IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v100y2008i3p425-427.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Soft budget constraints and the property rights theory of ownership

Author

Listed:
  • Eggleston, Karen

Abstract

Modeling the government make-or-buy decision, Hart and colleagues [Hart, O., Shleifer, S. and Vishny, R.W., 1997, The proper scope of government: Theory and an application to prisons, Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, 1127-1161] assume government providers are exogenously more replaceable than private providers. Instead, we posit government managers' soft incentives arise endogenously from their lack of control rights, because of rationally softer budget constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Eggleston, Karen, 2008. "Soft budget constraints and the property rights theory of ownership," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 425-427, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:100:y:2008:i:3:p:425-427
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1765(08)00094-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robinson, James A. & Torvik, Ragnar, 2009. "A political economy theory of the soft budget constraint," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 786-798, October.
    2. M. Dewatripont & E. Maskin, 1995. "Credit and Efficiency in Centralized and Decentralized Economies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(4), pages 541-555.
    3. Oliver Hart & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1997. "The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1127-1161.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andersson, Fredrik & Jordahl, Henrik, 2011. "Outsourcing Public Services: Ownership, Competition, Quality and Contracting," Working Paper Series 874, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    2. Kurt R. Brekke & Luigi Siciliani & Odd Rune Straume, 2015. "Hospital Competition with Soft Budgets," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(3), pages 1019-1048, July.
    3. Berger, Michael & Sommersguter-Reichmann, Margit & Czypionka, Thomas, 2020. "Determinants of soft budget constraints: how public debt affects hospital performance in Austria," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 116865, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2023. "The proper scope of government reconsidered: Asymmetric information and incentive contracts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    5. Kornai, János, 2008. "A puha költségvetési korlát szindrómája a kórházi szektorban [The soft budget constraint syndrome in the hospital sector]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(12), pages 1037-1056.
    6. Eggleston, Karen & Shen, Yu-Chu, 2011. "Soft budget constraints and ownership: Empirical evidence from US hospitals," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 7-11, January.
    7. Fredrik Andersson & Henrik Jordahl & Jens Josephson, 2019. "Outsourcing Public Services: Contractibility, Cost, and Quality," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 65(4), pages 349-372.
    8. János Kornai, 2009. "The soft budget constraint syndrome in the hospital sector," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 117-135, June.
    9. Yu-Chu Shen & Karen Eggleston, 2009. "The effect of soft budget constraints on access and quality in hospital care," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 211-232, June.
    10. Berger, Michael & Sommersguter-Reichmann, Margit & Czypionka, Thomas, 2020. "Determinants of soft budget constraints: How public debt affects hospital performance in Austria," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 249(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alberto Cavaliere & Simona Scabrosetti, 2008. "Privatization And Efficiency: From Principals And Agents To Political Economy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 685-710, September.
    2. Kornai, János, 2008. "A puha költségvetési korlát szindrómája a kórházi szektorban [The soft budget constraint syndrome in the hospital sector]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(12), pages 1037-1056.
    3. János Kornai, 2014. "The soft budget constraint," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 64(supplemen), pages 25-79, November.
    4. Joel Wood, 2013. "The Effects of Bailouts and Soft Budget Constraints on the Environment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 54(1), pages 127-137, January.
    5. de Bettignies, Jean-Etienne & Ross, Thomas W., 2009. "Public-private partnerships and the privatization of financing: An incomplete contracts approach," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 358-368, May.
    6. Timothy J. Goodspeed, 2017. "Bailouts and Soft Budget Constraints in Decentralized Government: A Synthesis and Survey of an Alternative View of Intergovernmental Grant Policy," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 221(2), pages 113-134, June.
    7. Boardman, Anthony E. & Vining, Aidan R. & Weimer, David L., 2016. "The long-run effects of privatization on productivity: Evidence from Canada," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 1001-1017.
    8. Giuseppe Cinquegrana & Serena Migliardo & Domenico Sarno, 2016. "Comparative analysis of private and public provision of the water and waste services by the Italian municipalities," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(3), pages 149-176.
    9. Pranab Bardhan, 2016. "State and Development: The Need for a Reappraisal of the Current Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(3), pages 862-892, September.
    10. Duranton, Gilles & Haniotis, Toni, 2004. "A comparison between economic systems with an application to transition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 2125-2157, August.
    11. Donald J. Wright, 2016. "Soft Budget Constraints in Public Hospitals," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(5), pages 578-590, May.
    12. David Martimort & Philippe De Donder & Etienne Billette De Villemeur, 2005. "An Incomplete Contract Perspective on Public Good Provision," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(2), pages 149-180, April.
    13. Kornai, János, 2014. "Bevezetés A puha költségvetési korlát című kötethez [Introduction to the author s volume entitled Soft Budget Constraint]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 845-897.
    14. János Kornai, 2009. "The soft budget constraint syndrome in the hospital sector," Society and Economy, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 31(1), pages 5-31, June.
    15. Pranab Bardhan, 2015. "State and Economic Development: The Need for a Reappraisal of the Current Literature," Working Papers id:7060, eSocialSciences.
    16. Mälkönen, Ville, 2008. "Optimal Public Procurement Contracts Under a Soft Budget Constraint," Discussion Papers 464, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    17. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    18. Yann Algan & Pierre Cahuc & André Zylberberg, 2002. "L'emploi public : un remède au chômage ?," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 53(3), pages 589-598.
    19. Stephanie Rosenkranz & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2007. "Can Coasean Bargaining Justify Pigouvian Taxation?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 573-585, November.
    20. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Firm Growth, Institutions and Structural Transformation," Ratio Working Papers 150, The Ratio Institute.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:100:y:2008:i:3:p:425-427. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.