Suchergebnisse

Modern governments operate through laws and regulations. However, difficulties in measuring their contents prevent researchers from understanding and evaluating their effectiveness. For example, it is not clear whether balanced budget laws have helped Canadian provincial governments control their budget deficits because the content of these laws is seldom examined in sufficient detail. This case study introduces a method that evaluates the stringency of balanced budget laws by generating a numerical index, so that these laws can be compared across jurisdictions and over time, and can be evaluated against their outcomes. This study also describes our process of developing a research design that draws from interdisciplinary knowledge and integrates multiple methods to answer one research question: Are balanced budget laws effective when economic conditions deteriorate? Our research design and methods can be applied to a wide range of social science research.

How should we construct incidence indexes for children and parents in the case of public subsidies for home-care of the elderly? What is the nature of a fiscal incidence index on a budgetary basis versus a theoretically more satisfactory index that is welfare-based? Can we find budgetary based measures that will serve as a proxy for incidence in welfare terms? Does the structure of the family including the altruism of children affect incidence indexes? How should fiscal shifting of the subsidy for home care paid to the parents be defined, in budgetary or in welfare terms, and what does simulation tell us about the distribution of benefits between the generations? We address these issues analytically and with simulation (using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey) in this contribution to the study of fiscal incidence. The definition of welfare incidence, the comparison of welfare-based incidence with budgetary incidence for non-cooperative and cooperative families, and the calculation of the shifting of program benefits between family members, some of whom may be altruistic, are key issues in the analysis. The integration of individual welfare, family structure and benefit shifting provides a new perspective on the fiscal incidence of home care programs.

Abstract This paper investigates the determinants of public health expenditure in a public‐private mixed health care system, where a longer wait time for public care is the major difference between public and private sectors. Voter preferences for health care vary according to their age and by income, and public policy choices are part of a multi‐dimensional, competitive political equilibrium. We show how equilibrium public health expenditure and wait times depend on demographics and explain why they are independent of the distributions of income and political influence. We also show that population aging may not always lead to more public health expenditure.

We analyze the expected impact of the new Canada Health Transfer (CHT) on the capacity of Canadian provinces to provide universal Medicare coverage. We found the new CHT formula, recently redesigned by the federal government, fails to address the differing capacity of provinces to provide Medicare coverage due to the unavoidably higher costs imposed by the population's age structure and geographical dispersion. We propose a modified capitation formula that adjusts for these "unavoidable" cost factors. The redistributive impact on the provinces is examined as well as the extent to which the proposed CHT fits with other federal transfer, especially Equalization.

The Canadian provinces have implemented various strategies aimed at improving kindergarten through 12th-grade mathematics performance. There is no clear evidence which, if any, of these strategies improve achievement scores. We apply hierarchical linear modelling to the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment data to isolate the effects of policy interventions. We find that efforts to improve learning conditions can be worthwhile, but their effects are not as substantial as a school's socio-economic status composition, which elevates or depresses the academic achievements of all students. As barriers to school choice come down, ambitious parents will resort to active school choice, a strategy that may reduce social equity.

The inter-provincial migration patterns of family physicians in Canada show that some provinces like Newfoundland and Saskatchewan experience persistent net out-migration, while others, including Ontario and British Columbia, are destinations more often than origins of migrants. Governments in provinces exhibiting net out-migration have responded with a number of incentive and recruitment programs. In this study, we investigate the determinants of the stated interprovincial migration intentions of 3,995 rural and urban family physicians in the 2010 wave of the National Physician Survey. We consider a range of physician characteristics, community attributes and working conditions. We find that in the intention to move, higher compensation has a modest effect, while the community characteristics have a consistently important influence. Our results suggest that policy and program designers should acknowledge the critical role of community-level living and working conditions in their family physician recruitment and retention efforts.

AbstractWe examine the performance of four parliamentary democracies – Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK – as they confront the need for a substantial fiscal policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research covers the period 1 January 2020 to 30 June 2020. We score the four countries on nine components of democratic accountability using Mark Philp's distinction between formal and political accountability. We conclude, first, that to appreciate the nuanced character of accountability, it is important to have a set of operational measures that identify specific aspects of performance. Second, preparation is important for resilience: countries that demonstrated strong accountability before the pandemic maintained relatively high accountability standards during the crisis; weaker accountability mechanisms showed less resistance to the expanding power of the executive. Finally, it is easier to be accountable when outcomes are favourable, but favourable outcomes include adherence to the norms of democratic accountability.

AbstractWe propose a framework to define and measure transparency in the budgeting process. We survey the main fiscal rules in the Canadian provinces from 1980 to 2018 and quantify them into a stringency index and a transparency index. Our findings show that more stringent balanced budget laws (BBLs) do not necessarily imply less transparency, while higher transparency requirements appear to reduce the effect of stringent BBLs on budget balance, possibly because transparency rules deter creative accounting. This study provides insights into the role of various fiscal rules in fiscal governance.

Since the mid‐1990s, most Canadian provinces have enacted balanced budget laws (BBLs). Critics argue that these laws are empty political gestures that are ignored during economic slowdowns. We consider BBLs in the Canadian provinces from 1981 to 2013 and find that provinces with stronger rules had better deficit and debt records overall. Recessions make it more difficult to achieve positive outcomes, but we find no obvious difference between the effects of BBLs during normal economic conditions and "bad times." We conclude with suggestions for how the design of BBLs could take better account of jurisdiction‐specific business cycles.

Debates about the size of government, which are often debates about what government should or should not do, need to be joined by a concern for the relative cost of government. Since 1981, the price in the public sector has grown faster than the price for GDP. We decompose the ratio between the price index for the public sector and that for GDP in the Canadian provinces and capture the governments' price advantage/disadvantage in different spending categories. Our analysis shows that governments with lower debt ratios and weaker fiscal rules are more vulnerable to rising costs, particularly during periods of higher commodity prices.