Governments often use multiple policy instruments for pursuing policy goals with mutually reinforcing effects. These effects include supplementation and substitution. This article examines both ...effects by studying two instruments of state budget stabilization policy: general fund balances and budget stabilization funds. States normally maintain budget surpluses in the general fund. In recent decades, many also created separate budget stabilization funds to guard against economic downturns. Empirical results show that substitution occurs between these instruments. In other words, the influence of the first instrument is partially offset by the second. The second instrument also produces some independent impacts—called supplementation—that increase the overall influence of both instruments. Such selfreinforcement decreases over time, suggesting that multiple policy instruments are most effective in the initial stage of application.
Man spricht daher synonym vom Pflegesatzverfahren bzw. der Pflegesatzvereinbarung oder aber auch vom Entgeltverfahren oder Entgeltvereinbarung bzw. Konkret ergibt sich die Höhe der Vergütung eines ...Behandlungsfalls im Diagnosis-Related-Groups(DRG)-System durch die Multiplikation des fallbezogenen Relativgewichtes mit dem Basisfallwert. Die entscheidenden Vorschriften finden sich im Krankenhausentgeltgesetz (KHEntgG) bzw. für psychiatrische Krankenhäuser und psychiatrische Abteilungen sowie für die Einrichtungen für psychotherapeutische Medizin und Psychosomatik in der Bundespflegesatzverordnung (BPflV).
Eurozone members are supposedly constrained by the fiscal caps of the Stability and Growth Pact. Yet ever since the birth of the euro, members have postponed painful adjustment. Wishful thinking has ...played an important role in this failure. We find that governments' forecasts are biased in the optimistic direction, especially during booms. Eurozone governments are especially over-optimistic when the budget deficit is over the 3% of GDP ceiling at the time the forecasts are made. Those exceeding this cap systematically but falsely forecast a rapid future improvement. The new fiscal compact among the euro countries is supposed to make budget rules more binding by putting them into laws and constitutions at the national level. But biased forecasts can defeat budget rules. What is the record in Europe with national rules? The bias is less among eurozone countries that have adopted certain rules at the national level, particularly creating an independent fiscal institution that provides independent forecasts.
We analyze how budgetary institutions affect government budget deficits in member states of the European Union during 1984-2003 employing new indicators provided by Hallerberg et al. (2009). Using ...panel fixed effects models, we examine whether the impact of budgetary institutions on budget deficits is conditioned by political fragmentation (i.e., ideological differences among parties in government) and size fragmentation (i.e., the effective number of parties in government or the number of spending ministers). Our results suggest that strong budgetary institutions, no matter whether they are based on delegation to a strong minister of finance or on fiscal contracts, reduce the deficit bias in case of strong ideological fragmentation. In contrast, the impact of budgetary institutions is not conditioned by size fragmentation.
Using real-time data from Europe's Stability and Convergence Programs, we explore how fiscal plans and their implementation in the EU are determined. We find that (1) implemented budgetary adjustment ...falls systematically short of planned adjustment and this shortfall increases with the projection horizon, (2) variability in the eventual fiscal outcomes is dominated by the implementation errors, (3) there is a limited role for 'traditional' political variables, (4) stockflow adjustments are more important when plans are more ambitious, and (5), most importantly, both the ambition in fiscal plans and their implementation benefit from stronger national fiscal institutions. We emphasize also the importance of credible plans for the eventual fiscal outcomes.
William Howard Taft and Frederick A. Cleveland's vision of executive budgeting clashes with the unique status of the U.S. Congress among the world's legislatures, and its proponents may exaggerate ...the potential for presidents to act as fiscal guardians. This article advocates more congressional budgeting by reinstituting effective fiscal rules and strengthening the role of the budget committees. These mechanisms would enhance fiscal discipline and aid consolidation.
Economic theory suggests that it is optimal for governments to use precautionary saving as a countercyclical tool.However, the availability of surplus funds often triggers political pressure for tax ...cuts and spending increases.Mechanisms for alleviating that pressure include limiting the transparency of slack resources and limiting politicians' discretion to use slack resources for purposes other than stabilization. This article investigates the extent to which these two mechanisms are substitutes. In particular, the authors examine whether the widespread adoption of budget stabilization funds (BSFs) in the U. S. states over the past several decades has been accompanied by a decline in conservative revenue forecast bias. Using panel data from 47 states over a 22-year penod, they find that the adoption of a BSF reduces revenue underestimation by approximately two-thirds; however, the size of the effect depends in part on how much a state saves in the BSF and the rules governing BSF deposits and withdrawah. The results suggest that BSFs have the unintended effect of increasing fiscal transparency.
The administration of President Barack Obama, like those of his immediate predecessors, is focused on trying to improve the quality of, and use of, performance data. The federal government has been ...pursuing performance-informed budget reforms for more than 50 years. Most recently, the Bush administration reforms included the President's Management Agenda and the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The Obama administration reforms include: measuring the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; reducing or eliminating poorly-performing programs; setting a limited number of short-term, high-priority performance goals; and funding detailed program evaluations. The administration is taking a more agency-driven approach than the Bush administration, but continues to find it challenging to move beyond production of performance data to its use. There should be opportunities to show how performance information can be used for decision making, given the change in the political climate and the needs to reduce spending and the deficit. Historically, there has been little appetite in the Congress for evidence-based decision making. The administration, however, can continue to demonstrate how federal agencies can use performance information to more effectively manage programs.
This paper focuses on the observed empirical relationship between fiscal rules and budget deficits, and examines whether this correlation is driven by an omitted variable, namely voter preferences. ...We make use of two different estimation methods to capture voter preferences in a panel of Swiss sub-federal jurisdictions. First, we include a recently constructed measure of fiscal preferences. Second, we capture preferences through fixed effects with a structural break as women are enfranchised. We find that fiscal rules continue to have a significant impact on real budget balances.
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