The Impact of Daycare Attendance on Math Test Scores for a Cohort of Fourth Graders in Brazil

We estimate the impact of having attended centre-based daycare institutions during early childhood on math test scores at the fourth grade level of elementary school. We find evidence that daycare attendance has a net impact on math proficiency, and that the effects are heterogeneous. The effect of daycare and kindergarten attendance on proficiency varies according to mother’s education. The effects of the impact of daycare vary from ?0.28 standard deviation for mothers with no education to 0.42 standard deviation for mother’s with college or more.     

Refining the Concepts of Territorial Revenue Assignment,Substate Fiscal Self-rule and Territorial Fiscal Balance

Fiscal federalism has offered a template for understanding intergovernmental fiscal relations. Yet when politicians are involved in day-to-day decentralization it may happen that some of the normative elements of fiscal federalism do not fit reality. Substate entities may go beyond the own-source paradigm and have a practical interest in alternative forms of fiscal self-rule. To better understand this pragmatism a threefold stage model of territorial revenue assignment is presented drawing on some insights offered by Germany’s fiscal constitution. Within this framework a reassessment of the role of territorial levels as levels during vertical revenue assignment is undertaken, a new typology of fiscal self-rule is introduced, and finally a theory of multiple territorial fiscal balance points is outlined, including the one based on the real domain of substate own policy-making.     

A matter of timing: The religious factor and morality policies

The question of whether or not religion accounts for variance in the governance of moral issues, between and within countries over time, has long been debated but never conclusively answered. A novel data set encompassing innovative measurements of state regulation of “life‐and‐death” issues and of the religious stratification of society enables us to answer why previous studies reached contradictory results. The time‐series cross‐sectional analysis of 26 countries over 50 years reveals that dominant religious denominations in society indeed influence state governance approaches regarding the issues of abortion and euthanasia. This denominational effect is shown to be contingent on the religiosity of a country's population, but independent from the formal state–church relationship. Lastly, it is shown that the religious effect has an inverse U‐shaped relationship with time, exposing the timeframe of analysis as decisive for inferences drawn in the study of morality policy.     

The oecd’s discourse on fragile states: expertise and the normalisation of knowledge production

The concept of legitimacy has been highly influential in policy recommendations concerning state building in ‘fragile states’. Indeed, depending on how ‘legitimacy’ is conceived, the actions and practices of state builders can differ substantially. This article discusses what is at stake in the conceptualisation of ‘legitimacy’ by comparing the academic literature with the normative production of the oecd. Looking at two approaches to legitimacy – the institutionalist or neo-Weberian approach focusing on institutional reconstruction, and the social legitimacy approach emphasising the importance of social cohesion for successful state building – the article shows that both these conceptions are present in most reports, but also that the neo-Weberian approach tends to prevail over the social legitimacy perspective. Through a series of interviews with oecd officials and scholar-practitioners who have participated in the writing process of oecd reports, we hint, finally, at future research avenues on the social conditions of knowledge production and its normalisation.     

Pouvoir royal et représentation provençale du XVIIème au XVIIIème siècle

SUMMARY

This paper examines assemblies of the clergy in early modern Castile and France. It provides a short overview of the representative nature of these assemblies, their functions, and their power over the ecclesiastical purse strings. In the process it argues that, in addition to secular representative institutions, historians need to take a closer look at ecclesiastical assemblies in order to understand politics, finance and representation in Catholic polities.     

Management Discretion and Political Interference in Municipal Enterprises. Evidence from Italian Utilities

The attention of scholars and policy-makers is shifting from full privatisation to alternative measures as a means to improve the efficiency of public services. This article focuses on three restructuring measures adopted by local governments: partial privatisation (without transfer of control rights), inter-municipal joint ventures, and the presence of outside directors on the Board. Divergent hypotheses on these measures have emerged from two economic theories, namely public choice and the agency perspective. An empirical analysis investigates the effects of restructuring processes on a sample of Italian municipal utilities. Partial privatisation has been shown to play a significant and positive role, while Board independence from management has a less significant influence. Multi-government utilities have been found to suffer from severe coordination costs, which are not outweighed by scale benefits. Our findings reveal that management discretion is a significant source of inefficiency in municipal enterprises.     

Struggling to stay out of high-poverty neighborhoods: housing choice and locations in moving to opportunity's first decade

Improving locational outcomes emerged as a major policy hope for the nation's largest low-income housing program over the past two decades, but a host of supply and demand-side barriers confront rental voucher users, leading to heated debate over the importance of choice versus constraint. In this context, we examine the Moving to Opportunity experiment's first decade, using a mixed-method approach.

MTO families faced major barriers in tightening markets, yet diverse housing trajectories emerged, reflecting variation in: (a) willingness to trade location – in particular, safety and avoidance of “ghetto” behavior – to get larger, better housing units after initial relocation; (b) the distribution of neighborhood types in different metro areas; and (c) circumstances that produced many involuntary moves. Access to social networks or services “left behind” in poorer neighborhoods seldom drove moving decisions. Numerous moves were brokered by rental agents who provided shortcuts to willing landlords but thereby steered participants to particular neighborhoods.     

Brown kids in white suburbs: Housing mobility and the many faces of social capital

Abstract

Social capital has many faces in the geography of urban opportunity, and as such, particular housing policies might have positive effects on some forms of social capital and negative effects on others. The author defines social support and social leverage as two key dimensions of social capital that can be accessed by individuals. A sample of 132 low‐income African‐American and Latino adolescents is used to examine the early impacts of a Yonkers, NY, housing mobility program on social capital.¹

Overall, program participants (^‘’movers^‘’) appear to be no more cut off from social support than a control group of “stayer” youth. On the other hand, movers are also no more likely to report access to good sources of job information or school advice— to leverage that might enhance opportunity. Adding just one steadily employed adult to an adolescent's circle of significant ties has dramatic effects on perceived access to such leverage.