Mark K. Cassell

Racing to the Bottom? The Impact of Intrastate Competition on Tax Abatement Generosity in Ohio

Does intrajurisdictional tax competition lead local governments to offer larger tax abatements to firms? The authors build upon the traditional literature that models tax abatements as a negotiation between individual governments and firms by including systemic political and economic trends affecting the bargaining power of local governments and businesses. The authors use a longitudinal data set from 1983 to 2004 with detailed information on the 4,408 individual tax abatements negotiated between local governments and firms to examine how tax abatement generosity varies in response to the relative bargaining position of governments and firms. They find that as Ohio has increased the number of local governments able to offer tax abatements, local governments have offered larger abatements to firms.

Why Governments Innovate: Adoption and Implementation of Open Source Software by Four European Cities

ABSTRACT A growing number of governments will consider and even choose to migrate to an alternative operating system that uses Free/Open Source Software (FOSS). This research examines why governments choose to migrate and what factors affect implementation. Drawing on a comparative case study of four cities, I find that governments decide to migrate for a range of factors, but are driven more by democratic values such as independence and self-determination than by a desire to cut costs or save money. I also find that implementation is affected by a variety factors but in particular by information technologys place within a citys organizational structure.

When Smaller Governments Open the Window: A Study of Web Site Creation, Adoption, and Presence among Smaller Local Governments in Northeast Ohio

The vast majority of local governments in the United States have populations with less 5,000. Local government research, particular in the area of e-government, has focused on larger cities. This article addresses the gap in the research but examining empirically the factors that influence the adoption and development of Web sites by smaller local governments.

Privatization and the Courts: How Judicial Structures Shaped German Privatization

This article examines how legal institutional structures shaped the process of East German privatization by the Treuhandanstalt. It argues that the courts, as an important venue for oversight and accountability, were central to achieving the rapid and narrowly defined privatization carried out by the agency. Moreover, the experience of privatization after 1989 suggests the courts played a far more important role in shaping economic policy than one would have expected from traditional scholarship on public agencies, the courts, or the German legal system.

Ideas in a Time of Crisis: How German and American Elites Understood the Financial Crisis Differently

The international financial crisis that began in 2006/2007 continues to threaten economic stability in many parts of the world including the United States and Europe. The paper explores how the financial crisis conforms to or challenges two models of capitalism by comparing efforts by Germany and the United States to address the financial crisis in 2008. The German Financial Market Stabilization Act passed by the German legislature and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 passed by the American legislature were enacted in the tumultuous days of October 2008. Both laws were passed with conservative executives in power, national elections on the horizon, and economies struggling with high unemployment and low growth. The stabilization acts present an opportunity to understand the current state of each country’s model of capitalism through lens of crisis. The paper examines how, in the lead-up to the legislation, policy makers defined the causes of the financial crisis. In earlier work I showed how models of capitalism influenced German and United States privatization of public assets. This paper considers a similar theme: how each country’s model of capitalism influenced government’s capacity to resolve the financial crisis.

Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy: Political Decision Making in Modern Democracies -

Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy: Political Decision Making in Modern Democracies. By Nikolaos Zahariadis. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003. 208p.

When Do States Pursue Targeted Economic Development Policies? The Adoption and Expansion of State Enterprise Zone Programs*

26.95. Nikolaos Zahariadis has written an interesting and ambitious book that extends to other countries and later stages of the policy process John Kingdons classic insight into agenda setting—that policies are the result of streams of problems, solutions, and politics, coupled by policy entrepreneurs when windows of opportunity open.