ISSUE ADDRESSED The Western Australian (WA) Public Health Bill will replace the antiquated Health Act 1911. One of the proposed clauses of the Bill requires all WA local governments to develop a Public Health Plan. The Bill states that Public Health Plans should be based on evidence from all levels, including national and statewide priorities, community needs, local statistical evidence, and st...

This paper examines the effects of ownership types on firms’ R&D intensity and innovation performance, using a sample of 357,857 Chinese firms from 2005 to 2007. This study finds considerable divergence among Chinese domestic enterprises in terms of R&D intensity and innovation performance. We find that firms owned by the central government are the key drivers for firms’ R&D activities, while l...

a) Most regulatory functions of local government are prescribed by central govenment, and this is often done with little guidance that would ensure consistency or good outcomes; b) Increasing regulation prescribed by central government, without compensatory financial consideration. Local government is therefore often left to fund such regulations through rates or user charges; c) At the same ti...

A substantial public choice literature exists on the generic phenomenon of government failure in advanced western representative democracies. However, much less attention has been focussed on this question in the specific context of local governance, with the important exceptions of Bailey (1999) and Boyne (1998). In this paper we advance the argument that not only is government failure an esse...

Classification: FS 52 u Od Local self-government has a long tradition in Sweden. The first legislation in this field is generally considered to be the Local Government Ordinances of 1862, which separated Church of Sweden tasks from civil ones. Church tasks were assigned to the parishes of this Lutheran State church, while civil tasks were assigned to cities and rural municipal districts. At the...

R oanoke, Virginia is a city with a population of approximately 99,000 and a police force of 248 sworn officers at full staffing. In 1991, the Roanoke Police Department began its community policing effort with a small specialized unit, COPE (Community Oriented Policing Effort). This program began with eight officers and one sergeant and was partially funded by the Roanoke Redevelopment and Hous...

This article investigates the effect of the intensity of political competition on the tax choices by local governments. More precisely, we study whether local governments determine their tax rates more in a Leviathan way, exploiting a low political competition to vote high tax rates, or in a partisan way, fiscal choices by leftwing governments being significantly in contrast with those by right...

This paper provides a self-contained overview of the present problems of state finances in India. It begins with an overview of historical evolution and current institutional structures, including economic, political, administrative and fiscal aspects of India’s federal system. The paper then reviews the current situation of India’s state government finances, going on to consider various develo...

BACKGROUND The professionalism of hospital workers in Japan was challenged by the pandemic (H1N1) 2009. To maintain hospital function under critical situations such as a pandemic, it is important to understand the factors that increase and decrease the willingness to work. Previous hospital-based studies have examined this question using hypothetical events, but so far it has not been examined ...

This paper examines whether decentralization increases the responsiveness of public investment to local needs using a unique database from Bolivia. Empirical tests show that investment patterns in human capital and social services changed significantly after decentralization. These changes are strongly and positively related to objective indicators of need. Nationally, these changes were driven...