Carine Smolders

Redistribution as a Local Public Good: An Empirical Test for Flemish Municipalities

Redistribution is typically viewed as a task of the central government. However, in most federal countries local governments do have some discretion in redistribution policy. The main theoretical argument for this is that redistribution may be a local public good (Pauly 1973). Using data on Flemish municipalities, we present a first empirical test of Paulys assumption. We find that the willingness to redistribute is negatively affected by the geographical dimension of the responsible government. We extend the notion of distance, considering also sociological, cultural, income and political distances between donors and recipients. We find that, with the exception of income, these are relevant determinants of welfare policy, though they do not always have the predicted effect.

Politics and public infrastructure investments in local governments: empirical evidence from Flemish municipalities (1996-2009)

This article offers new evidence on the political determinants of local governments public investment policy. A public infrastructure investment function was estimated using data for 307 out of 308 Flemish municipalities covering the period 1996–2009. The results reveal that government composition and the timing of the elections matter. The presence of the Liberal Party decreases investments, whereas fragmentation of the government has the opposite effect. Significantly higher investment levels were recorded in years preceding elections contrary to post-election years, which show important slowdown in investment policies. Finally, the analysis shows that local governments are sensitive to the investment policy of neighbouring municipalities. The positive spatial interaction effect implies that a municipalitys investments increase on average with 26.2% of changes in investment levels by neighbouring municipalities.

Houses and/or jobs: ownership and the labour market in Belgian districts

Isebaert D., Heylen F. and Smolders C. Houses and/or jobs: ownership and the labour market in Belgian districts, Regional Studies. A. J. Oswald argues that high rates of homeownership may imply inferior labour market outcomes. Using a panel of forty-two Belgian districts since the 1970s and accounting for other key determinants of employment, this paper confirms the Oswald hypothesis. A 1 percentage point rise in the rate of ownership in a district implies a statistically significant fall in the employment rate by about 0.35 percentage points. This negative effect declines in the fraction of the high-skilled in a district. The results underscore the importance of controlling for unobserved district-specific fixed effects and common time effects, and of appropriately dealing with endogeneity.

External pressures affecting the adoption of employee performance management in higher education institutions

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between external pressures and the adoption of employee performance management systems within academic units of Flemish higher education institutions. The literature on contextually based HRM and institutionalism is used to underpin the theoretical propositions.Design/methodology/approach – A comparative case study is described to provide evidence for the theoretical arguments.Findings – It has been suggested that academic units face a set of external pressures, which leads to different employee performance management systems. This study finds that academic units imitate their legitimacy‐based reference group and legitimacy‐driven imitation and the adoption of external employee performance management requirements distort the alignment of employee performance management systems.Research limitations/implications – Future research could formally test the relationship between external drivers and the adoption of strategic and integrated employee performanc...

The real impact of a one-off fiscal restriction: empirical evidence of a flypaper effect in Flemish municipalities

This paper analyses the effects of a one-off fiscal restriction on Flemish local government spending. The authors provide evidence of a ‘flypaper effect’: fiscal restriction stimulated the sensitivity of local spending to grants. This means that higher-level governments (regional/national/supranational) need to take a flypaper effect into account when considering one-off fiscal restrictions on lower-level governments.

The impact of the mortgage interest and capital deduction on Belgian borrowing behavior

In 2005, a system of mortgage interest, insurance premiums and capital deduction (MICPD) was introduced in Belgium to replace and simplify the previous system of fiscal housing benefits. Mortgage interest, capital amortizations and insurance premiums were assembled into one single deduction package. Although previous research has shown that the MICPD did not promote home ownership, we show in this paper that the MICPD did affect the mortgage market. The Household Finance and Consumption Survey is used to investigate the impact of the MICPD on the borrowing behavior of the Belgian households. A probit analysis is used to model the probability of holding mortgage debt. Mortgage demand, mortgage terms and housing consumption are estimated simultaneously in a 3-SLS approach. The results indicate that the fiscal benefit of the MICPD has induced households to modify their mortgage amounts and terms to maximize the fiscal advantage of the MICPD, rather than inducing them to take out a mortgage. Furthermore, we find that couples and financially unconstrained households are most likely to adapt their borrowing preferences.

The impact of internationalization on volume and quality of scholarly publication performance

This article discusses the effect of academic teaching staff mobility and publication performance. It investigates how international teaching assignments affect research output (measured in terms of publication). The research described covered a large range of publication types (for example in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, book chapters), disciplines and positions, as well as the duration and number of international visits. Generally, short, frequent teaching assignments increased productivity.

Strategic Use of Debt in Flemish Municipalities

Abstract This paper discusses the literature on strategic use of debt models and tests the seminal models of Persson & Svensson (1989) and Alesina & Tabellini (1990) on a dataset of Flemish municipalities. The literature on strategic deficit and debt behaviour originates from the question whether or not incumbent policymakers run higher budget deficits than they would if they were confident of re-election. In this paper, we introduce a vote function to estimate the probability of electoral defeat and present evidence of strategic debt in line with Persson & Svensson (1989), but only for leftist governments with expected vote percentages below 49%. There is no indication that rightist governments without re-election prospects are sensitive to strategic debt behaviour.