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- Gustafsson, Anders, 1985-
(författare)
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Busy doing nothing : Why politicians implement inefficient policies
- 2019
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Ingår i: Constitutional Political Economy. - : Springer. - 1043-4062 .- 1572-9966. ; 30:3, s. 282-299
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A substantial body of literature suggests that politicians are blocked from implementing efficient reforms that solve substantial problems because of special interest groups or budget constraints. Despite the existing mechanisms that block potentially efficient reforms, real-world data show that a large number of new programs and policies are implemented every year in developed countries. These policies are often selective and considered to be fairly inefficient by ex post evaluation, and they tend to be small in size and scope. With this background, this paper studies the reasons why a rational politician would implement an inefficient public policy that is intended to obfuscate the difficulties in achieving reforms. The paper uses a simple competence signaling model that suggests that if an effective reform is impossible, engaging in strategic obfuscation through an inefficient program increases the probability of winning a re-election compared to doing nothing at all. This is because an inefficient reform does not lead voters to believe that the politician is incompetent, which a lack of action risks doing. Intentional inefficiency aiming to obfuscate the difficulty of efficient reforms can therefore complement the previous theories’ explanations of political failure.
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| 2. |
- Gustafsson, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Do local bank branches reduce SME credit constraints? Evidence from public-private bank interaction
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the past few decades, commercial banks have substantially reduced the number of their branch offices. We address the question of whether or not the increased distance from the lenders correspondingly faced by many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) translates into a lower volume of loans. We use a unique dataset on loans from a state owned Swedish bank designed to support credit-constrained SMEs and interact their loan portfolio with the number of nearby commercial bank offices at the firm level along with an IV strategy to account for endogeneity. The estimation results strongly indicate that a larger number of local bank offices increases the local credit supply, and decreases the credit constraints of nearby SMEs.
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| 3. |
- Gustafsson, Anders, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Does the countryside lack cash (funding)? The impact of public bank loans on firm growth and its dependence on location
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We investigate whether public policies that aim to reduce credit constraints for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have different impacts on firms located in different types of regions. Using loan data from the state-owned Swedish bank Almi and combining coarsened exact matching with difference-in-difference regressions, we find positive but heterogeneous effects of loans on firm growth. Firms in urban regions are found to be less credit-constrained compared to firms located in other regions. However, the impact from receiving a public loan on firm growth is stronger for SMEs residing in major cities compared to firms in other regions. These results have important implications, suggesting that an evaluation of policies that are targeted to reduce credit constraints should take firm location into account.
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