connected firm shareholders. Consistent with this interpretation, connected firms commit to fewer jobs and less capital investment per dollar of incentive awarded. In sum, state governments disproportionately award incentives to politically connected firms, even though these awards are a less effective allocation of government resources. Our study thus identifies a channel through which politicians can transfer rents to connected corporations at the expense of local taxpayers.

Vulnerability to sea level rise: A novel local-scale indicator-based assessment methodology and application to eight beaches in Shoalhaven, Australia

Vulnerability of a socio-ecological system to one or more climatic hazards depends on climatic, geophysical, socio-economic and institutional factors. In addition, vulnerability is a scale- and place-dependent concept. While decision-making on adaptation is often made by local government, only a small number of local-scale assessments have been conducted. When indicators are used, global utility functions based on additive or multiplicative aggregation implicitly assume complete compensation between indicators, implying that one source of vulnerability (e.g., proximity to the sea) can always be compensated for by an advantage in another source (e.g., strong social or economic capital) when evidence shows that this is not always the case.This paper presents an indicator-based assessment of vulnerability of eight beaches in Shoalhaven, New South Wales, that are especially exposed to sea level rise. Its goal is twofold. First, it illustrates how indicator-based vulnerability assessments can be applied at a local scale – and not just sectoral, regional and national scales – with the aim of informing local government adaptation planning and resource allocation. In the process, models operationalising the concepts of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity are developed for two valued attributes identified through discussions with the local council, namely the well-being of beach residents and the well-being of users of infrastructure systems located at the beaches.Second, the paper studies, for the first time, the way outranking procedures can be applied in real-life vulnerability assessments as a form of data aggregation that better reflects the non-compensatory nature of many vulnerability indicators. The strengths and weaknesses of the outranking approach are discussed, especially the extent to which the concepts of preference, indifference and dominance thresholds can be conveyed to, and their values elicited from, stakeholders.

Grounded Globalization: Foreign Capital and Local Bureaucrats in China’s Economic Transformation

Summary How does a globalized context influence domestic development policies and the allocation of government resources in an authoritarian country like China? This study explores the coalitional politics in China’s transition from foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction to domestic technology upgrading, which created winners and losers in the local allocation of government resources. Drawing on comparative case studies, semi-structured interviews and newly compiled data at the city level, the study finds that the varied levels of government support for domestic upgrading are shaped by coalitions for or against the transition. The major obstacle for bureaucrats within a city government to garner resources for domestic technology does not directly depend on the overall level of FDI. Rather, it comes from the vested interest of international commerce bureaucrats. These bureaucrats are more likely to form a cohesive coalition when the export share of foreign firms is large. At the same time, such a coalition is more likely to gain political influence when industrial sales are concentrated in large firms. The direction and magnitude of foreign capital influence, therefore, is channeled and manifested through local bureaucratic coalitions. This study sheds light on the politics of implementing development policies in an era in which globalization has cultivated fragmented interests within the local bureaucracy.