the spread of municipal reform temporal spatial and social dynamics the adoption of commission and managerial administrative structures and their subsequent abandonment by the 267 largest american cities during the period 1900 1942 is studied using event history methods full period equations show no significant direct effect of percentage catholic culture clash or population size hierarchical diffussion and only a modest impact of city age modernization a strong effect from average annual manufacturing wages is found but in a direction contrary to that posited by the class conflict hypothesis the variable affecting transition rates most strongly appears to be regional adoption percentages an indicator of neighborhood diffusion these findings suggest revisions of the conventional image of the municipal reform experience

panel estimates of a two tiered earnings frontier this paper uses panel data to estimate a two tiered instead of a one tiered frontier model the innovation is to develop a two step maximum likelihood procedure yielding consistent estimates of inefficiency while at the same time accounting for heterogeneity the model is applied by estimating a two tiered earnings function to obtain indices of worker and firm incomplete labour market wage information using panel data from the panel study of income dynamics 1969 84 the estimation preserves the traditional quadratic age earnings profile but measures the extent to which employers often pay more than necessary to hire a worker incomplete employer information while at the same time employees often accept wages less than they could otherwise command incomplete employee information the results indicate that employees acquire less information than employers 1996 john wiley sons ltd

local government structure and the quality of minority neighborhoods one of the most long standing and controversial issues surrounding local government structure in the united states is how reformed political institutions have impacted minority neighborhoods a common belief is that reformism has harmed these neighborhoods but there is no empirical evidence on this issue drawing upon capital asset pricing theory this paper empirically investigates the effects of two reforms the council manager form of government and at large councilor elections on the quality of nonwhite neighborhoods quality is found to be higher in majority white places with at large as opposed to district based elections quality is not found to be affected by the form of government

financial liberalization financial regulation and bank efficiency a multi country analysis this article investigates the impact of financial reforms on bank efficiency more specifically we distinguish between two different types of financial reforms i e financial liberalization measures and measures of the quality of bank regulation and supervision i e financial regulation and study their relationship to bank efficiency separately moreover we analyse whether the impact of financial liberalization on bank efficiency is conditional on the quality of regulation and supervision of the banking system we apply stochastic frontier analysis to calculate bank efficiency at the individual bank level and use a new and detailed database that measures different aspects of financial reforms the data set consists of 87 312 bank year observations covering 61 countries for the period 1996 2005 overall we show that the impact of financial liberalization policies on bank efficiency is conditional on the extent to which bank regulation and supervision has been adopted and developed

local government type and municipal bond ratings what s the relationship abstractthere is an extensive literature analysing the executive branch within local u s government jurisdictions this has largely revolved around the differences between elected mayors and appointed city managers much of the academic work has considered the potential efficiency gains that may be associated with either form of government and comparative analyses between the two however the empirical literature has been divided regarding the relative efficiency of either form this article attempts to add to that literature by considering how bond markets may perceive potential efficiencies that emerge from one executive type over the other by evaluating bond ratings for a sample of large municipal governments in the united states overall the results suggest that municipalities headed by a city manager are associated with increased bond ratings and thus lower borrowing costs which may lend support that this form of administration is on some margin relatively more efficient than others these re

the uk association conference attendance decision making process this paper reports on research carried out into the consumer behaviour displayed by uk association conference delegates when deciding to attend a conference examination of the available literature suggested that there has been little investigation of the delegate s perspective on attending a conference as most research into business events has traditionally been centred on the supply side particularly convention destination image and association site selection the paper found six underlying dimensions of the uk association conference delegate decision making process personal professional development networking opportunities cost location time and convenience and health and wellbeing additionally regression analysis showed that two of the dimensions networking opportunities and cost were significant predictors of intention to attend the conference again in the future

the influence of the number of statewide legislative referendums on voter participation in the us this empirical study seeks to broaden the interpretation of the rational voter model so as to include the potential effects of the number of statewide legislative referendums this study tests the hypothesis that greater numbers of such referendums increase voter turnout because they elevate the expected gross benefits egb of voting by empowering voters while not significantly increasing the expected gross costs egc of voting using state level data for the 2006 general election in the us as well as the 2004 us presidential election and after allowing for a variety of economic and demographic factors this study finds compelling evidence that the number of statewide legislative referendums does significantly increase voter turnout

local institutions and the politics of urban growth this article uses a political market framework to analyze how the structure of local political institutions affects the relative political influence of development and environmental interests in the context of urban growth using panel data from 406 florida cities from 1998 to 2003 the empirical analysis finds important interaction effects between the structure of city executive branch institutions and interest group variables the economic and political forces driving urban growth do not operate identically in all cities they vary as a function of institutional context institutional structure helps determine which interest groups have their preferences reflected in local land use changes and development patterns the resulting patterns suggest a sustainability paradox wherein richer environmental interests push for the preservation of environmental amenities while at the same time accelerating the number of residential units built in a community

distributive politics ward representation and the spread of zoning this analysis examines two alternative explanations for the adoption of comprehensive zoning ordinances in the years immediately following its initial adoption in new york city the market failure explanation predicts zoning adoption in cities where externality problems represented by heavy incidence of manufacturing exist the distributive policymaking model treats zoning as a form of regulation that is most likely to be found in cities where local legislators are elected from geographically concentrated constituencies e g wards and therefore try to target policy benefits to their own constituencies while spreading the policy costs over all constituencies some support is found for each model especially striking is the interactive effect of ward representation and of economic interest i e levels of home ownership

diffusion of regulatory impact analysis among oecd and eu member states with the exception of few comparative case studies the literature on regulatory reform and regulatory impact analysis ria tends to focus on internal political actors activities and processes furthermore empirical analyses of new public management have overlooked the dynamics of communications among networks of administrative reformers this article fills these gaps presenting results of an event history analysis on the diffusion of ria it probes rationales for the origin of ria and administrative capacity explanations in combination with variables referring to international and transnational communication channels of administrative reforms a hypothesis based on legal origin is also tested the findings show that the decision to adopt ria rests on transnational networks as well as administrative variables such as government expenditure and legal origin

monitoring banking sector fragility a multivariate logit approach this article explores how a multivariate logit model of the probability of a banking crisis can be used to monitor banking sector fragility the proposed approach relies on readily available data and the fragility assessment has a clear interpretation based on in sample statistics the model has better in sample performance than currently available alternatives and the monitoring system can be tailored to fit the preferences of decision makers regarding type i and type ii errors the framework can be useful as a preliminary screen to economize on precautionary costs

banking deregulation and allocative efficiency in pakistan abstractthis article examines the impact of deregulation policies on allocative efficiency of banks in pakistan it investigates whether deregulation has impacted the pattern of allocative efficiency of banks and explores which bank ownership segment has been more responsive it uses data from 1991 to 2005 and explicitly models allocative inefficiency by using the translog shadow cost share system empirical results show that overregulation and imperfect market structure hampers the ability of banks to make competitive decisions we find evidence of allocative inefficiency leading to over utilization of labour and deposits vis a vis operating cost empirical results for time varying allocative efficiency show declining levels of allocative inefficiency for state owned and private banks in post reform period deregulation policies induce state owned banks to decrease over utilization of labour relative to deposits and operating cost while private banks succeed in using operating cost closer to optimal leve

good bye financial repression hello financial crash some unintended consequences of financial liberalization in latin america are analyzed in this paper intrinsic imperfectious in financial markets and the policy dilemmas they pose are reviewed first the stylized facts of southern cone experiments in financial liberization are then presented alternative ways of organlzing domestic capital markets under latin american conditions are discussed and an eclectic reform mongering program is proposed

basel iii and perceived resilience of banks in the brics economies abstractthis study investigates how the additional capital and liquidity requirements of basel iii would increase the resilience of banks in particular using panel data from 2007 to 2014 we examine the resilience of banks in the brics economies our results suggest that a 10 increase in capital adequacy ratio car tier 1 capital ratio tra and leverage ratio lev the resilience as measured by z score of banks increases by about 2 18 0 89 and 1 31 respectively similarly for a 100 increase in liquidity coverage ratio lcr the resilience of banks increases by 0 51 1 10 and 1 19 respectively in the models associated with car tra and lev hence our findings suggest that the car is robust to increase the resilience of banks our study also reveals that the lcr and lev are the most effective to increase the resilience of banks if implemented simultaneously we also find that the stage of economic development does not matter in formulating policies for the brics economies and finally

financial liberalization and bank efficiency a comparative analysis of india and pakistan this paper provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of the technical efficiency of commercial banks in india and pakistan during 1988 1998 a period characterized by far reaching changes in the banking industry brought about by financial liberalization data envelopment analysis is applied to two alternative input output specifications to measure technical efficiency and to decompose technical efficiency into its two components pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency the consistency of the estimated efficiency scores are checked by examining their relationship with three traditional non frontier measures of bank performance in addition the relationship between bank size and technical efficiency is examined it is found that the overall technical efficiency of the banking industry of both countries improved gradually over the years especially after 1995 unlike public sector banks in india public sector banks in pakistan witnessed improvement in scale efficiency only it is also found that banks are relatively more efficient in generating earning assets than in generating income this is attributed to the presence of high non performing loans in addition it is found that the gap between the pure technical efficiency of different size groups has declined over the years

the impact of liberalization on the productive efficiency of indian commercial banks abstract we examine the productive efficiency of 70 indian commercial banks during the early stages 1986 1991 of the ongoing period of liberalization we use data envelopment analysis to calculate radial technical efficiency scores we then use stochastic frontier analysis to attribute variation in the calculated efficiency scores to three sources a temporal component an ownership component and a random noise component we find publicly owned indian banks to have been the most efficient followed by foreign owned banks and privately owned indian banks we also find a temporal improvement in the performance of foreign owned banks virtually no trend in the performance of privately owned indian banks and a temporal decline in the performance of publicly owned indian banks we attempt to explain these patterns in terms of the government s evolving regulatory policies

lessons from the asian crisis abstract this paper provides an asymmetric information analysis of the recent east asian crisis it then outlines several lessons from this crisis first there is a strong rationale for an international lender of last resort second without appropriate conditionality for this lending the moral hazard created by operation of an international lender of last resort can promote financial instability third although capital flows did contribute to the crisis they are a symptom rather than an underlying cause of the crisis suggesting exchange controls are unlikely to be a useful strategy to avoid future crises fourth pegged exchange rate regimes are a dangerous strategy for emerging market countries and make financial crises more likely

the choice of municipal government structure and public expenditures numerous empirical studies have attempted to measure the effect of varying government structures on public expenditures i argue that these prior may have produced biased estimates as they are predicated on the assumption that government structures are exogenous

capital market liberalization economic growth and instability summary this paper reviews briefly the arguments for capital market liberalization and identifies their theoretical and empirical weaknesses this provides the foundations for the argument for intervention in short term capital flows the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the various ways in which such interventions may be implemented 2000 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

convention tourism modelling abstract this paper introduces an approach for identifying the determinants of convention attendance at alternative cities this approach permits planners to evaluate the relative importance of accessibility and attractiveness variables as determinants of convention attendance for each site four major convention sites in the usa are analysed to illustrate the procedure in this example accessibility was found to be far more important than attractiveness

cost efficiency in bangladesh banking does financial reform matter abstractthis article estimates the cost efficiency of the commercial banks of bangladesh in the context of financial reform employing the single stage stochastic frontier analysis sfa model the study uses a unique balanced panel data set comprising bank level annual data from the dominant commercial banks in bangladesh for the period 1983 2012 the results show that bank cost has fallen due to financial deregulation our results from the data envelopment analysis do not vary significantly that we obtained from the sfa in addition the presence of politically linked directors on the bank board has an adverse effect on efficiency these findings suggest that further reforms aiming at removing all sorts of political influence should continue to ensure competitive environment in order to achieve cost efficiency in the financial sector of the country

financial liberalization and economic growth a meta analysis this study provides a systematic analysis of the empirical literature on the relationship between financial liberalization and economic growth by conducting a meta analysis based on 441 t statistics reported in 60 empirical studies we focus on explaining the heterogeneity of results in our sample in terms of study data and method specific characteristics although our findings indicate that on average there is a positive effect of financial liberalization on growth the significance of this effect is only weak moreover we find that most of the variables that may help explain the heterogeneity of results are insignificant there are two exceptions first studies carried out based on data from the 1970s on average find a statistically less significant relationship between financial liberalization policies and growth i e they report lower t statistics as compared to studies using data from the 1980s second studies controlling for the level of development of the financial system report lower t statistics for the relationship between liberalization and growth

financial development financial liberalization and social capital abstractthe relationship between financial liberalization policies and financial development is controversial the impact of these policies differs greatly across countries in the literature the quality of formal institutions has been identified as an important source of this heterogeneity as countries with a weak institutional environment generally fail to benefit from financial liberalization using panel data covering 82 countries for the period 1973 2008 we find evidence that social capital may substitute for formal institutions as a prerequisite for effective financial liberalization policies in particular we find that during the post washington consensus period countries with a high prevailing level of social capital can ensure that financial liberalization positively influences financial development despite the poor quality of their formal institutions

the mechanisms of policy diffusion local policy adoptions provide an excellent opportunity to test among potential mechanisms of policy diffusion by examining three types of antismoking policy choices by the 675 largest u s cities between 1975 and 2000 we uncover robust patterns of policy diffusion yielding three key findings first we distinguish among and find evidence for four mechanisms of policy diffusion learning from earlier adopters economic competition among proximate cities imitation of larger cities and coercion by state governments second we find a temporal component to these effects with imitation being a more short lived diffusion process than the others third we show that these mechanisms are conditional with larger cities being better able to learn from others less fearful of economic spillovers and less likely to rely on imitation

demographic factors affecting constitutional decisions the case of municipal charters after decades of studying municipal charters largely by looking for patterns in the data we have a good basis for proceeding more formally with testable theories the political significance of demographic change becomes apparent by looking at its impact on political conflict in combination with the biases in social choice rules the theory of civil rights provides a framework for doing this it suggests identifying 1 the distribution of civil rights conveyed to citizens by alternative charters and 2 the bases for political conflict such as different demands for services and the unequal command of economic resources to satisfy them charters then become political tools simple statistical tests fail to refute this

forecasting international conference attendance abstract there are many tourism modelling forecasting studies but most of these are concerned with holiday tourism or total tourism ie not disaggregated by visit purpose conference tourism is virtually ignored in this paper an econometric model which explains tourism demand for an international conference is developed the model is specified in logistic form and is estimated using maximum likelihood techniques various alternative forms of the model are considered for the forecasting model selected good empirical results are obtained in terms of model fit and in contrast with previous non conference tourism forecasting findings the forecasts generated by the econometric model are more accurate than random walk forecasts

social network effects on the extent of innovation diffusion a computer simulation of innovation diffusion no longer focus exclusively on explaining the rate at which innovations diffuse or the sequence in which they are adopted they also focus on explaining why certain innovations diffuse extensively be coming de facto standards whereas others do so partially or not at all many of these theories specify a bandwagon process a positive feedback loop in which increases in the number of adopters create stronger bandwagon pressures and stronger bandwagon pressures in turn cause increases in the number of adopters factors affecting if and how many times this feedback loop cycles explain if and how many potential adopters jump on a bandwagon we argue that one important factor has not yet been incorporated into theories explaining bandwagons extent the structure of social net works through which potential adopters of innovations find out information about these innovations which can cause them to adopt these innovations we advance a theory of how the structure of social networks affects bandwagons extent we propose that both the number of network links as well as small seemingly insignificant idiosyncracies of their structures can have very large effects on the extent of an innovation s diffusion among members of a social network

financial sector liberalization bank privatization and efficiency evidence from pakistan abstract the pakistani banking system has been transformed over the past 15 years through liberalization the entry of private banks the privatization of public sector banks and the tightening of prudential regulations the effects of these changes on bank productivity and relative efficiency are investigated using various techniques bank productivity in terms of profits has increased and new entrants have been efficient but the dispersion of efficiency remains wide the privatized banks improved their profit efficiency in the period immediately following their privatization but in the subsequent years only one significantly improved its efficiency whereas the other did not differentiate itself in terms of efficiency from the remaining state owned banks the new private domestic banks generally proved to be among the most efficient and sometimes out performed the foreign banks

the effects of deregulation on the performance of financial institutions the case of spanish savings banks this paper examines the impact of regulatory reform on the performance of spanish savings banks the focus is whether increased competition brought on by deregulation affected performance of banks over time output technical efficiency which is defined in terms of the production possibility frontier is also examined empirical results show declining levels of output technical efficiency along with a significantly high rate of technical progress in spite of declining technical efficiency during this period evidence of an increasing trend in productivity growth is found

deregulation ownership and productivity growth in the banking industry evidence from india this paper analyzes the relationship between deregulation and total factor productivity tfp growth in the indian banking industry using a generalized shadow cost function approach tfp growth is decomposed into a technological change a scale and a miscellaneous component a disaggregated panel data analysis using the population of public and private banks over 1985 96 that covers both pre and post deregulation periods indicates that a significant decline in regulatory distortions and the anticipated increase in tfp growth have not yet materialized following deregulation while private sector banks have improved their performance mainly due to the freedom to expand output public sector banks have not responded well to the deregulation measures

the buchanan tullock model some extensions in their seminal work the calculus of consent 1962 buchanan and tullock develop a decision model which embodies fundamental relation ships relevant to institutional choices however the buchanan tullock model remains general thus inviting others to specify details and to develop extensions the present paper seeks to explicate this important model so as to clarify the framework in certain important ways and then to extend the model by introducing explicit considerations of such dimensions as group size and group preference heterogeneity as explicit variables

privatisation of waste collection services in response to fiscal stress in times of crisis according to the conventional theoretical framework fiscal stress is an explanatory factor of privatisation since the latter can provide economies of scale and cost savings as indicated by the theory of public choice however urban planning theories suggest that public choice does not take into account the collective needs of those receiving public services the present study aims to clarify two major issues firstly in the presence of fiscal stress do public managers really privatise and secondly does privatisation harm the public interest to investigate these questions we constructed and analysed a discrete time survival model which was applied to the period 2000 2010 to reflect the effects of the current global financial crisis on the fiscal stress privatisation relationship with respect to urban waste collection services the results obtained indicate that when certain aspects of financial condition worsen the likelihood of public services being privatised increases this was the case dur

the impact of financial liberalization on bank efficiency evidence from latin america and asia this article investigates the impact of financial liberalization on bank efficiency using data for a sample of over 4000 bank year observations from ten emerging economies for the period 1991 2000 we use data envelopment analysis dea to calculate bank efficiency at the individual bank level bank efficiency measures are then aggregated at the country level to investigate the relationship between financial liberalization and bank efficiency using a panel least square fixed effects model overall we find strong support for the positive impact of financial liberalization programmes on bank efficiency

sovereignty relinquished explaining commitment to the international human rights covenants 1966 1999 this article examines whether the content of the international human rights covenants and the costs associated with their ratification influence the decision of countries to join the author evaluates three theoretical perspectives rationalism world polity institutionalism and the clash of civilizations with data for more than 130 countries between 1966 and 1999 rationalists contend that treaty ratification is tightly coupled with internal sovereignty arrangements human rights practices and ideological commitments all of which become more important as treaty enforcement strengthens world polity institutionalists expect ratification to be loosely coupled with a country s conduct or its political ideological or cultural commitments although this gap narrows as compliance is more effectively enforced a civilizations approach predicts tight coupling between ratification and cultural values regardless of the mechanisms in place for enforcing compliance results lend partial support to rationalism a

competing for global capital or local voters the politics of business location incentives the competition for global capital has led to interjurisdictional competition between countries states and cities as to who can offer the most attractive incentives to firms in this study we examine the domestic politics of this competition by focusing on incentive use in the united states from 1999 to 2012 we define incentives as the targeted tax deductions or exemptions that are used to lure businesses into a locality drawing on data from municipal incentive programs we examine how electoral competition shapes the use and oversight of targeted incentives we find evidence that cities with elected mayors provide larger incentives than non elected city managers by taking advantage of exogeneity in the assignment of city government institutions and a database of over 2000 investment incentives from 2010 to 2012 we also find that elected mayors enjoy more lax oversight of incentive projects than their appointed counterparts our results have important implications for the study of interjurisdictional competition and the role of electoral institutions in shaping economic policy

hierarchical accountability in government abstract this paper studies a setting where a relatively uninformed voter holds a policymaker accountable through an informed intermediary in equilibrium the voter uses the intermediary to insulate the policymaker from pandering incentives when the voter s policy expertise is low or the policymaker s congruence is high the voter can thus enjoy the benefits of bureaucratic expertise without forfeiting electoral responsiveness we examine the model s predictions using u s city level data and find that hierarchically accountable managers reduce popular city employment and adjust it more flexibly than electorally accountable mayors the estimated incentive effects are smaller in cities with high voter expertise and larger during election years and are robust to instrumentation by precipitation shocks that influenced early 20th century manager government adoptions for reasons obsolete today

financial deregulation and total factor productivity change an empirical study of turkish commercial banks abstract in january 1980 a new liberal economic policy was adopted in turkey to promote financial market development and increase the efficiency and productivity of the financial sector by fostering competition among banks as a result of this policy the turkish banking system witnessed a series of legal structural and institutional changes throughout the 1980s to enhance their competitive viability turkish banks responded by streamlining their operations and investing in new technology utilizing a dea type malmquist total factor productivity change index we examine productivity growth efficiency change and technical progress in turkish commercial banks during the deregulation of financial markets in turkey we found that all forms of turkish banks although in different magnitudes have recorded significant productivity gains driven mostly by efficiency increases rather than technical progress efficiency increases however were mostly owing to improved resource management practices rather than improved scales our results also indicate that private banks began to close their performance gap with public banks in the new environment