Download or read book Fiscal Decentralization and the Challenge of Hard Budget Constraints written by Jonathan Rodden and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multi-country study of the conditions under which decentralized countries might ensure fiscal discipline.
Download or read book The Soft Budget Constraint The Emergence Persistence and Logic of an Institution written by Gun Eriksson Skoog and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story of the soft budget constraint. It seeks an answer to a paradox: the prevalence of the soft budget constraint in spite of the tremendous inefficiencies that it gives rise to, and its persistence in spite of reform of the system of which it is an integral part. The story aims at increasing our understanding of why the phenomenon exists. By studying the case of state in Tanzania before, during and after socialism, an explanation of the owned enterprises emergence, persistence and logic of the soft budget constraint is suggested. This introductory chapter presents an argument showing why this story is worth telling. It discusses the research topic and how the problem it presents is attacked. THE SOFT BUDGET CONSTRAINT The soft budget constraint is today a popular metaphor. Originally it was seen as a characteristic of the socialist system. It refers to the tendency of primarily state-owned enterprises to have their liquidity gaps or losses accommodated by the state, or some other external funding body, and to the resulting expectations of such bail-out. The concept was coined by the Hungarian economist Hmos Kornai. ' He distinguishes between four major forms of external financial assistance that contribute to the soft budget constraint: soft subsidies, soft taxation, soft credit and soft 2 administrative pricing.
Download or read book Soft Budget Constraints Firm Commitments and the Social Safety Net written by International Monetary Fund and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1991-10-01 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is shown that the inefficiencies created by the “soft” budget constraint, enjoyed by enterprises in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, will continue so long as governments are unable credibly to threaten not to bail out loss-makers. Commitment to a “hard” budget constraint can best be achieved by the institution of a suitable social safety net. The burden on the social safety net can be reduced by the (endogenous) development of financial markets.
Download or read book Soft Budget Constraints Firm Commitments and the Social Safety Net written by Daniel C. L. Hardy and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Soft Budget Constraints and the Dual Track System written by Jiahua Che and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I put forward a new theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between soft budget constraint syndrome and the economic performances of firms. It differs from the existing theoretical framework, a la Dewatripont and Maskin (1995), in the soft budget constraint literature. In this paper, soft budget constraint syndrome arises when firms that are expected to lose money are financed. The paper highlights a trade-off between hard and soft budget constraints. While soft budget constraints may compromise firms' incentives to improve performances, an all-out effort to harden budget constraints may put macro stability at risk, especially for economies suffering from allocative inefficiency. Based on this trade-off, the paper shows that a transition from centralized financing to decentralized financing in fact compromises firms' incentives to improve their performances, whereas a transition from centralized financing to a financial dual track system enhances efficiency. In the financial dual track system, budget constraints are soft in the centralized track but the macro stability of the economy is assured as a result. The macro stability enhances the disciplinary effect of hard budget constraints in the decentralized track, which in turn promotes firms' incentives to improve performances. The paper sheds light on a complementary relation between soft budget constraint syndrome in the state sector (i.e., the centralized track) and the remarkable growth of the non-state sector (i.e., the decentralized track) in China.
Download or read book Soft Budget Constraint Theories written by Eric Maskin and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper surveys the theoretical literature on the effect of soft budget constraints on economies in transition from centralization to capitalism; it also reviews our understanding of soft budget constraints in general. It focuses on the conception of the soft budget constraint syndrome as a commitment problem. We show that the two features of soft budget constraints in centralized economies ? ex post renegotiation of firms? financial plans and a close administrative relationship between firms and the centre ? are intrinsically related. We examine a series of theories (based on the commitment-problem approach) that explain shortage, lack of innovation in centralized economies, devolution, and banking reform in transition economies. Moreover, we argue that soft budget constraints also have an influence on major issues in economics, such as the determination of the boundaries and capital structure of a firm. Finally, we show that soft budget constraints theory sheds light on financial crises and economic growth.
Download or read book Externalities and Bailouts written by David E. Wildasin and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1997 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Disequilibrium Sports Economics written by Wladimir Andreff and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, sports economics has been set within the framework of equilibrium economics, in particular when modelling team sport leagues. Based on a conviction that this does not reflect real life, this book addresses a gap in the literature and opens up a new research area by applying concepts drawn from disequilibrium economics. It is divided into two parts, the first of which focuses on economic disequilibrium in sports markets and competitive imbalance in sporting contests. The second part concentrates on soft budget constraints and their consequences for club governance and management.
Download or read book A Political Economy Theory of the Soft Budget Constraint written by James A. Robinson and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do soft budget constraints exist and persist? In this paper we argue that the prevalence of soft budget constraints can be best explained by the political desirability of softness. We develop a political economy model where politicians cannot commit to policies that are not ex post optimal. We show that because of the dynamic commitment problem inherent in the soft budget constraint, politicians can in essence commit to make transfers to entrepreneurs which otherwise they would not be able to do. This encourages such entrepreneurs to vote for them. Though the soft budget constraint may induce economic inefficiency, it may be politically rational because it influences the outcomes of elections. In consequence, even when information is complete, politicians may fund bad projects which they anticipate they will have to bail out in the future.
Download or read book Soft Budget Constraints Taxes and the Incentive to Cooperate written by Joshua Aizenman and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper considers an economy where the macroeconomic equilibrium is the outcome of the conduct of an administration, consisting of a large number of decision makers whose horizon is uncertain, being endogenously determined by their behavior. Limited monitoring enables each decision maker to behave opportunistically in the short run, abusing his 'official' budget constraint, generating in the short run a degree of 'softness' in his budget. The uncertainty has two dimensions: the temporal one relates to the detection possibility facing the opportunistic decision maker, and the intertemporal one relates to the survival probability of the administration. We assume that the survival probability of the administration goes down with signals like inflation, tax rates and the like. In such a system, the public imposes a degree of discipline on the policy makers by its option to replace the administration, and the administration imposes discipline on the policy makers by monitoring their effective expenditure. We characterize the equilibrium, identifying conditions that yield limited cooperation. We show that adverse shocks (like a lower tax collection, lower international transfers, higher real interest rates and the like) or shorter horizon (due to greater instability) will tend to reduce cooperation among policy makers and will increase the inflation rate and the use of discretionary taxes.
Download or read book Advances in Local Public Economics written by Minoru Kunizaki and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-23 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces recent developments in both theoretical and empirical analyses of local public economics. Theories of those economics as well as empirical analyses have been developed dramatically in various directions in recent years. One direction has been to reflect real economic circumstances, especially in Japan. In the early 2000s, Japan experienced the so-called great merger (or consolidation) of municipalities in the Heisei era (1999 through the present), with the number of municipalities shrinking from 3,232 to 1,821 for increasing administrative and financial efficiency. This phenomenon is mainly due to a drastic change in demography in Japan: the dimishing birthrate and aging population. Following the consolidation, regional coordination has been undertaken to raise overall administrative and financial efficiency. In sum, various types of public policies for tackling the decreasing birthrate and aging population have been carried out. Urban sprawl and the timing of municipal mergers are dealt with from a broad point of view, and public child care services and tax competition are investigated from a policy standpoint. Another direction has been to incorporate new ideas for forming theoretical frameworks for local public finance, most of which have been based on static situations. In the recent trend toward globalization, local governments have attended not only to the welfare of residents but also to the interests of regional economic development. In addition, decision making by local governments has tended to be affected by political activities. Thus, the endogenous growth setting and lobbying activities for the activities of local governments are discussed in the book. With these new directions for analyses, the author tackles the topics of tax competition, cross-border shopping, local provision of public goods, and soft budgets, thus covering a broad range of aspects of local public finance.
Download or read book A Theory of the Soft budget Constraint written by Chong-en Bai and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How State owned Enterprises Drag on Economic Growth written by Ruiming Liu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a series of studies, this book shows that ownership structure plays a major role in the national economy as a whole. Inefficient State Owned Enterprises (SOE's) damage the development of private enterprises and overall economic growth in various ways. The policy implications are very clear: in order to achieve healthy and fast economic development, there must be a radical reform of SOEs. Moreover, the aim of the SOE reform is not just to highlight the enterprises’ efficiency, but also create favorable conditions for financial deregulation, elimination of market segmentation, weakened market monopoly, and balanced regional economic development. The book argues that SOE reform is pivotal to stimulating general economic reform and development in order for China to achieve a smooth transition to a mature market economy.
Download or read book Soft budget constraints and the fate of economic reforms in transition economies and developing countries written by Martin Raiser and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a decade, a large number of governments have embarked on economic reforms to strengthen the competitiveness of their countries in the world market and improve the standards of living of their populations. By far the most extensive reforms, both in depth and scope, have occurred since the late 1980s in the former communist economies of Central and Eastern Europe and East Asia. Despite vast differences in initial conditions and reform design, Martin Raiser argues that a central ingredient of the success of these reforms must be the hardening of the budget constraint for domestic producers. To verify this hypothesis, Raiser develops an analytical framework that links the concept of the soft budget constraint to issues of economic reform in developing countries, and examines indicators of the degree of budget softness with particular emphasis on the institutional deficiencies that may undermine the credibility of macroeconomic stabilization and the effectiveness of price signals. In his empirical analysis, Raiser relates the indicators of budget softness to the inflation and growth records of thirty-one developing countries. The cases of Poland and China further illuminate his theory by pointing toward the institutional arrangements that may hinder the effective hardening of budget constraints in transition economies. Finally, Raiser analyzes enterprise level data for China to verify the link between budget softness and technical and allocative inefficiency. Soft Budget Constraints will be of notable interest to those scholars and students of economics specializing in development and transition economics.
Download or read book The Socialist System written by Janos Kornai and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1992-05-28 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive account of the structure, conduct, and performance of the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe, the USSR, Communist China and the Marxist LDCs, looking at 26 nations in all. The author focuses on reform, perhaps the most important issue facing countries such as the USSR, Poland, Hungary, and China. Bureaucracy, soft budget constraints, markets, and the nature of the socialist state are the central issues that arise in the course of reforming a socialist economy. The first half of the book deals with 'classical socialism' and provides a theoretical summary of the main features of a now closed period of history. The second half deals with the processes of reform and concludes that the reform of classical socialist systems is doomed to failure as they are unable to renew themselves internally.
Download or read book Size Soft Budget Constraints written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Structural Adjustment in the Transition written by Paul Siegelbaum and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation The study reviews the transition efforts of four countries - Albania, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz Republic, and Moldova, to develop recommendations, which may benefit countries in future transition efforts. These countries have been unable to overcome obstacles to achieve any sustainable success in terms of growth or poverty reduction.
