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There is vast disparity in public expenditure on science, technology and environment (STE) across various Indian states. Public expenditure on STE is crucial in maintaining symmetric growth, social cohesion and sustainable development. Literature on this topic is scarce, which prompted the investigation of club convergence of STE public expenditure. In particular, the purpose of this paper to study the club convergence of STE public expenditure in the case of 20 Indian states during the period from 1987–1988 to 2019–2020.

This study applies the clustering algorithm to identify club convergence, advanced by the Phillips and Sul test, which enables identification of multiple steady states or club convergence, unlike beta and sigma convergences.

The findings of this paper show that all Indian states do not converge towards single steady states. This suggests a disparity in STE public expenditure across Indian states. Moreover, the findings favour three clubs that have their own unique transition paths. The results of this study are supported by the robustness check.

The findings suggest that the allocation of public expenditure on STE can be made based on club convergence to achieve social cohesion, sustainable development and millennium development goals across states.

Although several previous studies have investigated the convergence of public expenditure by considering either aggregate public expenditure or health/education expenditure, literature on the convergence hypothesis of STE public expenditure, particularly across Indian states, is scarce. Moreover, this paper is unique, as it examines multiple steady states or club convergence. Finally, this paper contributes to policymaking by suggesting which states should be given a push to achieve social cohesion and sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to show that states where corruption is greater also have higher levels of inflation.

Using a sample of all US states through the period 1992-2007 and various factors common across states that could impact the level of corruption or inflation, multiple regression techniques are used to determine corruption impact to inflation.

The study finds that corruption contributes, along with aid transfer, positively to inflation in the US states. The results are robust even after scaling the corruption variable to different determinants.

While there is some evidence on the relationship between corruption and inflation in cross-country dataset, there is no such evidence on it within country dataset. This paper, however, provides evidence on the relationship between corruption and inflation using state-level data of the US states.

This paper aims to study the impact of municipalities’ own resources on their investments‘ expenditure.

Panel data analysis. A sample of 34 municipalities in Benin. Econometrics tests for the panel data models – estimation of the fixed-effect and random-effect models. Hausman test to identify the best model to explain the impact of the explanatory variables on local investments’ expenditures. Heteroskedasticity, normality and autocorrelation tests.

The results establish a positive and significant impact of own resources, state transfers and demographic variables on local investments’ expenses.

As an implication, the results show the importance of local resources’ mobilization for the municipalities’ investment capacity building. They also show that the central government transfers continue to play a major place in local investments’ finance, even in a decentralization context. Limitation: Available data do not allow to well evaluate the impact of the electoral variable on municipalities’ investments’ expenditure. This situation does not allow to well analyze the public choice considerations in local authorities’ behaviors.

Local mobilization of financial resources must be encouraged to raise municipalities’ investments’ capacities. Strategies must be developed to reinforce local capacities in local resources mobilization.

The results show the importance of local resources in local investments. They show the importance of citizens’ participation in their well-being construction, through local resource mobilization (ex: local fiscality).

Many authors assert in the literature that financial autonomy has a real impact on local development. However, empirically, it was not demonstrated. This paper contributes to correct this lack.

This study investigates the effects of fiscal decentralization on global competitiveness through the level of corruption. This study aims to clarify the causal impacts of fiscal decentralization policy on the achievement of competitiveness rank considering the degree of corruption in a country.

The paper uses an empirical study using both cross-country arithmetic mean and panel data, covering ten-year period (2005-2014). The analysis uses both linear and non-linear specification in search of actual intermediating effects of corruption with controlling the possible endogeneity.

The paper provides empirical insights about corruption effects of fiscal decentralization on global competitiveness. It suggests that increasing level of fiscal decentralization has a positive contribution to competitiveness for the less-corrupt countries. The adverse effects appear for corrupt countries where the delegation of fiscal authority should endanger the country competitiveness.

This research exploits the well-known measurement of fiscal decentralization, the degree of corruption and competitiveness. Therefore, this measurement might be challenged for representing the real concept of decentralization, corruption and competitiveness, furthermore its relationship. Despite the limitation, this research explores the entanglement of fiscal decentralization, corruption and competitiveness.

The paper provides the implications for the national policymakers about decentralizing the fiscal authority to achieve higher competitiveness level, through assessing their state of corruption.

The research provides additional comments for Oates’ (1972) decentralization theorem in connection to competitiveness, by adding corruption level as pre-requisite condition.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of the environment on the financial performance in public sports agencies at the local level.

The influence of the socio-demographic, socio-economic and political environment on the financial condition of municipal sports agencies in Spain from 2003 to 2011 was studied by several regression models.

The results show a negative influence of the size of the population and a positive influence of the municipal taxes per capita. The influence of the political context is not demonstrated. However, the set of variables only explain a small percentage of the variance.

The main limitation of this study is the possible existence of other non-controlled environmental variables. However, this study approaches genuinely the effect of the environment on municipal sports agencies, which has important research implications as it shows additional information to be contrasted with other researches in different countries or regions.

The information provided in this study will be of great importance for managers to select more objectively other entities in benchmarking development.

Finally, this study uses a non-exploited database and redirects performance management studies to other areas of service provision such as sport.

El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar la influencia del entorno sobre el rendimiento financiero de las agencias de servicios deportivos municipales.

Se ha analizado la influencia del entorno socio-demográfico, socio-económico y político sobre la condición financiera de las agencias de servicios deportivos municipales en España, del 2003 al 2011, a través de diversos modelos de regresión.

Los resultados muestran una influencia negativa del tamaño de la población y una influencia positiva de los impuestos municipales per cápita. La influencia del contexto político no queda demostrada. Sin embargo, el conjunto de variables utilizadas solo explica un pequeño porcentaje de la varianza.

La principal limitación de este estudio es la posible existencia de otras variables del entorno que no han sido controladas. Sin embargo, este estudio es pionero al analizar la influencia del entorno en agencias deportivas, lo cual conlleva implicaciones de investigación ya que muestra información para ser contrastada con nuevos estudios en otros países.

La información proporcionada en este estudio será de utilidad para los gestores, al poder seleccionar de forma más objetiva otras entidades para el desarrollo de actividades de benchmarking.

Por último, este estudio utiliza una base de datos no explotada, redireccionando los estudios de gestión del rendimiento a otras áreas de servicios concretas como la deportiva.

This study aims to provide evidence of how budget officers use non-financial and accrual-based cost information in the budgeting process and how the usage of this information is influenced by financial constraints.

A randomized survey-based field experiment investigating budget officers in 546 Japanese local governments (LGs) was conducted. This allowed us to identify the budget officers' decision-making in the public sector budgeting process by creating and analyzing primary data with regression models.

We found that budget officers suppress budget amounts based on non-financial information of good performances. Under fiscal constraints, officers further reduce budget amounts using information on high accrual-based costs and poor non-financial performance.

Our survey-based field experiment allowed us to obtain primary data from officers making budget decisions. To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence that non-financial good and poor performance information and accrual-based cost information affect budget officers' decision-making under financial constrain.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of local public health expenditure in a decentralized health system, taking into account the electoral calendar and the effect of central and local elections, besides spatial interaction among municipalities and political alignment. The authors state that the expenditure in public health at the local level is positively influenced by vicinity and by elections calendar.

The authors performed a Spatial Durbin Model with a balanced panel using the data from 399 Brazilian municipalities from 2005 to 2012. The authors use a distance-based spatial matrix, whose choose was based on simplicity and relevance of Moran’s I and Geary’s C coefficients for spatial autocorrelation. The authors also cluster the data in the estimations, according to the distribution of regional facilities in the entire period and considering the occurrence of regionalization in public health services.

The empirical contribution lies in four issues: first, the authors demonstrate a positive spatial effect in the public health expenditure. Second, the estimations show that election-year shifts public spent, as a response for vote-seeking incumbents’ behavior. Third, reelected mayors increase local public health allocations, as well as single candidates and incumbents from the same party of central governments. Finally, populational concentration directly decreases health expenditure (even if those municipalities represent a lower unit cost of acquiring votes, the optimization of public health infrastructure and mobility in achieving public health services negatively affect health spent).

This study supports the statement that public health spent at local level is positively influenced by vicinity and by occurrence of elections.

This paper aims to, using a systematic mixed-methods based monitoring and evaluation approach, investigate the unintended consequences of physical and technical home improvements on energy use, indoor environmental conditions and occupant behaviour in community-led retrofits. The study is part of a UK Research Council funded research project on evaluating the impacts and effectiveness of low carbon communities on energy behaviours.

A graduated measurement, monitoring and evaluation framework has been developed and applied to gather quantitative and qualitative data on energy use and behaviours has been developed and applied to 88 households across the UK. A mixed-methods approach is used, including occupant interviews, questionnaires, activity diaries and continuous physical monitoring of energy use, environmental conditions and low-carbon technologies.

The study has uncovered a number of unintended consequences associated with home energy improvements, both beneficial and detrimental, including improved comfort levels in retrofitted dwellings and reduction in energy use but also an increased likelihood of overheating following fabric improvements, potential under-performance of low-carbon systems due to lack of understanding and inadequate installation and commissioning, along with adaptive energy behaviours leading to increased energy use and a widening gap between predicted and actual savings.

Although 63 case study households are involved, it is difficult to provide statistical analysis from the emerging findings.

This paper demonstrates the unintended consequences of home energy improvements. It aims to bring awareness of these issues to various sectors and stakeholders involved in delivering community retrofit programmes or the National Green Deal programme.

The paper fulfils an identified need to study the impacts of home energy improvements within existing homes through a robust, comprehensive M&E approach.

Compiled by Indexing Specialists (UK) Ltd covering the following journals published by Emerald: Facilities Volumes 8‐20; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐20; Property Management Volumes 8‐20; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐20.

Compiled by Indexing Specialists (UK)Ltd covering the following journals published by Emerald: Facilities Volumes 8‐20; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐20; Property Management Volumes 8‐20; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐20.