Allocation Of Public Goods Research Articles

RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURE IN LAIKIPIA COUNTY, KENYA

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine how resource allocation influences climate-smart agriculture projects in Laikipia County, Kenya. Theoretical Framework: Pareto Efficiency Theory states that at a certain level, it is not possible to utilize more resources to improve one party, without jeopardizing the other party. The study sought to heighten the level of food production to guarantee food security without threatening the environment. Method: A concurrent mixed method approach that adopted the descriptive cross-sectional survey and correlational design was employed to study two World Bank-sponsored Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture projects. Stratified and Simple random sampling were employed to get a sample of 225 small-scale farmers and purposeful sampling identified four key informants. Data was collected using questionnaires and an interview guide and analyzed using descriptive, inferential, and content data analysis techniques. Results and Discussion: The composite mean and standard deviation of the respondents' opinions on resource allocation were 3.52 and 1.143, respectively. The correlation coefficient of resource allocation and the performance of climate-smart agriculture projects was weak, with r=-0.220 and p-value p=0.000<0.05. Therefore, though resource allocation is a crucial factor in food production, judicious and effective resource allocation is critical to realizing the full potential of the projects. Research Implications: Consequently, it is critical to have policies that promote the effective allocation of public and private goods to promote food production coupled with enhanced healthy ecology. Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature by providing reliable and triangulated empirical data through authentic methodology enhancing suitability for data generalisability and replicability. The relevance and value of this research is evidenced by the need to promote food security in a healthy ecology.

IMPLEMENTASI DESENTRALISASI FISKAL DALAM UPAYA MENGENTASAN KEMISKINAN DI KABUPATEN DAN KOTA PROVINSI JAWA BARAT

The implementation of fiscal decentralization is driven by the belief that the regional government is the vehicle that best understands the needs of regional communities rather than the central government. This delegation of authority is then followed by budget allocation and provision of public goods to the regional government. This then opens up a new assessment that simply fiscal decentralization has an impact on poverty alleviation. However, the report on the implementation of fiscal decentralization over two decades in Indonesia shows that the rapidly increasing allocation of transfer funds has not been accompanied by a rapid reduction in poverty rates. Therefore, this research aims to determine the effect of fiscal decentralization indicators on the percentage of poverty, namely local government revenue, fiscal balance transfers and local government spending. By using Panel Least Square (PLS) regression estimates, we used specific samples based on districts and cities in West Java from 2014 to 2019. The regression results show that regional income can significantly reduce poverty, while the allocation of fiscal balance transfers makes poverty increase. Apart from that, local government spending was found to have no significant influence on the percentage of poverty. This paper is expected to help the government in carrying out financial management that is right on target. The ineffective allocation of balanced transfers in West Java needs to be responded by the regional government according to the priority scale in each disctrict or city.

Allocation of public goods, ethnic favouritism and the risk of local ethnic wars in sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT Ethnic favouritism in the distribution of public goods has been a common problem in multi-ethnic countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Is inequitable allocation of public goods associated with ethnic conflict and war? This study connects the literatures on ethnic competition, rent-seeking and public goods and examines whether impartial allocation of public goods by governments affect the onset of local ethnic wars in 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It is expected that particularistic policy-making in the allocation of public goods can increase the risk of local ethnic wars in sub-Saharan Africa because it can contribute to horizontal group grievances and rent-seeking over state resources. Analyses of 40 sub-Saharan African countries from 1946 to 2010 show that a one standard deviation change public versus particularistic goods provision appears to reduce the risk of local ethnic wars by a substantial 27–59% with consideration of a battery of control variables. To facilitate peace in the sub-Saharan countries, policy makers and states should promote impartial policies targeted at the allocation of public goods for all communities and groups.

Ethnic politics and National Integration in Nigeria's Fourth Republic

One of the contentious issues affecting national integration in Nigeria is ethnic politics. An ethnicity is a potent tool for mobilizing access to power and resources in Nigeria. It has not only affected nation-building but has also constituted security and governance challenges threatening national integration. Despite different measures adopted to foster national unity among different ethnic groups, primordial sentiments pervade the political system, festering like a malignant tumour with associated prognosis. The paper explored the implications of ethnic politics on national integration in Nigeria's Fourth Republic. Data elicited from secondary sources were utilized for the study. The findings showed that the dominant ethnic groups determine party formation, voting patterns and allocation of public goods. Ethnic politics is deployed by the political class to access and maintain their grip of power while other sub-ethnic groups are sidelined. Undue ethnicization of Nigeria's politics has not only encouraged prebendalised politics but affected democratic development. Electoral malpractices, political instability and crises experienced in Nigeria have their roots in ethnic politics. The study recommended, among other things, that there is a need for reorientation of Nigerian citizens on the danger ethnicized politics portends to nation-building and national integration. Furthermore, there is the need to redefine citizenship, indigene-settler syndrome and son of the soil conundrum that has been spurring ethnic politics in Nigeria.

Identifying the public goods allocation process: case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Identifying the public goods allocation process: case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Licensing Service Efficiency in Bandung City

The public service system is determined by the standardization of public services regulated in laws and regulations. Therefore, a common perception is needed between the bureaucratic apparatus and the community in terms of service delivery, especially in the investment sector in order to improve the performance of investment services both at the central and regional levels. Licensing is an instrument of government policy to control negative externalities that may be caused by social and economic activities. Permits are also an instrument for efficient and fair allocation of public goods, preventing information asymmetry, and legal protection of ownership or operation of activities. As an instrument of control, licensing requires clear rationality and is stated in the form of government policy as a reference. Without rationality and a clear policy design, licensing will lose its meaning as an instrument for defending the interests of the community over individual actions. Problems in the field of licensing in the city of Bandung, namely licensing services in the city of Bandung which have been implemented since 2001 are still considered ineffective, so that the performance of licensing services is still low. To carry out business licensing properly, a comprehensive analysis is needed to simplify licensing (Abolish, Combine, Simplified, Decentralized).

Civic Crowdfunding as Urban Digital Platform in Milan and Amsterdam: Don’t take pictures on a rainy day!

Cities are a conducive context for the emergence of digital platforms and at the same time cities are reshaped by the digital spaces that are created by these platforms. The key features that set Urban Digital Platforms (UDPs) apart from other digital platforms are the allocation of public goods and services at an urban scale (via P2P transaction), and their orientation towards civic and grassroots initiatives in area’s which the local state agencies have a significant role in steering urban development patterns. This article explores the spaces and realms of interactions and engagements which ‘urban digital platform(s) (UDPs) have created in two prominent European cities, Milan and Amsterdam. By focusing on civic crowdfunding initiatives, it shows that digital platforms not only unleash societal initiatives but also have the potential to fundamentally change (urban) political processes, as their gatekeeping principles provide a powerful frame by which projects are selected. This paper sheds light on how platform urbanism and the new lens of digital geography are critical in investigating ‘alternative platforms’ as civic crowdfunding and their mutual co-constitution between technology, sociality, and spatiality.

Poverty alleviation and state building in peripheral areas: evidence from China

AbstractThe literature suggests that the distributive allocations of local public goods help politicians secure support and thus contribute to political survival. We argue that the selective assignment of state-led infrastructure projects can bolster political control in peripheral areas by inducing the government's investment in essential administrative and security apparatus for project implementation and long-term state building. Drawing on a unique county-level dataset, we study the effects of poverty alleviation transfers in Xinjiang. We find that poverty alleviation was associated with significant increases in government spending on public management and security. In contrast, these alleviation transfers had a small and ambiguous effect on increasing agricultural production and reducing ethnic violence in the province. Our findings highlight the importance of comparing the capacity and welfare implications of distributive politics, as fiscal subsidies may change the actions of the leader's local agents more than altering the behaviors and attitudes of those who may benefit from these transfers.

The Public Good and the Brazilian State: Municipal Finance and Public Services in São Paulo, 1822–1930

The Public Good and the Brazilian State: Municipal Finance and Public Services in São Paulo, 1822–1930

The effect of homeownership on migrant household savings: Evidence from the removal of home purchase restrictions in China

Internal migrants account for over one-fourth of China's population, and their saving behavior is important in explaining “the Chinese saving puzzle”. The relation between household savings and house prices has been studied, but this paper utilizes a quasi-experiment that removed home purchase restrictions to examine the causal effect of homeownership on migrant household savings through a difference-in-differences approach and instrumental variable estimation. We find that the migrant saving rate significantly decreases after migrants buy houses, falling below that of the local hukou population. Further analysis reveals that this effect of homeownership can be explained by the consumption effect rather than housing purchase or increased household income effects. Our findings imply that hukou-based policies, including the allocation of public goods and the right to buy private goods such as houses, will harm both migrant welfare and sustained economic growth.

From targeted private benefits to public goods: Land, distributive politics and changing political conditions in Colombia

• There is a political land cycle (PLC) in Colombia: land allocations are higher in electoral years than in non-electoral ones. • The PLC is dependent on political conditions: its size is reduced by half after the implementation of a deep political reform. • The reduction was stronger in areas where increases in political competition and fiscal and administrative capacity were higher • These changes generate incentive and capacity effects affecting the costs and benefits of distributive politics resources. • This led to a re-composition of the distributive politics portfolio: from private targeted benefits towards public goods. This paper analyzes how changes in political conditions affect distributive politics. We study the case of Colombia, focusing on the strategic allocation of land in relation to the electoral cycle. Relying on over 55.000 municipality-year observations on land allocations, exogenous timing of elections and sociodemographic controls, we show that there is a political land cycle (PLC), and that this cycle is dependent on the local political conditions in place. We analyze the changes in the PLC derived from the implementation of a deep political reform that increased political competition and the fiscal and administrative capacity of the state, doing so heterogeneously across municipalities. We show that the PLC decreased by half after the reform, with this reduction being stronger in municipalities in which political competition and fiscal and administrative capacity increased the most. The heterogeneous reduction in the PLC does not appear to stem from an aggregate weakening of distributive politics, but rather, from a re-composition of the distributive politics portfolio: away from the allocation of private targeted benefits like land, and towards the strategic allocation of public goods. We discuss the incentive and capacity effects explaining this re-composition likely affecting the relative costs and benefits of different types of distributive politics resources. The results evidence the importance of understanding not only the territorial dimension of distributive politics, but also how the specific traits of resources determine distributive politics strategies and their resilience to contextual changes.

How does school district adjustment affect housing prices: An empirical investigation from Hangzhou, China

A quality promotion of neighborhood primary schools no doubt elevates nearby housing price. But which houses benefit from the public policy is important to improve educational equity. Accurate identification of such capitalization effects will help policymakers optimize the allocation of scarce public goods. Previous studies on this issue have been biased due to endogeneity and overlooking the impacts of facility quality change. Based on the Hangzhou's school district adjustment in 2012, the current work contributes to housing price effects of policies and education quality changes, rather than a static educational facility. The difference-in-differences model with quantile regression is constructed to obtain a more precise and detailed estimation among the different sub-markets. Results show that the average price effect estimated by the difference-in-differences is up to nearly 800 yuan/m2, higher than cross-sectional estimation. Only housing with better schools after reassignment witness a price premium. Low-priced and small houses earn more than 1000 yuan/m2, whereas high-priced and large houses are not significantly affected. The results demonstrate that future policies should ensure the rights of low-income groups to attend high quality primary school and guard against the gentrification of low-priced houses.

Political Reservation and Allocation of Household Public Goods for Backward Communities

Does political reservation for the backward communities at the rural local governments (Gram Panchayats in India) help favourable allocation of household public goods (houses, toilets, jobs) to the households belonging to those communities? While the conventional literature answers this question in affirmative, the present paper argues that the re-election motive of the political parties may prevent the elected representative belonging to the disadvantaged community to divert the allocation in favour of her own community, especially when it is in minority in the Panchayat. Thus, the purpose of political reservation may fail. Analysing data from villages in West Bengal, India, for Scheduled Caste (SC) reservation at the Gram Panchayats, we find that the impact of political reservation varies across household public goods. The political compulsion shows up the most in provision of jobs, the benefit of which is recurrent in nature.

Hybrid Governance and the Attribution of Political Responsibility: Experimental Evidence from the United States

AbstractHow does the mode of public service delivery affect the attribution of responsibility for public goods? Through a survey experiment on a sample of more than 1,000 Americans, we provide evidence of how the allocation of public goods shapes voters’ support for incumbent politicians. We find that voters prefer a mixture of public–private financing and management when it comes to the delivery of infrastructure. However, once performance information is available, the mode of infrastructure delivery no longer influences their voting intention. The successful delivery of these infrastructure projects is what ultimately matters to voters. Moreover, this preference for a mixture of public and private involvement in public service delivery is stronger among citizens with high political knowledge, who are more likely to punish the incumbent for a failed first phase of the public service delivery. These findings deepen our understanding of how hybrid forms of public service delivery are perceived by voters and how performance information affects evaluations of the performance of public services and politicians alike.

Spousal Secret Affairs with Money: Intra-household Allocative Efficiency in Spaces of Gender Politics in Development

Persisting gender inequities across political, economic and social life have spurred the global agenda to re-examine the triggers and consequences of gender disaggregation in household resource allocations. Defining and measuring intrahousehold allocations has been at the centre of the current debates among international development scholars and practitioners. The lack of clear consensus on intrahousehold public good allocation has consistently limited widespread efforts to design and evaluate programmes and policies aimed at improving women’s welfare. Based on intrahousehold allocation models, this paper proposes a conceptual framework which can accommodate the welfare of the household as an economic entreprise. Building on Sen (1989) and Kabeer (1999), this paper selectively reviews the abundant literature that offers insights into intra-household decision- making process and gender relations. The review illustrates the importance of intrahousehold allocations and describes a set of individual strategies that household agents use to by-pass intrahousehold negotiations and to secure private consumption. In many of the instances where inefficiencies have been identified in the data, a possible immediate cause is individual behaviour aimed at securing personal resources and consumption. Even, if they come, at the expense of total resources available to the household. Although, it need not be the case that such strategic behaviour are necessarily the source of inefficiencies, they may well be feeding the flames of suboptimality in household production entreprises.. That said, the paper clearly iterates circumstances under which non-cooperative behaviour of spousal income hiding could be vital to circumventing social norms which undermine Pareto productive efficiency. The paper further highlights the role played by collective resistance of social forces to economic changes that threaten social norms and gender roles. The study pinpoints evidence of collaborative efforts to stop women from embracing new economic opportunities that overturn traditional roles. Investigating the role played by household structure in reaching Pareto optimality for inefficient rural households, the paper concludes that neither monogamous nor polygynous conjugal units attain higher margins of efficiency. Instead, household agents played dictator games in public good allocation and responded opportunistically to private choices and strategies which optimized secret consumption.

Democratisation Under Diversity: Theory and Evidence from Indonesian Communities

We study the effect of ethnic diversity on local public spending following fiscal decentralisation in a setting where local institutions are salient. Specifically, the latter affects coordination costs and thereby cooperative behaviour across the constituent ethnic groups. Our theory highlights the role of the local elite in lobbying for policies which favour them in a decentralised setting. The differences in preferences over public good allocations along with the salience of coordination costs across ethnic groups are relevant in determining the equilibrium lobbying behaviour. This results in ethnic diversity having a detrimental effect on local developmental spending which is aggravated by increased levels of coordination costs. We test these predictions using Indonesian community-level data. Utilising the 1997 and 2007 Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) rounds, we are able to construct various measures of ethnic diversity. We exploit an institutional feature of Indonesian communities - namely, the observance of traditional laws to proxy coordination costs across ethnic groups. Overall, we find that ethnic diversity depresses local development spending post-decentralisation at the community level particularly where Adat laws (which promote an ethic of mutual co-operation) are not followed. The opposite obtains for spending on non-developmental items, all of which is consistent with our theory.

Allocation of village public goods at community level: does political reservation help?

It has been empirically observed that reserving seats for leaders belonging to disadvantaged social groups at the local level improves targeting of household public goods to households belonging to these groups. However, it is not clear whether a similar result holds for the allocation of village public goods that have limited spillover effects across households in a village, such as repair and maintenance of access roads to households, streetlights, sewer lines, etc. The present paper uses locational data collected from a sample of Indian villages and applies spatial econometrics to test whether political reservations for elected representatives increase allocations to households belonging to the reserved community, especially when they are in the minority. The results show that for certain types of village public goods, political reservations produce favourable allocations for the reserved community when locational clustering of the communities is present.

Matching in the Kolm triangle: interiority and participation constraints of matching equilibria

PurposeIn this paper we show how the Kolm triangle method, which is a standard tool for visualizing allocations in a public good economy, can also be used to provide a diagrammatical exposition of matching mechanisms and their effects on public good supply and welfare. In particular, we describe, on the one hand, for which income distributions interior matching equilibria result, and on the other hand, for which income distributions the agents voluntarily participate in a matching mechanism. As a novel result, we especially show that the “participation zone” is larger than the “interiority zone”Design/methodology/approachWe employ the Kolm triangle approach, which has – compared to most other graphical methods for representing allocations in a public good economy – the advantage that it allows for showing the aggregate budget constraint, the levels of considered agents' private consumption, and the level of public good supply directly in the same diagram.FindingsThe Kolm triangle method can be used to visualize important effects of matching in an elegant way, so basically the increase of public good supply through matching. The interiority of matching depends on the income distribution and especially, on how the “interiority zone” is shrinking when the matching rate increases. Moreover, we were able to delimit the “participation zone” in the Kolm triangle. An important and novel insight is that the participation zone is larger than the interiority zone, which means that also corner matching equilibria in which only one agent makes a positive flat contribution to the public good may make both considered agents better off.Research limitations/implicationsCorner matching equilibria in which only one agent makes a positive flat contribution to the public good may improve all considered agents' welfare. How this welfare effect can be generalized to the case of different utility functions and matching rates will be an issue of future research.Practical implicationsThe examined matching mechanism finds application in many policy fields where public good undersupply is pending. International climate policy is one of these fields of application, for example.Originality/valueThe Kolm triangle method has been particularly helpful to describe the Nash equilibrium in the case of non-cooperative public good provision and to compare this outcome with Pareto efficient public good allocations. Furthermore, the Kolm triangle approach facilitates the analysis of mechanisms for attaining an efficient public good allocation like the Lindahl equilibrium as well as the study of preconditions and limitations faced by such mechanisms. An important and novel insight of our study is that the participation zone is larger than the interiority zone.

Democratisation under Diversity: Theory and Evidence from Indonesian Communities

We study the effect of ethnic diversity on local public spending following fiscal decentralisation in a setting where local institutions are salient. Specifically, the latter affects coordination costs and thereby cooperative behaviour across the constituent ethnic groups. Our theory highlights the role of the local elite in lobbying for policies which favour them in a decentralised setting. The differences in preferences over public good allocations along with the salience of coordination costs across ethnic groups are relevant in determining the equilibrium lobbying behaviour. This results in ethnic diversity having a detrimental effect on local developmental spending which is aggravated by increased levels of coordination costs. We test these predictions using Indonesian community-level data. Utilising the 1997 and 2007 Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) rounds, we are able to construct various measures of ethnic diversity. We exploit an institutional feature of Indonesian communities - namely, the observance of traditional laws to proxy coordination costs across ethnic groups. Overall, we find that ethnic diversity depresses local development spending post-decentralisation at the community level particularly where Adat laws (which promote an ethic of mutual co-operation) are not followed. The opposite obtains for spending on non-developmental items, all of which is consistent with our theory.

Indigene Landrechte in Zeiten des Klimawandels und der Verhandlung um das Freihandelsabkommen Mercosur am Beispiel Brasilien

How to assess the issue of indigenous land rights in the face of man-m⁠a⁠d⁠e climate change and Amazon fires? How to classify the EU free trade agreement „Mercosur“ and relevant climate, environmental and indigenous rights? What are legal opportunities for indigenous people(s) on the international, inter-American and EU level, to prevent the loss of land and forests, and to protect themselves from climate change? On the basis of indigenous land and environmental rights in Brazil and reactions to the Amazon fires, environmental regulations of the "Mercosur Pact" as well as concerned human and indigenous rights are discussed. Further, this article deals with relevant inter-American law (individual indigenous land rights) and international law (collective land rights). Environmental and climate law provide legal and political options for indigenous people(s), for instance in Brasil. Negative impacts of climate actions on indigenous peoples, the competition between environmental protection areas and indigenous territories, the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in sustainable environmental protection and the allocation of Global Public Goods are discussed. There are various interactions between climate and biodiversity protection, human rights, indigenous peoples rights, and free trade between the EU and South America. While protecting forests as a carbon sink, negative environmental or social consequences must be avoided. Like trade agreements, environmental standards for the protection of the Brazilian Amazon rain forest should be enforceable. To reduce deforestation and to confine the effects of climate change, indigenous peoples rights have to be strengthened. The free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples to projects that may affect their territories is essential. It requires effective, coordinated solutions to protect human rights and indigenous land rights, and it needs a sustainable preservation of climate and forests - nationally and internationally. A collapse of the Amazon forest ecosystem would have global climate effects. In Brazil, alternatives to deforestation and destruction are: strengthening the rule of law and agro-ecology, and to defend indigenous territories.