IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/intare/v23y2020i3p268-287.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Discussing the determinants of online budget transparency based on a spatial regression analysis of Croatian cities and municipalities: Do good neighbours make you better?

Author

Listed:
  • Paulo Reis Mourao

    (Department of Economics, Economics & Management School, University of Minho, Portugal)

  • Mihaela Bronić
  • Branko Stanić

    (Institute of Public Finance, Croatia)

Abstract

Taxpayers want to pay as little in taxes as possible to fund an adequate level of public goods and services in their local government, and so they need to keep their local incumbents accountable. Online local budget transparency (OLBT) facilitates this accountability, as it enables citizens to find information online about their local budgets that is timely, accurate, comprehensive and understandable. The aim of this article is to identify the most important determinants of OLBT for all 556 Croatian cities and municipalities from 2014 to 2017. Using a dynamic spatial lag Durbin model, the analysis explores the direct and indirect effects of potential determinants on OLBT. The main contribution is the pioneering use of a dynamic spatial lag Durbin model for researching local budget transparency determinants in a Central and Eastern European democracy. The results show that neighbours have an influence on OLBT but that direct effects dominate; that is, the major OLBT determinants come from within each city/municipality. Particularly important determinants are residents’ income, the local government’s wealth, the number of public employees in the city/municipality and the population size.

Suggested Citation

  • Paulo Reis Mourao & Mihaela Bronić & Branko Stanić, 2020. "Discussing the determinants of online budget transparency based on a spatial regression analysis of Croatian cities and municipalities: Do good neighbours make you better?," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 23(3), pages 268-287, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:intare:v:23:y:2020:i:3:p:268-287
    DOI: 10.1177/2233865919895854
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2233865919895854
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2233865919895854?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emma Galli & Ilde Rizzo & Carla Scaglioni, 2020. "Is transparency spatially determined? An empirical test for Italian municipalities," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(58), pages 6372-6385, December.
    2. Borck, Rainald & Fossen, Frank M. & Freier, Ronny & Martin, Thorsten, 2015. "Race to the debt trap? — Spatial econometric evidence on debt in German municipalities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 20-37.
    3. Daniel Albalate del Sol, 2013. "The institutional, economic and social determinants of local government transparency," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 16(1), pages 90-107.
    4. Giroux, Gary & McLelland, Andrew J., 2003. "Governance structures and accounting at large municipalities," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 203-230.
    5. Benedetta Gesuele & Concetta Metallo, 2017. "Factors Influencing Mandatory and Voluntary e-Disclosure Diffusion by Municipalities," Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organization, in: Katia Corsi & Nicola Giuseppe Castellano & Rita Lamboglia & Daniela Mancini (ed.), Reshaping Accounting and Management Control Systems, pages 263-276, Springer.
    6. Daniel Albalate del Sol, 2013. "The institutional, economic and social determinants of local government transparency," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(1), pages 90-107, March.
    7. Caldeira, Emilie, 2012. "Yardstick competition in a federation: Theory and evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 878-897.
    8. Salmon, Pierre, 1987. "Decentralisation as an Incentive Scheme," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 3(2), pages 24-43, Summer.
    9. Carlos Serrano-Cinca & Mar Rueda-Tomás & Pilar Portillo-Tarragona, 2009. "Factors Influencing E-Disclosure in Local Public Administrations," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 27(2), pages 355-378, April.
    10. Laswad, Fawzi & Fisher, Richard & Oyelere, Peter, 2005. "Determinants of voluntary Internet financial reporting by local government authorities," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 101-121.
    11. James E. Alt & David Dreyer Lassen & Shanna Rose, 2006. "The Causes of Fiscal Transparency: Evidence from the American States," EPRU Working Paper Series 06-02, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    12. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    13. Evans, Jh & Patton, Jm, 1987. "Signaling And Monitoring In Public-Sector Accounting," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25, pages 130-164.
    14. Manfred M. Fischer & Peter Nijkamp (ed.), 2014. "Handbook of Regional Science," Springer Books, Springer, edition 127, number 978-3-642-23430-9, April.
    15. James E. Alt & David Dreyer Lassen & Shanna Rose, 2006. "The Causes of Fiscal Transparency: Evidence from the U.S. States," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 53(si), pages 1-2.
    16. Oecd, 2002. "OECD Best Practices for Budget Transparency," OECD Journal on Budgeting, OECD Publishing, vol. 1(3), pages 7-14.
    17. Andrews, Matthew R., 2009. "Isomorphism and the Limits to African Public Financial Management Reform," Scholarly Articles 4415942, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    18. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    19. Patten, Dennis M., 1992. "Intra-industry environmental disclosures in response to the Alaskan oil spill: A note on legitimacy theory," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 471-475, July.
    20. Geys, Benny, 2006. "Looking across borders: A test of spatial policy interdependence using local government efficiency ratings," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 443-462, November.
    21. Benny Geys & Steffen Osterloh, 2013. "Borders As Boundaries To Fiscal Policy Interactions? An Empirical Analysis Of Politicians’ Opinions On Rivals In The Competition For Firms," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 583-606, October.
    22. Lung‐fei Lee & Jihai Yu, 2016. "Identification of Spatial Durbin Panel Models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), pages 133-162, January.
    23. José Caamaño-Alegre & Santiago Lago-Peñas & Francisco Reyes-Santias & Aurora Santiago-Boubeta, 2011. "Budget Transparency in Local Governments: An Empirical Analysis," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1102, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    24. Andrews, Matt, 2009. "Isomorphism and the Limits to African Public Financial Management Reform," Working Paper Series rwp09-012, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    25. repec:imf:imfops:1998/001 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Juan Camilo Fernández-Marín & Nadja Simone Menezes Nery Oliveira & Paulo Mourao, 2022. "The role of policies in transforming regional fiscal structures: an exploratory analysis of spatial data from a policy of fiscal decentralization in Latin America," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 11(1), pages 1-24, December.

    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. Katarina Ott & Velibor Maèkiæ & Mihaela Broniæ, 2019. "Political Stubbornness and Online Local Budget Transparency in Croatia," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 37(2), pages 553-585.
    2. Branko Stanic, 2018. "Determinants of subnational budget/fiscal transparency: a review of empirical evidence," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 42(4), pages 449-486.
    3. Lorenzo Cicatiello & Elina Simone & Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta, 2017. "Political determinants of fiscal transparency: a panel data empirical investigation," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 315-336, November.
    4. Cañizares-Espada Manuela & Muñoz-Colomina Clara Isabel & Pérez-Estébanez Raquel & Urquía-Grande Elena, 2021. "Transparency and Accessibility in Municipalities: The Case of Social Services in Spain," Central European Journal of Public Policy, Sciendo, vol. 15(1), pages 31-54, June.
    5. Francisco Bastida & Bernardino Benito & Maria-Dolores Guillamon, 2019. "Tax mimicking in Spanish municipalities: expenditure spillovers, yardstick competition, or tax competition?," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 43(2), pages 115-139.
    6. Wehner, Joachim & de Renzio, Paolo, 2013. "Citizens, Legislators, and Executive Disclosure: The Political Determinants of Fiscal Transparency," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 96-108.
    7. Francisca Tejedo-Romero & Joaquim Filipe Ferraz Esteves Araujo, 2023. "Critical factors influencing information disclosure in public organisations," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    8. Kristien Werck & Bruno Heyndels & Benny Geys, 2008. "The impact of ‘central places’ on spatial spending patterns: evidence from Flemish local government cultural expenditures," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 32(1), pages 35-58, March.
    9. Revelli, Federico & Tovmo, Per, 2007. "Revealed yardstick competition: Local government efficiency patterns in Norway," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 121-134, July.
    10. Carlos Serrano-Cinca & Mar Rueda-Tomás & Pilar Portillo-Tarragona, 2009. "Factors Influencing E-Disclosure in Local Public Administrations," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 27(2), pages 355-378, April.
    11. Javier Garcia-Lacalle & Lourdes Torres, 2021. "Financial Reporting Quality and Online Disclosure Practices in Spanish Governmental Agencies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-21, February.
    12. Borck, Rainald & Fossen, Frank M. & Freier, Ronny & Martin, Thorsten, 2015. "Race to the debt trap? — Spatial econometric evidence on debt in German municipalities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 20-37.
    13. Geys, Benny & Vermeir, Jan, 2008. "Party cues and yardstick voting," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 470-477, June.
    14. Xiao Cheng & Yanping Pu, 2017. "Effective Tax Rates, Spatial Spillover, and Economic Growth in China: An Empirical Study Based on the Spatial Durbin Model," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 18(1), pages 73-97, May.
    15. Ana Cárcaba & Eduardo González & Juan Ventura & Rubén Arrondo, 2017. "How Does Good Governance Relate to Quality of Life?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-16, April.
    16. Qiuxian Hu & Leibao Zhang & Wenyu Zhang & Shuai Zhang, 2020. "Empirical Study on the Evaluation Model of Public Satisfaction With Local Government Budget Transparency: A Case From China," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, May.
    17. Francesco Aiello & Graziella Bonanno, 2019. "Explaining Differences In Efficiency: A Meta‐Study On Local Government Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 999-1027, July.
    18. Tamara Guerrero-Gómez & Andrés Navarro-Galera & David Ortiz-Rodríguez, 2021. "Promoting Online Transparency to Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals: An Empirical Study of Local Governments in Latin America," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-18, February.
    19. Pierre Salmon, 2013. "Horizontal competition in multilevel governmental settings," Working Papers hal-00830876, HAL.
    20. Revelli Federico & Tovmo Per, 2006. "Declared vs. revealed yardstick competition:Local government efficiency in Norway," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 200605, University of Turin.

    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:sae:intare:v:23:y:2020:i:3:p:268-287. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.hufs.ac.kr/user/hufsenglish/re_1.jsp .

    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.