This paper develops a political-economy model of the budget process focusing on the common pool problem of the public budget. We show that the externality arising from the fact that public spending tends to be targeted at individual groups in society while the tax burden is widely dispersed...

Despite the Founding Fathers' careful planning, the reason for the public's lack of confidence in Congress is that elections, like the institutional checks and balances of federalism and separation of powers, are necessary but not sufficient to ensure that Congress acts in the best interests of...

This analysis reflects the presumption that the principal-agent relationship is central to an understanding of government spending. Our model's structure is adapted from Jack Hirshleifer's (1970) use of the state-preference theory of decision-making under uncertainty to delimit the information...

This paper uses a public choice framework to consider the impact of Congressional adoption of a biennial federal budget. The introductory chapters detail the evolution of the current Congressional annual budget and explain how budgetary institutions affect the power structures inside Congress....

Ineffective controllership is, perhaps, the most common managerial failure found in the public sector. This failure affects outcomes and achievements in every area of public policy - often profoundly. Controllers design and operate management-control systems. The effectiveness of alternative...

This chapter examines the redistributive preferences of Latin Americans and investigates the factors that shape them. Using a detailed survey in eight Latin American countries, the study sheds new light on redistributive preferences and explores which aspects of redistribution are more popular...

The business model used by Congress to pay for Social Security, Medicare and national debt is our costliest federal mandate. Because they run a national retirement plan without using compound interest, Congress makes us pay TWELVE dollars to do a ONE-dollar job. This business model is the root...

Open and participatory budget making is imperative for good governance; yet by international standards India fares badly on this count. this article analyses the process of budget preparation and suggests how it can be made more transparent and participatory

Although mandated by federal law, Medicaid always has been fundamentally a matter of state business, primarily because states administer the program and receive only partial federal reimbursement for state expenditures. As health care costs have burgeoned over the past few decades, states have...