Suchergebnisse

Public spending often increases at the end of fiscal years. This is undesirable because late spending tends to be inefficient. The causes for these spending spikes are however poorly understood. This paper offers a novel identification strategy that relies on the historic variation in countries' fiscal years to analyze their effect on government disbursements. We show that the end of fiscal years rather than alternative explanations cause spending spikes at the end of fiscal years. Our accounting data includes discretionary contributions of 27 OECD countries to the World Bank from 2002 to 2013 at the daily level. As suggested by the principal-agent theory, we find that the end of year effect is smaller in countries with high administrative quality. We analyze the pertinent budget institutions as possible mechanism. For the first time, we can show that unexpected positive demand shocks decrease year-end spending, a common assumption in the literature. Finally, we revisit the complementary explanations for year-end effects in public spending.

Recent evidence shows public service motivation (PSM) may be unrelated to one's consideration of a public service career. In places where civil service examinations prevail, even adverse selection (selecting low-PSM individuals) can occur. This leaves public sector managers with tough questions: "Can we improve new recruits' PSM? Does training matter?" The present study attempts to answer these questions by using a case of onboard training in Taiwan. We hypothesize that PSM, along with public service–related knowledge and a positive attitude toward public service work, improves after training, and that the improvement hinges on trainees' satisfaction with training and perceived usefulness of training. Analytical results indicate that knowledge and attitudes are more "trainable" than PSM. Meanwhile, training satisfaction is associated with the growth of public service–related knowledge, while perceived training usefulness relates to a positive attitude toward public service work and PSM. Overall, these findings advance our understanding of the effectiveness of public service training, its determinants, and the implications for public employees' public service orientations.