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Mark Schelker
Title
Prof. Dr.
Last Name
Schelker
First name
Mark
Email
mark.schelker@unisg.ch
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1 - 10 of 38
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PublicationGovernance, Bureaucratic Rents and Well-Being Differentials Across US StatesWe analyse the influence of institutional restrictions on bureaucratic rents. As a measure for these rents, we propose subjective well-being differentials between workers in the public administration and workers in other industries. Based on data for the US states, we estimate the extent to which institutional efforts to strengthen bureaucratic accountability affect differences in well-being. We find that well-being differences are smaller in states with high transparency, elected auditors, and legal deficit carryover restrictions. These findings are consistent with limited rent extraction under these institutional conditions. No or weak effects are found for performance audits and regulatory review.
Scopus© Citations 3 -
PublicationAuditors and Corporate Governance : Evidence from the Public SectorCorporate auditors review and evaluate financial statements. Audit quality depends on auditor expertise and independence. To enhance auditor independence the selection process and auditor rotation requirements have been debated intensively. The available empirical evidence is not conclusive and suffers from serious endogeneity problems. I propose learning from the public sector where auditors play a similar role and present empirical evidence on the impact of auditor expertise, term length and rotation requirements on government performance at the US state level. I find evidence indicating that greater auditor expertise and rotation requirements have a positive effect on state credit ratings.
Scopus© Citations 5 -
PublicationAuditor Expertise: Evidence from the Public SectorThis paper is the first attempt to study the relationship between public auditor expertise and fiscal performance. I find that states requiring the auditor to hold a professional degree feature significantly higher credit ratings and lower expenditures and debt.Type: journal articleJournal: Economics LettersVolume: 116Issue: 3
Scopus© Citations 10 -
PublicationThe influence of auditor term length and term limits on US state general obligation bond ratingsImproving transparency and enabling the principal to hold its agents accountable is a major issue in any principal agent relationship. This paper focuses on the role of public auditors in this task and presents evidence on the impact of auditor term length and term limits on government performance measured by state credit ratings at the US State level. I find no clear evidence for the influence of auditor term length, but strong evidence for a positive and significant influence of term limits on state credit ratings. Auditors who face a binding term limit are associated with higher credit ratings.Type: journal articleJournal: Public ChoiceVolume: 150Issue: 1-2
Scopus© Citations 15 -
PublicationFederalism and Exit Costs : A Comment on C. Mantzavinos, Federalism and Individual LibertyIn a recent paper in this journal, Mantzavinos (2010) discussed the relation between federalism and individual liberty. Federalism leads to greater diversity among political units. Between this diversity and individual liberty he presumed two relations. (a) Greater diversity enhances individual liberty insofar as it increases the choice set of the citizens. (b) Greater diversity reduces individual liberty insofar as it increases exit costs. Thus, he arrives at an optimal degree of federalism. Both of these relations, but their combination in a common model in particular, have to be questioned. His first relation is in the dimension of rights, the second one, however, in the dimension of costs and benefits and to compare them causes problems. Moreover, his first relation is correct whenever we evaluate individual liberty in the dimension of rights, but not necessarily in the dimension of individual benefits. His second relation neglects the most important part of exit costs which usually decrease with greater liberty. Thus, the opposite relation between diversity and exit costs seems to be more plausible. In the following, these points are discussed.Type: journal articleJournal: Constitutional Political EconomyVolume: 22Issue: 2
Scopus© Citations 1 -
PublicationAuditors and Fiscal Policy : Empirical Evidence on a Little Big InstitutionVarious political institutions designed to control the government have been analyzed in the academic literature. However, an important institution has been neglected so far: independent auditing institutions with an extended mandate to audit the budget draft and individual policy proposals. We argue that such auditors improve transparency and provide essential information on the impact of policy proposals on common pool resources, which leads to less wasteful spending. We empirically analyze the impact of such auditors on fiscal policy at the Swiss local level. Auditors who can evaluate and criticize policy proposals ex ante to policy decisions, significantly reduce the general tax burden and public expenditures. The results are similar for different datasets and robust to various changes in the econometric specification.Type: journal articleJournal: Journal of Comparative EconomicsVolume: 38Issue: 4
Scopus© Citations 26 -
PublicationIndependent and competing agencies: An effective way to control governmentControlling government is a primary focus of the politico-economic literature. Recently, various political institutions have been analyzed from this perspective, most importantly balanced budget rules, fiscal federalism, and direct democracy. However, one type of institution has been neglected so far: elected competitors to the government. Such institutional competition between the government and an independent agency can be found at the Swiss local level, where finance Commissions compete with the government. In some parts of Switzerland, local finance commissions can ex ante criticize government projects and bring alternative policy proposals onto the political agenda, which are then voted on by the citizens. Thus, they become strong competitors to the government. We econometrically investigate this institutional setting by comparing the 26 Swiss cantons. We find the power of the local finance commission to have an economically relevant, statistically significant and robust negative effect on the tax burden and on public expenditures.Type: journal articleJournal: Public ChoiceVolume: 130Issue: 1/2
Scopus© Citations 17 -
PublicationType: journal articleJournal: Swiss Journal of Economics and StatisticsVolume: 139Issue: 3
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PublicationType: book