bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Pressman-Wildavsky Paradox: Four Addenda or Why Models Based on Probability Theory Can Predict Implementation Success and Suggest Useful Tactical Advice for Implementers
Authors: Bowen Elinor R. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPressman and Wildavsky'sImplementationoccupies center stage in the developing literature about policy implementation, in part because of the analogy they drew between implementation processes and the multiplicative model from probability theory. This paper takes the relevance of probability theory further and considers the additive model from probability theory and conditional probabilities as well as the multiplicative model. This expanded coverage of probability theorems (1) leads to markedly increased optimism about the likelihood of successful implementation, (2) encompasses empirically reasonable tactics such as persistence, packaging of clearances, engineering bandwagons and policy reduction, and (3) generates advice to hopeful implementers – some of it non-obvious.
Evaluation and Problem Redefinition
Authors: Dery David 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTInadequate problem formulation leads to inadequate, alas persistent, solutions (programs). Program evaluation is commonly held as a means to put programs and policies to the test. The best of controlled experimentation, however, cannot serve as the ‘potential falsifier’ of problem formulation, only of the adequacy of means to solve a pre-conceptualized problem. An analysis of disadvantaged youth policy in Israel is provided to illustrate and support these contentions.
Discounting Discounting
Authors: Goodin Robert E. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPolicy analysts typically presume that future payoffs should be discounted relative to present ones, and that this discounting should proceed at the same rate for all goods and all periods. Closer inspection of four arguments for discounting, however, shows these practices to be problematic. Only two of those arguments provide plausible justifications for time-discounting at all; and neither of those justify a constant rate throughout all periods or for all goods. Indeed, there is an important class of ‘nontradable’ goods which can be discounted only in their own terms. The overall conclusion is that policymakers ought, logically as well as morally, to weight the interests of the future far more heavily than in ordinary discounting procedures.
The Costs and Benefits of Foreign Students in United States Higher Education
Authors: Winkler Donald R. 
Published: November 2008

AbstractThis paper makes a two-fold contribution to the practical application of cost-benefit analysis and to our understanding of the costs and benefits to the host country of foreign students in higher education. First, within the technical constraints it develops a model for assessing costs and benefits; this model is potentially applicable to all countries with foreign students. The model includes educational and political as well as economic inputs, and the paper discusses qualitative as well as quantitative costs and benefits. Secondly, the model is applied to the particular case of the United States. The significance of different perspectives for assessing net benefit is recognized, and costs and benefits are assessed from the perspectives of higher education institutions, state residents and all US citizens. The paper finds positive net benefits, subject to a number of assumptions. However, the policies of both state governments and the US government do not appear to be consistent with the goal of maximizing this net benefit.
Business Associations and Public Policy: a Comparison of Organisational Development in Britain and Canada
Authors: Coleman William , Grant Wyn 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe levels of organisational development of business interest associations in two industrial sectors – chemicals and food processing – in Canada and the United Kingdom are compared, with special reference to the capacity of the associations to undertake public policy functions and to engage in long-term strategic thinking about the problems facing their industries. There is a higher level of organisational development in British business interest associations than in their Canadian counterparts, especially in the chemicals sector. The British associations are better able to assume responsibility for public policy implementation as private governments. A number of explanations are reviewed, particular emphasis being placed on different company structures, the disintegrating effect of high levels of foreign ownership in Canada, bureaucratic competition in Canada, association involvement in collective bargaining, and the impact of European Community membership on the British associations.
Large Firms and Public Policy in Britain
Authors: Grant Wyn 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTDespite the high level of concentration in the UK economy, the politics of firms has been largely neglected. The emergence of government relations divisions in very large companies is discussed and their functions are reviewed. However, very large firms are also actively involved in business interest associations. Very large firms may develop distinctive corporate political philosophies and a typology of such philosophies is presented. Government seeks to modify the behaviour of firms by providing a range of industrial policy incentives, but the available evidence suggests that the impact of such incentives is limited. Lack of mutual trust and understanding between firms and government, and the persistence of a concept of the autonomous firm, leads to pessimistic conclusions about the likely success of attempts to manage industrial decline.
The UK Monetarist Experiment
Authors: Arestis P. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe paper argues that the monetarist ‘experiment’ of the first Thatcher government in Britain (1979–83) has been unsuccessful. Alternative monetarist philosophies and their specific application to Britain are outlined. These propositions are then re-examined in the light of the actual experience of economic policy in Britain, and are found to be inadequate. Inflation in Britain has come down, but ironically after a period when money supply grew quickly – well above the government's target ranges. Unemployment has also risen much more severely than monetarists predicted. ‘Monetarism’ in Britain can be interpreted less in terms of theoretical and empirical economic analysis as in terms of value judgements about the size of the public sector and about paying a high cost in unemployment to stabilise prices.
Decision rules and regulatory reform
Authors: Linder Stephen H. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe regulation of risks to health and the environment in the United States is currently undergoing serious criticism for its impact on the recession economy. Attempts to diminish health risks by placing stringent limitations on potentially harmful substances are thought to be excessively expensive and ineffective. To remedy this problem, basic reforms in the way these regulations are fashioned have been proposed. Perhaps the best known is cost-benefit analysis. Nevertheless, there are a number of areas where agencies purposely avoid making tradeoffs between costs and benefits and instead assign priorities among levels and types of benefits. However, despite a considerable literature examining the merits of making tradeoffs in regulatory decisions, little attention has been given to the disparate premises of the tradeoff and no-tradeoff rules and how the choice of decision rules determines the role of cost considerations in agency decision making. This paper not only examines these issues, but develops an analytical framework for restructuring the choice between rules. Instead of abolishing the no-tradeoff rules, the analytical framework proposed here can be used to generate a compromise rule which permits partial tradeoffs under certain well-defined circumstances.
Marketable Permits: What's all the Fuss About?
Authors: Supa Robert W. Hahn 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe command and control approach to government regulation of pollution is clearly not working for many problems. While the theoretical case for applying market mechanisms to control pollution as an alternative is persuasive, there are several stumbling blocks which arise in their application. This paper examines some of the key implementation issues which must be addressed in designing a marketable permit scheme. The issues are brought into focus by considering a particular example – the control of sulfur oxides emissions in Los Angeles.
Technology-Based Small Firms and Regional Innovation Potential: The Role of Public Procurement
Authors: Rothwell Roy 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTTraditional regional policies largely failed to attract a balanced range of skills to the regions, leaving them deficient in all but ‘blue collar’ craft skills. Thus, regional policies have hardly equipped the regions to survive during a period when technology is becoming an increasingly important element in competitiveness. In most countries, industry in the regions is composed mainly of mature companies producing traditional products and which often experience great difficulty in adapting to the rapidly changing requirements of the latter part of the twentieth century. Small firms, and especially new small firms appear, in contrast, better able to adapt. Regional policies should, therefore, be directed more towards the creation and growth of technology-based new small firms in the regions. Technology-based large firms are, of course, less dependent on the local environment than on their smaller counterparts and are better able to overcome local technical and market deficiencies. In order to stimulate the growth of innovative small firms, it is necessary to create an innovation infrastructure in the development regions, which, generally, have only limited innovation potential. This infrastructure will comprise a set of policy instruments on both the supply side and the demand side, while at the same time attempting to create a fiscal and regulatory climate conducive to innovatory endeavours by local firms. Perhaps the potentially most powerful element in this environment would be the establishment of local innovation oriented procurement procedures. A number of guidelines for the development of a viable system of innovation-oriented procurement are provided in the final section of this paper.
The Nationalisation of the Banks in Mitterand's France: Rationalisations and Reasons
Authors: Cobham David 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the arguments for the nationalisation in 1982 of much of the privately owned banking sector in France, on the grounds that this would restore the power of money creation to the “collectivity’ and produce a better economic policy. The paper concludes that the French government's case was grounded more in elections than economics.
Curbing Public Expenditure: Current Trends
Authors: Tarschys Daniel 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTNearly every OECD country has faced a scissors crisis in public finance since the worldwide depression of the mid-1970s; in slow growth economies public spending has been rising faster than tax revenues. In response, a great variety of methods have been employed to control public spending. Governments have sought to: impose global ceilings on spending; modify indexation rules; decentralize decremental decisions among government agencies; improve cash flow management; devise balanced packages; introduce new constitutional rules; provide incentives for retrenchment; and privatize public sector activities. Efforts to impose cuts in spending have been directed at the bureaucracy; transfer payments; subsidies; local and regional government; and quangos. The conclusion emphasizes that retrenchment policy presupposes a shift in the balance of power between guardians and spenders.
When is a Policy Instrument not an Instrument? Fiscal Marksmanship in Britain, 1951–84
Authors: Mosley Paul 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe paper considers the size and the implications of the errors made by the British Treasury in forecasting the budget over the period 1951–84. On average the Treasury underestimated the public sector fiscal deficit by 0.5 per cent of GDP; this is about half the average amount by which Chancellors attempted to change aggregate demand by means of their budgets. The general pattern was for tax revenue to be under-predicted, but for public expenditure to be under-predicted by even more. The government's fiscal deficit and thus the reflationary effect of government policy was therefore greater than the Treasury intended.A decomposition exercise carried out on the Treasury's own model for the fiscal year 1980/81 suggests that only about half of this error is due to errors in the specification of the model; the other half is due to errors in data estimation and in forecasting exogenous variables. Hence, the scope for improving forecasts by improvements to the model is limited. The paper considers three alternative methods by which forecasts could be improved: the application of realisation functions relating forecast to actual values; more frequent budgeting; and an attempt to derive more tax revenue from those categories (such as excise duties on alcohol, petrol and tobacco) whose yield is easiest to predict.
The Political Economy of Imperfect Competition
Authors: Etzioni Amitai 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTEconomic actors command political power as well as economic power. It is used to the same effect to create monopolies and oligopolies. The two powers can be combined; e.g., aside from monopolies based only on economic power or only on government intervention, there are especially powerful monopolies that command both powers. The stability of the various power holders is related to the nature of their power base; pure economic power is particularly unstable. However, economic power can be more readily amassed than interventionist power, which violates norms, and has a sharply declining marginal utility. When the effects of interventionist power are added to those of economic power, economies such as America, which are often classified as quite competitive, turn out to be much less so.
Laws as an Instrument of Policy: A Study in Central-Local Government Relations
Authors: Page Edward 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTLaw is an instrument which can be used by central government to influence its environment, including other levels of government. This paper examines a number of fundamental questions about the nature of legal influence upon local authorities in Britain. Legislation affects local authorities in a variety of ways: through making direct reference to local authority organisations and the services they provide; through affecting all large organisations, public or private; and through affecting the organisations and individuals with which local authorities interact. In the 1970s a large proportion of legislation was concerned with the financial aspects of local services. Relatively few laws make substantive changes in the legal framework within which local authorities operate and much legislation can be categorised as ‘anodyne’. However, particular items of legislation can produce such substantive changes in public policies and in the powers of different organisations within government.
Maximizing Tax Revenue While Minimizing Political Costs
Authors: Rose Richard 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTTax revenue is a function of laws and administration as well as economic activity. Four different theories purport to explain revenue-raising in contemporary Western nations: universal abstractions about economic systems; national culture: tax-specific characteristics; avoiding political costs through political inertia. OECD data on taxation in Western nations since 1955 show that national tax systems do not have sufficient in common to validate universalistic generalizations Tax-specific influences can be identified only for a few major sources of revenue. The inertia persistence of substantial national distinctiveness reflects a non-decision making approach to tax policy by politicians. The strategy is to rely primarily upon revenue-buoyant taxes authorized by past legislation rather than risk the political blame for introducing new taxes to raise large amounts of needed additional revenue.
Have Taxes Led Government Expenditures? The United States as a Test Case
Authors: Von Furstenberg George M. , Green R. Jeffery , Jeong Jin-Ho 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper explores intertemporal relations between innovations in government receipts and expenditures, by type and in total, at federal and state-local levels in the United States over the period 1955–82. A structural model is specified with tax and spending components as endogenous variables. After estimation with full information maximum likelihood techniques, residuals derived from the reduced form equations are used in causality tests. These tests show that where there is an indication of causality, spending tends to lead taxes. The lesson learned from past data thus appears to be that changing aggregate tax rates does not cause spending to change. Tax initiatives provide little leverage if changes in the growth of government are intended.
The Determinants of Taxation in Britain: An Empirical Test
Authors: Karran Terence 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe effects of political and macroeconomic influences in determining the principal taxes in the United Kingdom since 1948 are examined here. Basic models of tax determination – policy initiative, macroeconomic determination and consumer preference – are tested. Causal path analysis is used to answer the question: Which is more important in determining tax revenues: the policy initiatives of governments, or circumstances in the economy which in the short term may be outside governmental control? The results demonstrate that for most taxes policy initiatives to alter tax rates and bases are much less important to revenue yield than underlying trends in the economy. The continuing strength of these macroeconomic secular trends circumscribes attempts by British policymakers to depart radically from the existing pattern of taxation.
The Public Debt of French Local Government
Authors: Derycke Pierre-Henri , Gilbert Guy 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTAfter a sharp increase, the public debt of French local communities has been stabilized in real terms: its amount reached 54 per cent of total public debt in 1980. In the French institutional framework, local government borrowing policy is under the tight control of central agencies. An econometric model of the borrowing behaviour of local governments since 1965 is presented; it emphasizes the role of internal determinants of local debt (needs for investment, self-financing ability of governments), external constraints (e.g. interest rates and the financial resources of lenders, such as households savings), and finally the impact of macroeconomic policy measures from the central government.
The Subsidy as a Purely Normative Concept
Authors: Ricketts Martin 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTAlthough the term ‘subsidy’ is commonly used in the context of social, industrial, and trade policy, there is no general agreement concerning its precise definition. This paper argues that current usage of the term ‘subsidy’ does not permit us to isolate a distinct policy instrument. Instead, subsidies exist when the tax system fails to accord with specified ‘norms’. Thus, the subsidy turns out to be a normative concept and is defined relative to desired ends. Explicit acceptance of the normative character of subsidies might clarify policy disputes by distinguishing between disagreements over ends, and disagreements about technical relationships.
The Efficient Diffusion of Steel Technology Across Nations
Authors: Tarr David G. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper attempts to explain what influenced efficient decisions in the adoption of important technology in the steel industry. An index of efficient decisions for the adoption of the basic oxygen furnace and for continuous casting is discussed theoretically and then empirically developed for the steel industries of 28 and 27 countries respectively. Statistical tests are performed to determine the influence of government ownership of the steel industries, central planning of the economies and involvement in international competition on efficient decisions regarding technology adoption. The tests reveal that both government ownership and central planning retarded efficient decisions regarding the adoption of technology.
Conspiracy and The Policy Process: A Case Study of the New Zealand Experiment
Authors: Wallis Joe 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper advances the concept of a policy conspiracy – perpetrators strive together to steer the policy process in a direction which they believe to be worthwhile and possible. A policy conspiracy is conceived as an exclusive social network of policy participants who commit themselves to the advancement of a policy quest which embodies their shared hopes and who promote one another to positions of influence on the basis of the mutual trust they develop through regular interaction. The degree to which the network of technocrats, technopols and change agents who played a pivotal role in the implementation and consolidation of the ‘New Zealand experiment’ between 1984 and 1993 exhibit these characteristics is considered. By examining the way this policy conspiracy took advantage of a significant window of opportunity for reform, this paper seeks to make a contribution to the literature concerned with the conditions for radical policy reform.
The State and Industrial Followers: Japanese Versus French Computer Strategy, 1960s–1980s
Authors: Siaroff Alan , Lee Clement 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTWithin the advanced capitalist world, Japan and France have normally been the main examples of strong, interventionist states. From the 1960s onwards, government policy in each nation attempted to cultivate a domestically based computer industry in response to American dominance. This seemed to be parallel cases of strong states attempting to target an industry in order to catch up. However, by the start of the 1980s it was clear that French policy had failed, whereas Japan was relatively successful. We explain this difference by stressing that Japanese policy was ultimately more market conforming. This occurred because Japanese companies were less dependent on government financing and procurement for their business compared to French counterparts. In short, the Japanese state had less power over its domestic computer companies than did the French state. This national difference in ‘state strength’, i.e., state-business power relations, accounts for a negotiated pattern of industrial restructuring in Japan compared to the predominantly state-led pattern in France.
Military Administrative Behavior and Democratization: Civilian Cabinet Appointments in Military Regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Anene John N. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTMilitary administrators in sub-Saharan Africa often appoint civilian political elites to cabinet positions for the following reasons: to advance effective governance, as a response to demands for transition to civilian rule, and as a political technique to civilianize the military regime. Empirical patterns of civilian cabinet appointments by the types of post-military political regimes show that the nature of civilian involvement in military administration is a valid predictor of the types of regime likely to follow military rule. Further findings confer some historical insights to the programmed and the national conference models of democratization in the region. In addition, military administrative analysis is a way to gain new insights into military transition in the region.