THE PUBLIC FINANCING OF AMERICA'S LARGEST CITIES: A STUDY OF CITY FINANCIAL RECORDS IN THE WAKE OF THE GREAT RECESSION

Why were elite bankers and financiers demoted from ‘masters’ to ‘servants’ of society after the Great Depression, a crisis to which they contributed only marginally? Why do they seem to have got away with the recent crisis, in spite of their palpable responsibilities in triggering the Great Recession? This chapter provides an analysis of the differences between the bankers of the Great Depression and their colleagues of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century—regarding their position within, and attitude towards the firm, work culture, mental models, and codes of conduct—complemented with a scrutiny of the public discourse on bankers and financiers before and after the two crises. The authors argue that the (relative) mildness of the Great Recession, compared to the Great Depression, has contributed to preserve elite bankers’ and financiers’ status, income, wealth, and influence. Yet, the long-term consequences of their loss of reputational capital are difficult to assess.

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Spontaneity, Coalition Structure, and Strategic Choice

Sociological Perspectives ◽

10.1177/0731121420908891 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 (5) ◽

pp. 851-869

Author(s):

Amanda Pullum

Keyword(s):

Public Sector ◽

Great Recession ◽

Organizational Structures ◽

Coalition Structure ◽

Sufficient Time ◽

Strategic Choices ◽

The Public ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Political Tactics ◽

Public Sector Unions

Following the Great Recession, austerity programs and restrictions on the public sector were introduced worldwide. In this article, I ask how and why labor coalitions in two states used differing organizational structures to respond to “shock politics” that severely restricted public-sector unions in 2011. I find the availability or lack of a citizen-initiated veto referendum shaped but did not completely explain differences in strategic choices between unions in Wisconsin and Ohio. Rather, tensions among allies and lack of time for strategic planning also contributed to a nonhierarchical coalition in Wisconsin, while Ohio unions had ample time to create a bureaucratic coalition and plan a successful veto referendum campaign. I argue that given sufficient time to respond to political threats, hierarchical organizations can promote efficient, effective deployment of some political tactics.

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The trade-off between pension costs and salary expenditures in the public sector

Journal of Pension Economics and Finance ◽

10.1017/s1474747219000362 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 151-168

Author(s):

Dongwoo Kim ◽

Cory Koedel ◽

P. Brett Xiang

Keyword(s):

Public Sector ◽

Great Recession ◽

Pension Plans ◽

Teacher Salary ◽

The Public ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Pension Costs ◽

Crowd Out ◽

Pension Contribution ◽

Effect Heterogeneity

AbstractWe examine pension-cost crowd out of salary expenditures in the public sector using a 15-year data panel of state teacher pension plans spanning the Great Recession. While there is no evidence of salary crowd out prior to the Great Recession, there is a shift in the post-recession years such that a 1% (of salaries) increase in the annual required pension contribution corresponds to a decrease in total teacher salary expenditures of 0.24%. The effect operates through changes to the size of the teaching workforce, not changes to teacher wages. An explanation for the effect heterogeneity pre- and post-recession is that public employers are less able to shield the workforce from pension costs during times of fiscal stress. This problem is exacerbated because unlike other benefit costs, such as for health care, pension costs are countercyclical.

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Medicaid Access During Economic Distress: Lessons Learned From the Great Recession

Medical Care Research and Review ◽

10.1177/1077558720909237 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 107755872090923 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joseph Benitez ◽

Victoria Perez ◽

Eric Seiber

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Eligibility Criteria ◽

The Public ◽

Economic Distress ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Medicaid Enrollment ◽

Economic Downturns ◽

Medicaid Eligibility ◽

New Evidence

Medicaid enrollment increases during economic downturns which imply households using the public health insurance program during coverage gaps due to job loss. However, we provide new evidence demonstrating that the Medicaid program’s countercyclical protections against economic downturns are largely concentrated in states with more generous Medicaid eligibility criteria for adults. We exploit the timing of the 2007-2009 Great Recession to compare trends in recession-linked Medicaid enrollment between states with more generous Medicaid eligibility guidelines and states with more restrictive guidelines. For similar effects of the recession, Medicaid enrollment grew larger states in with more generous Medicaid programs. Our work suggests for every 100 people becoming unemployed in states with a restrictive Medicaid program, about 96 would be uninsured, and about 11 would enroll in Medicaid. Conversely, about 49 would be uninsured in a state with more generous Medicaid guidelines and 57 would enroll in Medicaid.

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Bank rescues and fiscal policy in the European Union during the great recession

Panoeconomicus ◽

10.2298/pan1602211f ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 63 (2) ◽

pp. 211-230 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jesús Ferreiro ◽

Catalina Gálvez ◽

Carmen Gómez ◽

Ana González

Keyword(s):

European Union ◽

Great Recession ◽

Public Support ◽

The European Union ◽

Budgetary Impact ◽

The Public ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Considerable Impact ◽

Fiscal Impulse ◽

The Impact

The outbreak of the economic and financial crisis in 2008, the socalled Great Recession, has made that many European Union countries have made massive interventions in their banking and financial systems. These interventions have had a considerable impact in the public finances of these countries. The aim of the paper is to analyze the impact on the national public budgets of the measures of public support to problem financial institutions carried out between the years 2008 and 2013, and to study how this budgetary impact has affected to the fiscal imbalances and to the strategies of fiscal impulse and consolidation implemented along these years.

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The durability of coordinated bargaining: Crisis, recovery and pay fixing in Ireland

Economic and Industrial Democracy ◽

10.1177/0143831x17718067 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 41 (2) ◽

pp. 481-505 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

William K Roche ◽

Tom Gormley

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

Industrial Relations ◽

Negative Effects ◽

Advanced Economy ◽

Social Partnership ◽

The Public ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Crisis Recovery ◽

Irish Case ◽

European Periphery

The international literature on the economic and fiscal crisis that heralded the Great Recession emphasizes the negative effects of ‘disorganized decentralization’ on unions’ capacities for pay coordination and ultimately on their effectiveness in representing their members. These effects are seen as particularly pronounced in countries on the ‘European periphery’ such as Ireland. The article challenges this view by showing how the collapse of social partnership and centralized bargaining in Ireland was soon followed in the private sector by a new form of coordinated decentralized pattern bargaining. Coordinated sectoral bargaining emerged and was sustained in the public service. The durability of pay coordination is attributed to the strategic postures of unions, combined with embedded features of industrial relations institutions. The comparative import of the Irish case arises less from ‘disorganized decentralization’ than from the resilience of coordination following one of the most severe economic and fiscal shocks experienced by any advanced economy.

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Local Governance and the Issue of Fiscal Health

State and Local Government Review ◽

10.1177/0160323x18765919 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 50 (1) ◽

pp. 46-55 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Bruce D. McDonald

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

Local Governments ◽

Local Governance ◽

Fiscal Health ◽

The Public ◽

Measurement Systems ◽

Academic Literature ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Financial Condition ◽

Provision Of Services

Since the start of the Great Recession, the issue of fiscal health possesses a prominent place in the management of local governments. To ensure the government’s continuation and its provision of services, administrators must balance the demands of the public with the resources it has available. Although a number of measurement approaches appear to help administrators, there is a lack of agreement on how fiscal health should be measured. To aid in the management of local governments and push the academic literature forward, this article investigates the measurement systems of financial condition established in the literature while considering their implications on governance.

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Crisis, Ideology, and Interventionist Policy Ratchets

Political Studies ◽

10.1177/0032321718807858 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 67 (4) ◽

pp. 815-833 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Christian Bjørnskov ◽

Martin Rode

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

Regulatory Policy ◽

Central Element ◽

Government Size ◽

Policy Debate ◽

Left Wing ◽

The Public ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Core ◽

Policy Responses

Proper government reaction to economic crisis has long been a central element of public policy debate and is experiencing a revival after the Great Recession of 2008. Previous studies argue on theoretical and empirical grounds that crises may lead to more interventionist policies, but also cause deregulation and liberalization. This article claims that policy responses will partly depend on the core economic ideology of government, causing ideologically heterogeneous post-crisis strategies. Employing a panel of 69 countries for which salient ideology measures can be constructed, we find that growth crises between 1975 and 2015 caused larger increases in government size and regulatory policy when countries have left-wing governments. We also find some evidence of policy ratchets, meaning that certain crisis policies present a tendency to become permanent, regardless of the ideology of successive governments in power. Rolling back the public sector in size and scope seems to be possible, but our results show that, on average, it does not clearly occur as an ideologically driven reaction to anti-crisis policies.

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The End of Cornucopia: Party Financing after the Great Recession

Government and Opposition ◽

10.1017/gov.2021.3 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Piero Ignazi ◽

Chiara Fiorelli

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Great Recession ◽

Public Support ◽

Public Spending ◽

European Countries ◽

Public Financing ◽

Electoral Outcome ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Private Donations ◽

Different Sources

Abstract This article investigates the dimension and evolution of the financing of political parties. It focuses on 28 parties in the five major European countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain), analysing the parties’ budgets from 2002 to 2016. The article's assessment shows that the availability of funds increased until the beginning of the Great Recession (2008), and then decreased, mainly due to a decline in public support for parties. Diminished state generosity has led parties to look for different sources of financing: the article shows the proportion of self-funding resources in terms of membership fees and private donations that has sustained the parties’ finances. Finally the article presents a model that helps to explain the shrinking of parties’ income by including parties’ ideological alignment, electoral outcome, presence in government and share of public financing, and countries’ public spending and GDP level, to investigate the plausible causes of the reduction of parties’ income.

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