| 1. |
- Andersson, Fredrik, 1974-, et al.
(author)
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Outsourcing Public Services : Contractibility, Cost, and Quality
- 2019
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - Örebro : Oxford University Press. - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 65:4, s. 349-372
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We review the literature on public sector outsourcing to explore if the theoretical predictions from the incomplete contracts literature hold up to recent empirical evidence. Guided by theory, we arrange services according to the type and magnitude of their contractibility problems. The empirical studies point at rather favourable outsourcing outcomes, in terms of costs and quality, for services without severe contracting problems. The picture is more mixed for services with tougher contracting problems, with the weight of the evidence in favour of public provision. This difference between services is largely in line with the property-rights framework and theories of incomplete contracts.
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| 2. |
- Baltrunaite, Audinga, et al.
(author)
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Affirmative Action and the Power of the Elderly
- 2015
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 61:1, s. 148-164
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- There is evidence that age matters in politics. In this article we study whether implementation of affirmative action policies on gender can generate additional effects on an alternative dimension of representation, namely, the age of politicians. We consider an Italian law which introduced gender quotas in candidate lists for local elections in 1993, and was abolished in 1995. As not all municipalities went through elections during this period, we can identify two groups of municipalities and use a difference in differences estimation to analyze the effect of gender quotas on the age of elected politicians. We find that gender quotas are associated with election of politicians that are younger by more than 1 year. The effect occurs mainly due to the reduction in age of elected male politicians and is consistent with the optimizing behavior of parties or of voters. (JEL codes: D72, J45).
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| 3. |
- Belotti, Federico, et al.
(author)
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Spatial Differencing : Estimation and Inference
- 2018
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - : OXFORD UNIV PRESS. - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 64:2, s. 241-254
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Spatial differencing (SD) is a spatial data transformation pioneered by Holmes (1998) increasingly used to estimate causal effects with non-experimental data. Recently, this transformation has been widely used to deal with omitted variable bias generated by local or site-specific unobservables in a 'boundary-discontinuity' design setting. However, as is well known in this literature, SD makes inference problematic. Indeed, given a specific distance threshold, a sample unit may be the neighbor of a number of units on the opposite side of a specific boundary inducing correlation between all differenced observations that share a common sample unit. By recognizing that the SD transformation produces a special form of dyadic data, we show that the dyadic-robust variance matrix estimator proposed by Cameron and Miller (2014) is, in general, a better solution compared to the most commonly used estimators.
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| 4. |
- Berger, Helge, et al.
(author)
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Does Money matter for U.S. Inflation? : Evidence from Bayesian VARs
- 2011
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - : Oxford University Press. - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 57:3, s. 531-550
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We use Bayesian estimation techniques to assess whether money growth Granger causes inflation in the USA. We investigate the issue of Granger-causality out-of-sample and find that including money growth in simple VAR models of inflation does systematically improve out-of-sample forecasting accuracy. This holds for a long forecasting sample 1960–2005, as well for more recent subperiods, including the Volcker and Greenspan eras. However, the contribution of money to inflation forecasting accuracy is quantitatively limited and tends to be close to negligible in recent subperiods.
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| 5. |
- Blind, Ina, 1977-, et al.
(author)
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Construction of Register-based Commuting Measures
- 2018
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - : OXFORD UNIV PRESS. - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 64:2, s. 292-326
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Early empirical studies in labour and urban economics addressing the role of commuting (on, e.g., wages and locational choice) have typically been confined to the use of survey data. Researchers are, however, increasingly getting access to large register databases with detailed information on where individuals live and work. A variety of methods have thus emerged to exploit the geocoded characteristic of the data to calculate commuting measures that go beyond simple Euclidean metrics. These methods involve new techniques that make use of geographic information system (GIS) routing software or application programming interfaces provided by third-party developers. This article provides (i) a brief survey of the small but emerging literature that uses geocoded register data to calculate different commuting measures, (ii) an example on how register-based commuting measures can be constructed along with descriptive evidence on how different commuting measures compare for different socio-economic groups using rich Swedish register data, (iii) a discussion of the pros and cons of different methods and measures, and (iv) a discussion of the potential of using mobile phone data to further improve registerbased commuting measures.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Bordo, Michael D., et al.
(author)
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A Fiscal Union for the Euro: Some Lessons from History
- 2013
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 59:3, s. 449-488
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The recent financial crisis starting in 2007-2009 is the longest and the deepest recession since the Great Depression of 1930. The crisis that originated in the US subprime mortgage markets spread and amplified through international financial markets and resulted in severe debt crises in several European countries. Events revealed that the European Union (EU) had insufficient means to halt the spiral of the European debt crisis. The aim of this study is to identify the characteristics of a robust common fiscal policy framework that could have alleviated the consequences of the recent crisis. This is done by using the political and fiscal history of five federal states: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, and the USA. Our study suggests that a fiscal union is necessary to avoid divergent fiscal policies and we identify five conditions crucial for it to function effectively: (i) a credible commitment to a no-bailout rule, (ii) a degree of revenue and expenditure independence reflecting the preferences of the voters, (iii) a well-functioning European system of transfers in times of distress, (iv) the creation of a euro bond market serviced by taxes collected by the EU government, (v) the ability to learn from and adapt to changing economic and political circumstances. (JEL codes: H10, H70, H73).
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| 8. |
- Brilli, Ylenia, et al.
(author)
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Does Increasing Compulsory Education Decrease or Displace Adolescent Crime? New Evidence from Administrative and Victimization Data
- 2018
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 64:1, s. 15-49
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article estimates the contemporaneous effect of education on adolescent crime by exploiting the implementation a reform that increases the school leaving age in Italy by 1 year. We find that the Reform increases the enrollment rate of all ages but decreases the offending rate of 14-year-olds only, who are the age group explicitly targeted by the Reform. The effect mainly comes from natives males, while females and immigrants are not affected. The Reform does not induce crime displacement in times of the year or of the day when the school is not in session, but it increases violent crimes at school. By using measures of enrollment and crime, as well as data at the aggregate and individual level, this article shows that compulsory education reforms have a crime-reducing effect induced by incapacitation but may also lead to an increase of crimes in school facilities plausibly due to a higher concentration of students.
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| 9. |
- Campa, Pamela, et al.
(author)
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Gender Culture and Gender Gap in Employment
- 2011
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 57:1, s. 156-182
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article analyzes to what extent gender culture affects gender gap in employment. Drawing on Italian data, we measure culture by building two indices: one based on individuals' attitudes, as done in the existing literature; one based on firms' attitudes. Firms' beliefs, which express their set of ideas, values and norms, though generally neglected, are as important as individuals' attitudes to explain female labor market outcomes. Using an instrumental variable analysis, we show that our index of gender culture based on firms' attitudes is significant in explaining gender gap in employment in Italian provinces. We show that the same holds when culture is measured with reference to individual attitudes. (JEL code: J16).
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| 10. |
- Dackehag, Margareta, et al.
(author)
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Competition, Capitation, and Coding : Do Public Primary Care Providers Respond to Increased Competition?
- 2019
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In: CESifo Economic Studies. - : Oxford University Press. - 1610-241X .- 1612-7501. ; 65:4, s. 402-423
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The case for competition in health-care markets rests on economic models in which providers seek to maximize profits. However, little is known regarding how public health-care providers, who might not have a profit motive, react to increased competition from private providers. This study considers the heterogeneous effects of a primary health-care reform in a Swedish region that considerably loosened entry restrictions and increased patients' freedom of choice, thus enabling increased competition. Our difference-in-differences analysis contrasts local markets that were affected by both entry and choice with local monopoly markets, which were unaffected by the reforms. Using detailed administrative data on all visits to public health centers in 2008-2011, we find that providers in markets with increasing competition registered more diagnoses in an administrative database, thus increasing their reimbursement per patient. Although the economic significance of the effect is small, the result suggests that public providers are indeed sensitive to competition.
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