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The Comrades Marathon is a world‐renowned ultra marathon that takes place yearly between the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Durban in KwaZulu‐Natal, South Africa. It attracts athletes from around the world, and boasts a participation of more than 14,000. The purpose of this article is to determine the impact that this marathon has on the provincial economy – a manufacturing‐based economy.

Spending data of participants and their accompanying spectators were compiled by means of surveys and participants were split into categories based on their origin. The provincial Social Accounting Matrix is used to quantify the impact of this spending stimulus on production, income and job creation within the province.

The results show that Comrades Marathon contributes significantly to the provincial economy and that more than 600 jobs are dependent on the event.

It has a larger impact on the local economy than many similar sport events and this is attributed to the specialised nature of the event as well as its status as an ultra‐marathon.

This research is one of few on ultra‐marathons and the focus is on participants’ spending behaviour during the event.

This study examines the fiscal impact of tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) on state spending by expanding the popular, narrow view of examining TELs and taking into account the scope, purpose, and restrictiveness of individual state TELs. Using an efficient estimator, called fixed effect vector decomposition I employ a set of panel data from all fifty states for the period 1997 - 2006. While a number of studies have been inconclusive about the impact of state TELs on spending, this study finds that having a TEL is not what matters. Rather, the impact of TELs depends on the actual features of the individual TEL. Further, TELs impact different categories of spending in different ways and, under the right conditions, TELs can have the desired impact and effectively reduce state spending.

This paper analyzes the impact of economic downturns on the revenue and expense sides of city financing for the period 2003 to 2009 using a convenience sample of the audited end of year financial reports for thirty midsized US cities. The analysis focuses on whether and how quickly and how extensively revenue and spending directions from past years are altered by recessions. A seven year series of Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) data serves to explore whether citiesʼ revenues and spending, especially the traditional property tax and core functions such as public safety and infrastructure withstood the brief 2001 and the persistent 2007 recessions? The findings point to consumption (spending) over stability (revenue minus expense) for the recession of 2007, particularly in 2008 and 2009.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of a consumer confidence shock on GDP and different types of consumer spending during a slack state as well as a non-slack state of an economy.

The authors use the US quarterly data from 1960Q1 to 2014Q4 and apply Jorda’s (2005) local projection method to compute the impulse responses of macroeconomic variables to a consumer confidence shock. The local projection method allows us to include non-linearities in the response function.

In general, the response of output, following a consumer confidence shock, is similar in slack and non-slack states and indicate that an unfavorable confidence shock is contractionary. However, the intensity and duration of impact of a confidence shock on different components of spending are state dependent. Overall, a negative confidence shock appears to have a stronger impact on non-slack time than on a slack time.

Policy makers should be careful about undertaking a policy action that may affect consumer confidence adversely, particularly during an economic good time. An adverse confidence shock can trigger a downfall in a well-functioning economy and the dampening effect may last for several quarters before the economy rebounds.

US economy is subject to fluctuations; however, the literature on the impact of confidence shock in different economic states is limited. The incremental contribution of this paper is that it investigates how the consumers respond to the confidence shock in a state-dependent model. Furthermore, the authors use a more robust and alternative estimation method that tackles any non-linear problems.

This paper examines how voters' initiatives used in 24 states affect state budget balance. The author first uses a qualitative approach to investigate the extent to which ballot initiatives are used and identifies the initiatives that have had significant impacts on state revenues and expenditures. The review shows that the impact of initiatives differs from a state to state. The heavy initiative user states have experienced substantial impact on their budgets. Second, as their impact on state budget is particularly significant during economic downturn, a linear regression analysis is performed to examine the relationship between the use of initiatives and state budget balance measured in terms of the state budget gap as percentage of FY 2010 general fund. The regression analysis shows that the number of expenditure-induced initiatives have a statistically significant effect on state budget gap, while revenue-restrained measures (e.g. number of tax-limiting measures and the use of super majority or popular vote to approve tax increase) only marginally affect the FY 2010 budget gap.

This paper investigates the impact of state governments’ “Tax and Expenditure Limits” (TELs) on their tax progressivity and redistributive spending. A two stage least squares (2SLS) regression model of data covering 1985-2007, was employed to allow for simultaneity in the relationships between intergovernmental transfer, tax progressivity, expenditure progressivity, and labor mobility. This model tested whether high- or low income residents had paid for and benefited from these fiscal institutions. As a result we find that TELs significantly decrease tax progressivity and increase poverty rate. These two policy effects should be explicitly accounted for in the design or revision of TELs.

Although public owned enterprises have rarely received the attention of the American public, their presence across the nation is widespread and their role in governance fundamental. These business-type activities, which are financed through user charges and fees, represent a great potential revenue source for municipalities as they often generate revenues beyond their costs. This paper examines longitudinally how public enterprises affect governmental spending and revenue patterns by analyzing a panel dataset of 100 Georgia cities between 2005 and 2009. This study used two-step GMM regression (2SGMM) and robust standard errors to estimate the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The findings of this research suggest that net enterprise transfers increase own-source revenues (additive effect) but decrease governmental expenditures (siphoning effect) contradicting findings from earlier studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customers’ upgrading/downgrading _(t−1) behavior may be predictive of future spending. Further, this paper also investigates how customers’ post-consumption evaluations of upgrades and downgrades [satisfaction_(t−1) and perceived value_(t−1)] may moderate the relationship between upgrades/downgrades and future spending.

The predictions are tested using a large longitudinal data set of river cruise purchases (N = 48,103) and largely replicated using a data set of zoo membership purchases (N = 2,469).

Satisfaction_(t−1) mitigates the positive relationship between prior upgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t). In contrast, perceived value_(t−1) magnifies the positive relationship between prior upgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t). However, no positively moderating effects are observed to alleviate the negative relationship between prior downgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t).

This research suggests that managers should work hard early in customer–firm relationships because of an asymmetric difficultly in altering the trajectory of an established relationship. Specifically, relationships that are trending downward (as consecutive downgrades would suggest) are difficult to repair – a mechanism to alter this trajectory is not observed. In contrast, relationships that are trending upward (as consecutive upgrades would suggest) can be improved with high perceived value evaluations but also degraded with high satisfaction evaluations.

This research should recast marketers’ understanding of the value of customers’ upgrade and downgrade decisions. Instead of using customers’ upgrade or downgrade decisions as the dependent variable, or final outcome in buyer behavior, this study shows how the accumulation of prior upgrades and prior downgrades, over time, acts as a bellwether of the customer–firm relationship. Further, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to connect these upgrade/downgrade decisions to customers’ evaluations of those purchases to understand how individual purchases can impact the overall customer–firm relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the recent (2008‐) economic crisis on information communication technology (ICT) spending. The empirical findings are discussed within a broader theoretical framework of technological trends/diffusion and economic cycles.

First, the paper introduces the innovation diffusion theory and theories of economic cycles. Next, it presents the analyses of the data from official statistics, international agencies and research companies. Finally, it summarizes the empirical findings within theoretical contexts.

In general, crises always reduce spending and therefore also ICT spending. However, focusing on the recent crisis, it affected the ICT market selectively and also much less than other sectors. In addition, the empirical findings indicate that after decades of fast ICT expansion (1971‐2000) we are now in the period of slower sectoral growth, which is in line with theories of super cycles, although, the authors also propose alternative explanations.

The impact of the economic crisis on the ICT market strongly depends on countries' economic situation and development stage. Nonetheless some ICT segments that allow cost savings, greater productivity and efficiency, have been strengthened during the latest (2008‐) economic crisis, which also pinpoints the directions for further transformation of ICT.

Despite usually reduced budgets during the crisis, managers should put increased attention to new/alternative ICT solutions (e.g. virtualization, outsourcing, cloud computing) and lowered prices of ICT products/services to increase competitiveness. The crisis can be thus an opportunity to re‐examine the contribution of ICT to productivity, workflow efficiency and introduce new methods for better exploitation of ICT capital.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding about the transformation of ICT in economic crises. It also demonstrates that recent crises caused another microwave within the last super cycle.

The paper provides empirical insight into the link between economic situation and ICT spending in past 15 years, with special attention to the changes observed during the latest (2008‐) crisis. The analysis is also put into a broader theoretical framework, where it proposes alternative explanations supported by empirical evidences.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between public spending, budget imbalance and underground economy. In addition, this paper investigates how budget imbalance moderates the public spending–underground nexus.

By utilizing a data set spanning from 1995 to 2017 of 35 OECD countries, the study has employed Dynamic Common Correlated Effects (DCCE) approach. The study is also extended to consider the marginal effects of public spending on the underground economy at different degrees of budget imbalance.

The results indicate that an increase in public spending and budget imbalance contributes to the expansion of underground economy. Interestingly, the effects of public spending on the underground economy will enhance and intensify with a higher budget imbalance level. The results are robust to various specifications and their broader implications are discussed.

Governments should carefully implement a fiscal policy with a clear understanding that increasing public spending leads to the expansion of informality. Besides, policymakers should enforce supportive policies to boost economic growth, cooperation and cross-border trade to control the size of the underground economy.

This study stresses the role of public spending, budget imbalance on the underground economy in OECD nations. To the best of the author's knowledge, this study pioneers to explore the moderating effect of budget imbalance in the public spending–undergrround nexus.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0645.