Determinants of service quality in bureaucracy: Parkinson's theory at work

Parkinsons law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion and that the number of administrators in an office is bound to increase over time. An unique laboratory to test Parkinsons ideas are vehicle registration offices in Germany. Using their data we found empirical support for Parkinsons law: First, service quality is no better in offices that have more staff per case. Second, service quality is worse if the service procedure is disaggregated into multiple smaller sub-services. Third, the staff size is a convex function of the number of customers. These results are robust to specifications in various alternative models. --Bureaucracy,Parkinsons law,Waiting time,Service Quality,Queueing Theory

The political economy of the German Länder deficits

We analyze the deficits of the German Länder for the period from 1960 to 2005 and test a number of hypotheses derived from the literature on the political economy of public deficits. Estimating a dynamic panel data model, we find evidence for political opportunism in the spirit of Rogoff and Sibert: German voters seem to favor fiscal discipline as debt issue is significantly lower in preelection years. As suggested by the theory, coalition governments issue significantly more debt than single party governments. There is no evidence for partisan behavior; party ideology plays a negligible role. Strategic debt issue may occur when the probability of reelection is small. Our results suggest that this kind of political instability has no impact on debt issue. -- Wir analysieren die Entwicklung der Budgetdefizite in den deutschen Bundesländern von 1960 bis 2005 und testen eine Reihe von Hypothesen, die sich aus der politökonomischen Literatur öffentlicher Defizite ableiten lassen. Im Rahmen eines dynamischen Panel-Modells finden wir Evidenz für politischen Opportunismus im Sinne von Rogoff und Sibert: Deutsche Wähler scheinen fiskalische Disziplin zu befürworten, da die Verschuldung in Vorwahljahren signifikant weniger ansteigt als in anderen Jahren. Wie die Theorie nahe legt, wächst die Verschuldung bei Koalitionsregierungen signifikant mehr als bei Alleinregierungen. Wir finden hingegen keine Belege für Partisanenverhalten, Parteiideologien spielen also eine zu vernachlässigende Rolle. Strategische Neuverschuldung könnte erfolgen, wenn die Wiederwahlwahrscheinlichkeit gering ist. Unsere Ergebnisse lassen jedoch erkennen, dass diese Art der politischen Instabilität keinen Einfluss auf die Neuverschuldung hat.Public Deficit,German Länder,Political Economy,Dynamic Panel,Data Model

Determinants of service quality in bureaucracy: Parkinson's theory at work

Parkinson's law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion and that the number of administrators in an office is bound to increase over time. An unique laboratory to test Parkinson's ideas are vehicle registration offices in Germany. Using their data we found empirical support for Parkinson's law: First, service quality is no better in offices that have more staff per case. Second, service quality is worse if the service procedure is disaggregated into multiple smaller sub-services. Third, the staff size is a convex function of the number of customers. These results are robust to specifications in various alternative models

The Political Economy of the German Länder Deficits

We analyze the deficits of the German Länder for the period from 1960 to 2000 and test a number of hypotheses derived from the literature on the political economy of public expenditures and public deficits. Estimating a dynamic panel data model, we find evidence for political opportunism of the Rogoff/Sibert-type. German voters seem to favor fiscal discipline as debt issue is significantly lower in pre-election years. There is no evidence for partisan behavior. Party ideology thus plays a negligible role. As suggested by the theory, coalition governments issue more debt. This effect is, however, not statistically significant. If the probability of reelection is small, the incumbent government may find it beneficial to issue more debt. We consider four different approximations of the reelection probability but find evidence for none of them. --Public Debt,Political Economy,German Länder,Dynamic Panel Data Model

Parkinson’s theory at work

Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion and that the number of administrators in an office is bound to increase over time. An unique laboratory to test Parkinson’s ideas are vehicle registration offices in Germany. Using their data we found empirical support for Parkinson’s law: First, service quality is no better in offices that have more staff per case. Second, service quality is worse if the service procedure is disaggregated into multiple smaller sub-services. Third, the staff size is a convex function of the number of customers. These results are robust to specifications in various alternative models

Nachhaltige Finanzpolitik auf Länderebene: Konzepte, Indikatoren und Umsetzung

Eine nachhaltige Finanzpolitik der Länder sollte zu den Zielen einer Föderalismusreform gehören. Wie kann die Veröffentlichung von Indikatoren dazu beitragen, dieses Ziel zu erreichen? Welche Nachhaltigkeitskonzepte gibt es und wo liegen deren Chancen und Grenzen? Welche besonderen Probleme sind auf Länderebene zu beachten

'Staatsschulden ohne Haftung': Eine Option für deutsche Bundesländer?

Eine zentrale Aufgabe der Föderalismuskommission II besteht in der Suche nach geeigneten institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen für eine wirksame Begrenzung der Verschuldung von Bund und Ländern. Welche Erfahrungen wurden im Ausland mit Haftungsbegrenzungen von Staatsschulden gemacht? Wäre dieser Ansatz eine Option für deutsche Bundesländer? --

Fiscal equalization and regions' (un)willingness-to-tax: Evidence from Germany

Under cooperative federalism, when an identical tax tariff applies to all regions of a federation, usually redistribution rules are implemented to smooth fiscal differences. The administration of tax collection, however, is sometimes delegated to the regional level, leaving the regional administrations some discretion concerning the auditing of tax returns. Building on a stylized model, we show that under such conditions granted discretionary tax deductions at the level of tax units is positively related to state-specific marginal rates of loss (MRL), i.e., the fraction of an additional tax Euro raised in a region that the fiscal-equalization system redistributes to other jurisdictions. We empirically test the model's presumption using administrative income-tax micro data from Germany. Regression estimates comply with the implications of our model. --Fiscal federalism,rate of loss,income tax returns

The political economy of the German Länder deficits

We analyze the deficits of the German Länder for the period from 1960 to 2000 and test a number of hypotheses derived from the literature on the political economy of public expenditures and public deficits. Estimating a dynamic panel data model, we find evidence for political opportunism of the Rogoff/Sibert- type. German voters seem to favor fiscal discipline as debt issue is significantly lower in pre-election years. There is no evidence for partisan behavior. Party ideology thus plays a negligible role. As suggested by the theory, coalition governments issue more debt. This effect is, however, not statistically significant. If the probability of reelection is small, the incumbent government may find it beneficial to issue more debt. We consider four different approximations of the reelection probability but find evidence for none of them

Herausforderungen bei der Messung von Wohlfahrt

Initiiert von einer lebhaften öffentlichen und wissenschaftlichen Debatte um die Eignung des Bruttoinlandsprodukts als Indikator für materiellen Wohlstand sind zahlreiche alternative Maße zur Wohlstands- und Wohlfahrtsmessung entwickelt worden. Fällt dabei die Wahl auf einen Indikatorensatz, ist die Bestimmung der optimalen Anzahl der Indikatoren eine zentrale Herausforderung. Je mehr Indikatoren ausgewählt werden, desto besser können zwar die Bestandteile der Wohlfahrt abgebildet werden, desto schlechter ist aber die Kommunizierbarkeit. Beate Jochimsen und Christian Raffer analysieren mit Hilfe mehrerer statistischer Methoden die Verbindungen der 10 W3-Leitindikatoren des Deutschen Bundestages untereinander. Es zeigt sich, dass - je nach Messverfahren - drei bis sechs dieser Indikatoren ohne großen Informationsverlust weggelassen werden können, da sie mit den verbleibenden eng korreliert sind. Ein kleiner W3-Indikatorensatz könnte wesentlich leichter erklärt und kommuniziert werden. Im Ergebnis bedeutet dies, dass der Umfang aller nationaler und internationaler Indikatorensätze zur Wohlfahrtsmessung kritisch zu würdigen ist.Triggered by the lively public and academic debate on the gross domestic product as welfare indicator numerous alternative welfare measurements emerged. If a set of indicators as welfare measurement is chosen the identification of an optimal number of indicators is a challenging question. The more indicators are included in the set the more comprehensive welfare can be mapped, thus, the more complicated is the communication of results. Based on several statistical methods Beate Jochimsen and Christian Raffer analyze the linkage of the ten W3-Indicators which the German Bundestag developed. They find that - depending on the statistical method - between three and six of those ten indicators could be easily excluded as they are closely correlated with the remaining ones. A smaller set of W3-Indicators could be explained far easier to the public. This result suggests to critically evaluate the number of indicators in various welfare measures onnational and international level