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This study investigated the effect of auditor's independence on the financial reporting quality of Parastatals in Lagos State, Nigeria. A survey was conducted to gather data on auditor's independence and a content analysis procedure was adopted to extract secondary data from the audited financial statement of the parastatals. Data were analyzed using binary logistic regression. The findings show that when an auditor alienates his personal interest from audit and his ability to issue a qualified audit opinion where necessary, have a statistically significant effect on improving both the fundamental and enhanced qualitative characteristics of financial reporting (FQC and EQC). Hence, the more an auditor allows his personal interests to becloud his judgement, the lower both the FQC and EQC of financial reporting. The outcome of reliance on the work of the internal auditors and auditor's rotation gave an inconclusive result. Therefore, rotation of auditors and the reliance on the findings of internal auditors promote the relevance and how faithfully represented the financial reporting are, while the EQC has no effect on auditor's independence. The study recommended that parastatals must place a premium on promoting auditors' independence in order to minimize audit failure and the credibility attached to the financial reports.

A diversidade dos sistemas de informação no setor público e a necessidade de informações mais completas e fiáveis deram origem a um conjunto de reformas no setor público de diversos países, nomeadamente nos seus sistemas contabilísticos, com base no conceito de Nova Gestão Pública (NGP). Adicionalmente, em Portugal a crise financeira e a consequente necessidade de intervenção externa do Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI), aumentou a necessidade de reforma de um novo normativo contabilístico. Assim, surgiu o Sistema de Normalização Contabilística para as Administrações Públicas (SNC-AP) para substituir o Plano Oficial de Contabilidade Pública (POCP). O objetivo deste estudo é conhecer a perceção dos profissionais de contabilidade das entidades de ensino sobre a implementação do SNC-AP, nomeadamente os seus impactos no relato financeiro, na sua qualidade e utilidade, assim como as condições para a adequada implementação. Assim, no contexto de um estudo exploratório foi realizado um questionário aos profissionais de contabilidade das entidades de ensino público em Portugal, a partir do qual foram obtidos os resultados analisados através de estatística descritiva e testes de inferência estatística. Conclui-se que os profissionais de contabilidade consideram que a implementação do SNC-AP não tem impactos significativos no relatório financeiro e nas suas demonstrações financeiras, no entanto contribui para o aumento da qualidade da informação financeira e na sua utilidade para os seus utilizadores. Quanto às condições das entidades e seus profissionais, conclui-se que existem condicionantes para a implementação adequada do normativo. The diversity of information systems in the public sector and the need for more complete and reliable information gave rise to a set of reforms in the public sector in several countries, namely in their accounting systems, based on the concept of New Public Management (NGP). Additionally, in Portugal, the financial crisis and the consequent need for external intervention by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), increased the need to reform a new accounting standard. Thus, the Sistema de Normalização Contabilística para as Administrações Públicas (SNC-AP) emerged to replace the Plano Oficial de Contabilidade Pública (POCP). The aim of this study is to understand the perception of accounting professionals from educational entities about the implementation of the SNC-AP, namely its impacts on financial reporting, its quality and usefulness, as well as the conditions for its proper implementation. Thus, in the context of an exploratory study, a questionnaire was carried out to accounting professionals from public education entities in Portugal, from which the results analyzed were obtained using descriptive statistics and statistical inference tests. It is concluded that accounting professionals consider that the implementation of the SNC-AP does not have significant impacts on financial reporting and its financial statements, however it contributes to increasing the quality of financial information and its usefulness to its users. As for the conditions of the entities and their professionals, it is concluded that there are limitations for the proper implementation of the current normative.

Most of the African states have joined the roll-call of the hundreds of ‘failed states’ engrossed in the inter-ethnic wars, genocide and adverse and disruptive regime changes, and Nigeria is not an exception. In fact, the country has become seed-beds of violence, terrorism, mass migration of criminals across the borders, refugees’ movements, etc. These factors have weakened the state as well as force it out of its public policy role towards socio economic and political development. Two decades since democracy was reintroduced in the country, Nigerians have not really witness true changes to their socio-economic well-being as expected. Broadly speaking, they are currently demanding for another kind democracy with a redeeming quality. The country’s poor leadership has been identified as a major factor to these crises and conflicts. Perhaps, it could be the major reason for the recent End Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) protest in the country. This paper therefore examines how leaders emerged in Nigeria and the policy formulation in terms of development. The work also traces the reasons for ethno-religious crises, nepotism and corruption by these leaders.

An emphasis on public-private partnership (PPP) in the regulatory policy process can overcome the challenges hindering regulatory effectiveness with the emergence of fast developing technologies and new industries. This study attempts to evaluate quantitatively different aspects of institutional settings of South Korean regulatory policy in terms of stakeholder engagement as PPP, using evidence-based data released by the OECD. From the results of the principal component analysis, South Korea can be evaluated as being at a very good level overall in its institutional establishment. Nevertheless, the fact that the outcome of regulatory reforms in South Korea is still insufficient compared with this well-established system suggests that the country should concentrate on improving system operation. Consequently, this study makes policy suggestions to improve regulatory effectiveness through PPP by supplementing the facets that are well-equipped but not feasible with respect to regulatory policy cycle, regulatory governance, regulatory method, and conflict resolution.

The research aims to examine and evaluate the accounting information disclosure (AID) quality of the non-current tangible assets in the annual financial statements of private sector entities of Lithuania and identify characteristics of these enterprises that have an impact on the AID quality. The research model of the AID quality in the financial statements is created. Based on the national accounting standards’ legal requirements, the original checklists were structured, and the disclosure quality indexes (DQIs) allowing evaluation of AID (both mandatory and voluntary) quality were formed. The empirical results show that Lithuanian enterprises’ AID quality was sufficient and average during the investigation period. The significant AID quality change was not observed during the short term (2007–2008), i.e., when Lithuania was going through a significant change in the economy, where the rapid growth was followed by the financial crisis. In addition, it was investigated whether significant changes were observed during the long term (2007–2016) when Lithuania was transforming from a developing to a developed country. The results show that during this period the disclosure of mandatory (for all enterprises) and voluntary information did not change significantly, while additional (for large and medium) AID quality increased. Multiple panel regression analysis showed that the enterprise’s characteristics (such as its size, debt-paying capacity, indebtedness, tangible assets, and profitability) appeared to have a statistically significant effect on the AID quality. The research findings could contribute to helping shareholders, potential investors or creditors, financial analysts, and other stakeholders when making decisions in regard to the evaluation of the AID quality as well as helping regulators to increase standards for information transparency and comparability.

Do local institutions influence the nature of political clientelist exchange? We find a positive answer in the context of a village institution prevalent in Java since the Dutch colonial rule, where democratically elected village heads receive usufruct rights over a piece of communal village land (bengkok land) as a compensation for their service in lieu of salary. To formulate how limited-term private ownership of bengkok land promotes clientelism, we model a timely delegation of agricultural tenancy contracts to villagers-cum-voters as an incumbent re-election strategy. Based on a household survey fielded in 2018 across 130 villages in Java, Indonesia, we find that the chances of a bengkok plot being rented out increase by 6 percentage points as the time of the next election becomes closer by one year, and sharecropping is preferred to a fixed-rental contract as the election approaches. The empirical results are statistically significant and remain largely unchanged against a series of robustness checks. We also find suggestive evidence of short-term efficiency loss from clientelist politics over bengkok land.

Introducing financial incentives to increase productivity in the public sector tends to be politically and bureaucratically cumbersome, particularly in developing countries. Behavioral interventions could be a low-cost alternative, both politically and financially, although evidence of their effectiveness remains scarce. We evaluate the effect of redesigning the notice requiring civil servants in Buenos Aires to comply with citizens requests under Argentina's freedom of information act. The new notice, sent to the treatment group, attempts to exploit salience, deterrence, clarity, and social norms to increase adherence to deadlines. The results show an increase in the share of requests fulfilled by the second deadline, possibly because of a strong anchoring effect. These findings indicate that behavioral interventions can affect civil servants' actions. The fact that the intervention occurred at the same time as a civil service training program with sessions attended by members of both the control and treatment groups allows us to evaluate spillover effects. The evidence suggests that the time it takes a members of the treatment group to respond to a request increases with her interactions with members of the control group at the workshops. These findings have implications for policy design. First, they indicate that behavioral interventions could affect task compliance and productivity in the public sector. Second, they provide evidence that workshops may not always have the intended consequences, particularly when they increase interactions among employees with high and low incentives for task compliance.

Despite improvements in the living conditions of the population, there has not been a significant change in income disparities. Since the growth of left-wing parties and political competition as per the median voter hypothesis do not stand in the Brazilian case, what could explain the tenacity of inequality in the country? To answer this, the paper, grounded in new institutionalism theory, employed a process-tracing method to explore the causes of the continuity of unequal income distribution in Brazil. The inquiry tests the mechanism using the case of redistributive fiscal policy and the literature of electoral rules and business influence in the political system. This analysis reinforces that the Brazilian government not only misuses its fiscal instruments to distribute income, but also acts as a 'Robin Hood in reverse': that is, it withdraws from those who have less to subsidize or pay transfers to those who have more.

We use the UK's 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) to study which attributes characterize a top-scoring (four-star) publication in Economics and Econometrics. We frame the analysis as a classification problem and, using information in official documents, derive conditions to infer the unobservable score that panellists awarded to each publication. Juxtaposing institutions' submissions with REF outcomes provides information on the latent pass-marks used for assigning quality levels, which respond to journal prestige measured by the Thomson Reuters Article Influence Score. We explore this statistical feature in the econometric analysis, which reveals the limited contribution to awarded quality made by other publication attributes, possibly unobservable to us, conditional on the Article Influence Score. We conclude that, in large-scale and costly evaluations such as the REF, the time-consuming task of peer reviews should be devoted to publications not in academic outlets with unambiguously top-scoring bibliometric indicators of journal impact. Our model also predicts a ranking of academic journals consistent with the classification of REF panellists.

Florian Dorn prepared this study during his doctoral studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU). The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics. This dissertation contributes to the empirics of public economics and political economy. All chapters are self-contained research articles and can be read independently. However, the chapters are mutually related and contribute to the discussion on how economic inequality, institutions, and economic and infrastructure policies can influence welfare and political stability. Chapter 2 examines how relative economic deprivation influences the support for radical parties. Chapter 3 examines how trade openness influences income inequality. Chapter 4 uses a case study to discuss how infrastructure policies can affect regional economic development. Chapters 5 and 6 contribute to the debate on the effect of political and fiscal institutions on budgeting, accountability, and government efficiency. Empirical identification strategies, endogeneity problems, and remaining caveats regarding causal inferences are discussed in detail in all chapters of this dissertation. The study employs state-of-the-art empirical techniques to infer causal effects including instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, event study, and synthetic control estimations. The addendum contains extended abstracts of three further research projects during the Ph.D. phase of Florian Dorn: (I) Globalization, government ideology, and top income shares: Evidence from OECD countries; (II) Political institutions and health expenditure; (III) The common interest of health and the economy: Evidence from Covid-19 containment policies. These papers are also related to the empirics on public economics and political economy and contribute well to his overall research agenda. Florian Dorn erstellte diesen Beitrag während seines Promotionsstudiums an der Universität München (LMU). Die Studie wurde im September 2020 abgeschlossen und von der Fakultät für Volkswirtschaftslehre als Dissertation angenommen. Die Dissertation trägt zur Empirie der Ökonomie des öffentlichen Sektors und der politischen Ökonomie bei. Alle Kapitel sind in sich abgeschlossene Forschungsartikel und können unabhängig voneinander gelesen werden. Die Kapitel sind miteinander verbunden und tragen zur Diskussion bei, wie wirtschaftliche Ungleichheit, Institutionen sowie Wirtschafts- und Infrastrukturpolitik Wohlfahrt und politische Stabilität beeinflussen. In Kapitel 2 wird untersucht, wie relativer wirtschaftlicher Mangel die Unterstützung für radikale Parteien beeinflusst. In Kapitel 3 wird untersucht, wie die Offenheit des Handels die Einkommensungleichheit beeinflusst. In Kapitel 4 wird anhand einer Fallstudie erörtert, wie Infrastrukturpolitik die regionale Wirtschaftsentwicklung beeinflussen kann. Die Kapitel 5 und 6 leisten einen Beitrag zu der Debatte, ob politische und fiskalische Institutionen die Haushaltsplanung, die Rechenschaft und die Effizienz der Regierung beeinflussen. In allen Kapiteln werden empirische Identifizierungsstrategien, Endogenitätsprobleme und verbleibende Vorbehalte hinsichtlich kausaler Schlussfolgerungen eingehend erörtert. Die Studie verwendet modernste ökonometrische Techniken wie Instrumentalvariablen, Differenz-in-Differenzen Schätzer, Ereignisstudien und synthetische Kontrollmethoden, um kausale Effekte zu identifizieren.Der Anhang enthält Zusammenfassungen drei weiterer Forschungsprojekte: (I) Globalisierung, Regierungsideologie und Spitzeneinkommen: Evidenz aus OECD-Ländern; (II) Politische Institutionen und Gesundheitsausgaben; (III) Das gemeinsame Interesse von Gesundheit und Wirtschaft: Erkenntnisse aus der Covid-19 Eindämmungspolitik.

Using multiple indicators of audit quality, the study examines the impact of audit partner rotation on audit quality in India based on 1,694 firm years for the period of 2011–2017 when the institutional set up for audit partner rotation was voluntary. The empirical results indicate that the audit partner rotation had no significant impact on audit quality as measured by discretionary accruals and going concern audit opinion. The study finds that other factors like loss year, size of the firm, value, leverage have a statistically significant impact on audit quality. The empirical results also indicate an inverse relationship between audit fees and audit partner rotation implying, price-cutting of the audit. The findings are important to regulators regarding the significance of audit partner rotation in enhancing audit quality.

Asylum policy-making in advanced democracies frequently faces the accusation that prejudice and stereotyping lead to erroneous decisions. The model of taste-based discrimination suggests that the biases of decision-makers or their peers against certain groups of applicants influence the evaluation of an asylum claim. Conversely, the concept of statistical discrimination implies that a dearth of information forces impartial decision-makers to resort to stereotypes. We examine both forms of discrimination, evaluating whether they shape asylum-seekers’ chances to receive protection in Germany, currently a key recipient country. Our empirical examination of a representative refugee survey in Germany confirms that asylum decisions are subject to taste-based discrimination: males, Muslims, and applicants assigned to regions with a conservative population or government are less likely to obtain asylum or other forms of protection. Conforming to the theory of statistical discrimination, stereotyping against male or Muslim applicants’ manifests most pronouncedly if decision-makers suffer under high workload or possess little information. However, high information costs do not alter stereotyping in more conservative regions. Altogether, our study reveals that extra-legal reasons in the form of prejudice and stereotypes considerably undermine what should be the key criterion in assessing an asylum claim: the credibility of an individual’s need for protection. published

This paper combines cross-national statistical analysis and in-depth historical case studies of Argentina and Chile to explore the relationship between two crucial dimensions of state capacity. We show that information capacity contributes to the development of fiscal capacity. States require accurate information about their subject populations, territories, and economies in order to effectively mobilize revenues. In developing this argument this paper makes three broader contributions. First, while existing scholarship either treats distinct dimensions of capacity as separate entities, or simply assumes that they complement each other, our findings urge scholars to treat state development as sequential and to further investigate how multiple dimensions of state capacity are interrelated. Second, the paper suggests a broader underlying set of mechanisms-economies of scope-which connect these dimensions, and explores them in the specific context of the dependency of fiscal capacity on information capacity. Third, we join scholarship on the importance of societal compliance in the creation of the fiscal state, but with a focus on elite compliance with the state's information collection efforts, which was crucial to tax state development.

Challenge funds (CF) induce competition between grant applicants as they develop proposals to address important social problems. We develop a game theoretic model to study how funding availability and proof of concept requirements (e.g., pilots or other forms of early stage screening) influence investments by applicants and the ultimate success of the CF. Larger budgets and more rigorous proof of concept requirements can reduce applicant investments and lead to less effective funding initiatives. The results show how the design of a CF affect the incentives of those competing for funding, and how the most effective CF design needs to carefully consider how the NGOs or researchers applying for funding will respond to a change in incentives. Otherwise, steps taken to improve the quantity or quality of funded projects can backfire and decrease overall funding effectiveness.

This study aimed to analyze the scientific production on the relationship between state (public policies), school feeding and family agriculture in Brazil, before and after Law n. 11,947/2009, which reformulated the regulatory framework of the National School Feeding Program (PNAE). The objective was to verify how these terms have been addressed in the literature, investigating the diversity of possible problems and interpretations that the interface between them raises. The methodological path chosen is divided into two parts. First, a bibliometric survey was carried out in order to draw a quantitative overview of the production of interest, whose selected researches are presented regarding their publication periods, areas of knowledge, dissemination channels, methodological approaches and keywords most used. Subsequently, a thematic categorization of all selected works was performed, aiming at identifying the main emphasized subjects, to then highlight the general evidences found and systematized from a qualitative review of its bibliographic content. Thus, a privileged approach was obtained about the operational reality of the PNAE, since the analyses demonstrate concrete aspects about the challenges and potentials associated with the insertion of family agriculture in institutional markets, while emphasizing possible factors for the potentiation of this instrument in the Brazilian territory.

In a simplifying analytical framework with endogenous levels of actual and self-reported emissions, we consolidate the existing literature into three main hypotheses about the relative merits, for a resource-constrained regulator, of random (RAM) and competitive (CAM) audit mechanisms in the presence or absence of peer information about actual emissions. Testing the three hypotheses in a quasi-laboratory experiment (N = 131), we find supportive evidence that CAM always induce more truthful reporting than RAM. Moreover, we provide the empirical validation of the theoretical prediction that CAM can succeed in aligning actual emissions more closely with the social optimum in the presence of peer information when RAM cannot. Behavioral mechanisms prevent reaching the first-best outcome.

This paper examines new data on public sector employees from 18 Latin American countries to shed light on the role of trust in the performance of government agencies. We developed an original survey taken during the first COVID-19 wave that includes randomized experiments with pandemic-related treatments. We document that individual-level trust in coworkers, other public employees, and citizens is positively related to performance-enhancing behaviors, such as cooperation and information-sharing, and policy attitudes, such as openness to technological innovations in public service delivery. Trust is more strongly linked to positive behaviors and attitudes in non-merit-based civil service systems. High-trust and low-trust respondents report different assessments of their main work constraints. Also, they draw different inferences and prefer different policy responses when exposed to data-based framing treatments about social distancing outcomes in their countries. Low-trust public employees are more likely to assign responsibility for a negative outcome to the government and to prefer stricter enforcement of social distancing.

ZusammenfassungIn der Septemberausgabe 2020 veröffentlichte der Wirtschaftsdienst einen Aufsatz mit dem Titel „Bremst die Doppik öffentliche Investitionen? Ergebnisse aus drei aktuellen Evaluationsstudien“ von Désirée Christofzik, Florian Dorn, Stefanie Gäbler, Christian Raffer und Felix Rösel. Stephan Stüber vertritt in einer Replik eine andere Auffassung, im Anschluss erläutern Christofzik et al. ihren Standpunkt in einer Erwiderung.

The governance of international trade incurs major costs, including to the environment. Global supply chains are complex, and traditionally involve the printing, dispatching, processing, exchanging, and ultimately discarding of vast quantities of paper documents. Trade facilitation, and particularly the implementation of cross-border paperless trade, have the potential to significantly reduce these environmental burdens. We estimate the greenhouse gas savings for the Asia-Pacific and the World from implementing paperless trade by combining detailed descriptions of trade transactions, data on trading volumes and relevant emissions factors. Our results indicate that, even with conservative assumptions, the emissions savings from paperless trade implementation can be very high-driven especially by efficiency gains from handling data digitally. Still, the savings from trade digitization pale in comparison to the emissions from transport in international supply chains.

This Discussion Paper addresses the main open government initiatives active in the Federal Government in 2019, in an attempt to trace the characteristics of the Brazilian scenario of internet use and promotion of transparency. After a theoretical discussion on the subject of digital democracy and its main sub-areas, this exploratory study presents the initiatives of the Secretariat of Digital Government of the Ministry of Economy; the Federal Ombudsman's Office and the Directorate of Transparency and Social Control of the Comptroller General of the Union. In order to collect necessary information, interviews were conducted with managers and technicians responsible for these topics, followed by consultation of the documentation mentioned by them. In its conclusions, the study points out the central roles played by these bodies in the theme of open government and presents some preliminary hypotheses to be developed in future research.

La actividad pública en los países europeos desarrollados implica un volúmen cercano al 50% del PIB, por un lado, e implica, por otro lado, por su capacidad normativo- reguladora, en muchos casos, al sector privado de la economía, por lo que tiene una influencia decisiva tanto en la configuración del Orden de la Economía como en la incidencia sobre las economías tanto domésticas como empresariales. Se trata en ésta actuación pública, por un lado, de la disposición que realiza de los recursos y, por otra, de la evaluación del impacto de su normativa reguladora. El Orden de la Economía afecta tanto a la acción pública como a la actuación privada, por lo que la acción de las Instituciones Públicas incide de forma creciente en la ordenación económica de la sociedad y en su respuesta al desarrollo de las personas. De la configuración y estructuración de las múltiples y diversas Instituciones Públicas a través de las cuales se realiza la acción pública en el Orden de la Economía y en la configuración de la Sociedad, depende el funcionamiento económico-social de un País. Por lo que se precisa plantear tanto su organización como el desarrollo del personal bajo perspectivas de Economía de la Empresa tanto en lo que afecta a la disposición de los recursos como al impacto que ocasiona con su acción pública en el conjunto económico-social. La exigencia de criterios económicoempresariales en la “gestión” de la Institución Pública es decisiva, en particular, fomentando el desarrollo de las personas que actúan en las Instituciones Públicas singulares. Y ello con el fin de dotar a las Instituciones Públicas con la necesaria capacidad de transformación y cambio tecnológico y social que va más allá de los planteamientos meramente presupuestarios. Es una nueva y necesaria transformación de las Instituciones Públicas para dar eficiencia, en los diferentes planos, a la acción pública. En esta contribución se trata de diseñar la contribución de la Economía de la Empresa en la configuración de la acción pública y de sus Instituciones., In the developed European countries public activity represents approximately 50% of GDP while also often exercising legal and regulatory control over the private sector of the economy. Public activity, therefore, plays a decisive role in configuring the Economic Ordering and in both family and business economies. This paper examines how the exercise of public activity affects how resources are made available and also its regulatory impact is evaluated. Economic Ordering affects both public and private action and therefore the actions of Public Institutions increasingly affect Society’s Economic Ordering and its response to individual development. Public action within the Economic Ordering ranges from configuring and constructing the numerous Public Institutions, through which public action is performed, to configuring Society itself, all of which depends upon the manner in which State functions in economic-social terms. As a result of the above, both organising and developing a business’ staff must be approached from the perspective of its Business Economy, both in terms of the use of resources to the impact that its public action will have upon the economic-social nexus as a whole. The demands of economic-business criteria upon the management of a Public Institution are decisive – particularly in order to promote the development of those individuals who act within singular Public Institutions. Add to this the aims of endowing Public Institutions with the necessary capacity for social and technological transformation and change which goes beyond mere budgetary issues. This, then, is a new and necessary transformational process that Public Institutions must undergo in order to be, on many different levels, efficient in their public action. This contribution aims to design how the Business Economy can contribute to configuring public action and Public Institutions.