When Push Comes to Shove: The Effect of Economic Crisis on the Spending of Government Savings

Cheong Kim and Sanghee Park

International Journal of Public Administration, 2022, vol. 45, issue 6, 523-536

Abstract: This study explores whether and how an economic crisis affects the spending of government savings by focusing on its political-economic benefit. Despite a great deal of discussion about the government’s tendency toward more spending, relatively few studies have attempted to identify the conditions that can reverse the tendency. Using data from 254 California cities during 1996–2009, this study finds a regular U-shape relationship between unemployment rates and government savings. Savings decrease until the unemployment rate reaches almost double digits (9.9%) and begin to recover after this point. The results suggest that an economic crisis curbs the spending tendency by modifying the incentives of legislators. This study contributes to public administration research by explaining local government savings and its delayed responses to a crisis from a political-economic perspective.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01900692.2020.1868507 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:lpadxx:v:45:y:2022:i:6:p:523-536

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/lpad20

DOI: 10.1080/01900692.2020.1868507

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Administration is currently edited by Ali Farazmand

More articles in International Journal of Public Administration from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().