Shock or Design: What Drives Fiscal De/Centralization? A Comparative Analysis of Twenty-Nine OECD Countries, 1995–2017

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Tobias Arnold ◽  
Sean Mueller ◽  
Adrian Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Political System ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fiscal Centralization ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Active Policy

Abstract Over the past decades, decentralization has become the new paradigm in how states should organize power territorially. Carefully planned institutional re-designs are the most visible expression thereof. Yet the Great Recession of 2007–2009 has pushed governments into the opposite direction, i.e., towards centralization, to better weather the fiscal drought. Given these contradictory developments, this article compares the effects of twenty-three separate state reforms with the impact of the Great Recession on fiscal centralization in twenty-nine countries over more than two decades. In the main, our analyses attribute a larger effect to design, i.e., pro-active policy making through reforms, than reactive crisis management after a great shock. However, this difference is only apparent once we consider a state’s institutional structure, that is whether a political system is unitary or federal. Our findings thus highlight the need for a multidimensional approach to better understand the drivers of fiscal de/centralization.

scholarly journals Automation vs. Jobs

2012 ◽  
Vol 134 (04) ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Alan S. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Information And Communications Technology ◽  
Communications Technology ◽  
Working Adults ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Impact

This article examines the impact of automation on jobs. Since the end of the Great Recession in June 2009, the GDP of the United States has grown 75% as fast as its average between 1948 and 2007. Ordinarily, such growth would spur companies to hire more workers. However, the fact is that overall unemployment has hovered above 9% for most of the past three years and remains stubbornly high. The percentage of working adults is at its lowest level since 1983, when women were still entering the workforce. Instead of hiring workers, companies are now investing in equipment and technology, which rebounded quickly after the recession. Some economists contend that advanced information and communications technology is transforming the economy by capturing jobs that only humans could have done before. They even consider digital technology when looking at the potential causes of unemployment. They also believe this is a sign of deeper structural changes in the economy.

A Long Stagnation, or Capitalism without Growth

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Economic Stability ◽  
Secular Stagnation ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Growth Prospects

Chapter 11 assesses the growth prospects of the world economy. The history of global economic doomsaying is traced briefly, a frequently reasonable position that has not done well with the facts for the past hundred years. Capitalism has been adept at escaping from the pit and pendulum. A set of global imbalances is then reviewed that are seen as posing a severe threat to global economic stability and certainly to the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth. The Great Recession following the Crash of 2007–8 might be “different this time.” Historical and contemporary fears of “secular stagnation” are discussed but the speculative nature of stagnationist assessments is acknowledged.

scholarly journals Preventing NEETs during the Great Recession: the effects of mandatory activation programs for young welfare recipients

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emile Cammeraat ◽  
Egbert Jongen ◽  
Pierre Koning
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Welfare Recipients ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Employment Education ◽  
The Impact

AbstractWe study the impact of mandatory activation programs for young welfare recipients in the Netherlands. What makes this reform unique is that it clashed head on with the Great Recession. We use differences-in-differences and data for the period 1999–2012 to estimate the effects of this reform. We find that the reform reduced the number of welfare recipients but had no effect on the number of NEETs (individuals not in employment, education or training). The absence of employment effects contrasts with previous studies on the impact of mandatory activation programs, which we argue is due to the reform taking place during a severe economic recession.

The Great Financial Crisis: an Ethical Rejoinder

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (01) ◽  
pp. 19-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Charles Merrill
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Heterodox Economics ◽  
Ethical Philosophy ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Economy ◽  
Radical Reconstruction

The Great Financial Crisis that broke in 2008 and the Great Recession that followed has led many to question the very structure of contemporary economies. Some argue that the economic model of the past forty years is now broken. Criticism has also been directed at the orthodoxies of economics. For example, neoclassical equilibrium economics, the mainstream economics of the day, is accused of failing to understand some of the most basic aspects of the modern economy (debt and money), of supporting policies that have led to the economic breakdown (deregulation), and of failing to see the crisis coming (Bezemer 2012, Keen 2011). Consequently, heterodox thinking in economics is getting a hearing as never before. Heterodox economics offers itself as the requisite radical reconstruction of the science of economics and also proposes policies for the radical reconstruction of the major economics.Yet to talk of the reconstruction of the modern market economy is at the same time to raise the ethical question: what shape ought the market economy to take? Heterodox economics may acutely analyse the inadequacies of real economies and propose plausible reforms, but as an essentially descriptive science there will be limits on its ability to state what ought to be. Rather, what is required seems to be a systematic prescriptive ethics. In other words, recent events in the world of economics have provided an opening for what ethical philosophy should be best at providing. Determining whether a specific ethical philosophy, to be identified shortly, has the capacity to address the questions raised by heterodox economics is the task of this paper.

The Great Depression and the Great Recession in Interwar Greece and Today: A comparison

2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Lazaretou
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek Crisis ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Nominal Anchor

AbstractThe past Greek crisis experience is more or less terra incognita. In all historical empirical studies Greece is systematically neglected or included only sporadically in their cross-country samples. In the national literature too there is little on this topic. In this paper we use the 1930s crisis as a useful testing ground to compare the two crises episodes, ‘then’ and ‘now’; to detect differences and similarities and discuss the policy facts with the ultimate aim to draw some ‘policy lessons’ from history. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to study the Greek crisis experience across the two historical episodes. Comparisons with the interwar period show that the recent economic downturn was faster, larger and more severe than during the early 1930s. More importantly, analysing the determinants of the two crises, we conclude that Greece’s problems arose from its inability to credibly adhere to a nominal anchor.

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