Neoliberal developmentalism in South Korea: Evidence from the green growth policymaking process

This paper argues that Korea, once a representative East Asian developmental state, has state characteristics that amount to ‘neoliberal developmentalism’, which is a combination of the government's neoliberal political rationality and the developmental state's governmentality. To elucidate this, the case of Korea's recent green growth policymaking process is analysed. The government based the policy on its neoliberal political rationality. This featured the utilisation of neoliberalism to achieve the government's specific aims in the international, political and socio‐economic spheres. Furthermore, the government revealed the developmental state's governmentality, focusing on the maintenance of the developmental state's policy autonomy and capacity. Based on the findings, this paper teases out the academic implications of the post‐developmental state and the policy implications regarding policymaking in the context of neoliberal developmentalism.     

A Cartographic Analysis of Water Development Referenda in Texas, 1957-85

ABSTRACT State-level financial assistance programs for water projects are expected to become more important as federal funding levels drop and mechanisms change. In some western states such as Texas and California, constitutional restrictions are placed on tax and spending limits and the issuance of general obligation bonds to finance projects is subject to voter approval through a referendum process. Seven water-related referenda have been held in Texas between 1957 and 1985. Election results indicate that through 1968 voters from across the state supported the concept of state-level financial assistance for water projects and ratified three consecutive referenda, thus establishing the Water Development Fund and its $400 million authorization limit. Between 1969 and 1981, three amendments intended to increase authorization and expand the Fund's scope were defeated in elections that exhibited a regionalized voting pattern between East and West Texas voters. In 1985, this cleavage was not evident and the Water Development Fund was increased by an additional $980 million. These shifts reflect changes in voter perceptions of the state's water development policy and coincide with release of the 1968 and 1984 versions of the Texas Water Plan. The Texas experience, which is particularly relevant to California, could also be useful to other states considering similar state-level financial programs that would require voter approval.     

The Strange Case of the Missing West Virginia Labor Force

The rate of labor force participation in West Virginia is far below all other states. This study finds that little of the participation rate gap can be attributed to traditional economic or institutional factors. For example, the high long-term unemployment rate in West Virginia accounts for less than 10 percent of the adult male participation gap. Most of the difference is associated with a large Appalachian population, and a high rate of federal disability benefits receipt. The latter, which we argue reflects tastes for nonmarket activities, also is a major factor in low participation rates of West Virginia adult females and teenagers. Unemployment does explain a significant portion of low participation rates for these groups. However, we estimate that a decline in the state's long-term unemployment rate to the nation's average would raise its aggregate participation rate by 3.9 percentage points, or just 28 percent of the total gap. It appears that nonparticipating West Virginians are not just “discouraged workers,” and that economic development policies should explore ways to increase aggregate labor supply, as well as labor demand.     

The Economics and Politics of Tax Increment Financing

ABSTRACT Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is a popular yet controversial tool that allows local governments to use property tax revenue to fund the public costs of economic development. Since TIF gives one local government the power to affect the tax bases of the overlapping jurisdictions, there is uncertainty and argument on the part of government officials and taxpayers as to who really finances the program. To evaluate the alternative contentions, this paper presents a general methodology that identifies which taxpayers in which locations fund the TIF's expenditures, and sets forward the conditions under which such a local economic development policy can be beneficial to taxpayers. The paper applies the model to study the TIF program currently active in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. The evidence indicates that the taxpayers in the entire metropolitan area subsidized the downtown activities in the early years, but now pay lower property tax rates due to the city's TIF-financed urban revitalization program.     

Transnational state entrepreneurship? Assessing Singapore's Suzhou Industrial Park project (1994–2004)

Abstract: This paper examines an exemplary case of ‘transnational state entrepreneurship’, which was the Singapore government's Suzhou Industrial Park project. Between 1994 and 2001, the Singapore government was directly involved in the development and management of the project, hoping to generate an income that could eventually supplement Singapore's domestic economy. The strategy involved servicing the industrial needs of multinational corporations seeking to locate operations in China. This paper finds that transnational state entrepreneurship was less than successful, as the Singapore government's objectives were only partially achieved. The project's biggest problems were its lack of profitability and, ironically, the state's presence. This led to the Singapore government disengaging from the project in 2001. The paper concludes that it would be very difficult for a state, which is essentially a political entity, to be as efficient as a business entity, especially in an international environment.     

Ordering the exemplary urban spaces: A critical analysis of Hanoi's embellishment projects

Vietnam has a long tradition of social engineering through which the ordering of urban space has effectively been used to enforce the state's vision of political and social order. With the country currently in transition from a centrally planned to a market‐oriented economy, the ordering of urban spaces is currently all the more important. This is prominently manifested in the numerous beautification projects that are being implemented in Vietnamese cities. This article explores recent ordering endeavours and considers the way they are legitimated and contested in Vietnam's new socio‐political context. Three beautification projects in Hanoi are examined using materials from policy documents, professional journals and media coverage. The article argues that state ordering actions and the ‘exemplary’ urban spaces they seek to create are embodiments of a complex system of orders of powers in transitional Vietnam, in which political visions of modernist socialism and the new market‐oriented agenda are sometimes in alignment and sometimes clash. Overall, the state's failure in sustaining these ‘exemplary’ urban spaces is emblematic of this hybrid system.     

“Debrucing” the Link between Tax and Expenditure Limits and Special District Governments

We provide a direct test of the extent to which the stringency of a Tax and Expenditure Limit (TEL) influences the creation of special district governments by examining one of the strictest TELs in U.S. history, the Colorado Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR). Through analysis of panel data from 1993 to 2004 of general purpose and special district governments, we test the relationship between TABOR and the creation of special districts. The novelty of our research involves the use of successful and failed attempts to override TABOR to measure variation in TEL restrictiveness at the county and municipal geography. Our results indicate that counties and municipalities unable to override TABOR's restrictions and therefore bound by the TEL have no greater use of special district governments than local jurisdictions experiencing similar demand for services but not bound by TABOR. These results are robust to failed override attempts specific to tax revenue as well as debt proceeds. Furthermore, results are unaffected by the use of multiyear lagged measures of override attempts and the inclusion of county debrucing initiatives that passed or failed by a small margin—i.e., less than 60 percent of votes. Contrary to anecdotal evidence, our results find no relationship between tax and expenditure limits and the formation of special districts.     

Residential Property Values and Community Right‐to‐Know Laws: Has the Toxics Release Inventory Had an Impact?

ABSTRACT This paper uses a cross‐sectional hedonic pricing model to investigate the relationship between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data releases and the prices of single‐family residences within postal zip code areas situated in Omaha, Nebraska's Douglas County. The model employs demographic data from the 2000 Census, toxic chemical release data for the year 2000 from the EPA's TRI database, as well as other pollution variables for each of the zip code areas comprising Douglas County. The model also employs house‐specific data supplied by the Douglas County Assessor's Office on dwelling characteristics for homes sold in Douglas County in the year 2000. The findings indicate that, when controlling for relevant socioeconomic variables, TRI pollutant releases are significant determinants of residential housing values. The results should be of interest to anyone in the real estate industry, including tax assessors, appraisers, mortgage lenders, and property owners.     

Can State Tax Policy Increase Economic Activity and Reduce Inequality?

Previous research shows that when changes in national commodity and income tax rates affect labor supply decisions differently, relative rates can be altered to increase welfare. In the U.S., 40 states impose both a sales and income tax; however, the reliance varies widely. This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to examine tax policy changes in Colorado. The findings suggest that the revenue neutral changes to income and sales tax rates can affect both the level of economic activity and the distribution of income. When labor force participation is highly sensitive to income tax rate changes—which this paper suggests is the case—progressive changes to Colorado's tax policy changes can both reduce inequality and increase output and employment.     

Challenging the developmental state: Nature conservation in Singapore

Abstract: Nature conservation efforts are often reactive to encroaching development plans and systematic conservation planning that is integral with development is not only uncommon, but is often fraught with difficulties even where it is actually attempted. Such obstacles to conservation are especially apparent in developmental states where state legitimacy is largely derived from the state's ability to develop the country. Among other things, developmental states place a premium on physical and economic development. This paper critiques, through the standpoint of nature conservation, the inadequate conceptualisation of ‘development’ in the developmental state thesis. Specifically, this paper argues that the seemingly value‐free (but ultimately economically based) underpinnings of development goals pushed by the developmental state needs to be tempered with a broader concern for the ethics of development. To that end, I draw on two case studies of nature conservation tussles in Singapore to show how alternative extra‐economic visions of development have been articulated, notwithstanding the developmental state's monopoly on the discourse (and practice) of progress and development. The case studies, set in the heady economic growth of the early 1990s, will critique two related aspects of the developmental state: its ‘amoral’ economistic conception of development and its use of growth and materialism as legitimacy.     

Acquisition-Based Assessment and Property Tax Inequalities after California's 1978 Proposition Thirteen

This paper examines the shift from current market value assessment to acquisition-based assessment as mandated by a little-noticed provision of California's 1978 Proposition Thirteen. The distributional effects of the reformed property tax system are studied for a 300-house, ten-neighborhood sample in Davis, California. Micro-area tax inequalities for similar properties greatly increased from 1978 to 1985. By 1988, however, intra-area and inter-area inequalities in tax payments were diminishing slightly due to a low inflation rate and increased property turnover (resales). Because of its social policy consequences, acquisition-based assessment is an element of California's tax revolt that other jurisdictions should not emulate.     

Public intervention,private aspiration: Gated communities and the condominisation of housing landscapes in Singapore

While the proliferation of gated communities worldwide has generated great interests and debates, the emergence of gated communities is by no means a ‘global’ urban phenomenon that displays uniform characteristics and genesis. Drawing on Singapore as a case study, this paper goes beyond the universalising and often polemical discourses on gated communities to provide a balanced account on how gated communities in the form of enclosed condominium estates are locally embedded in the city state where public housing dominates. As will be pointed out in the paper, gated communities in Singapore may be considered as a form of ‘club good’ that exists as part of the state's urban/national developmental agenda and are, arguably, less socially and spatially divisive than those depicted elsewhere. By teasing out the local specificities of gated communities, this paper underscores the need to read beyond the physical form of gated communities in order to understand the complex social and political production of housing landscapes.     

The ‘street politics’ of migrant il/legality: Navigating Malaysia's urban borderscape

Immigration control constitutes a particular technique for regulating urban space and for controlling and disciplining migrant subjects within it. Unlike other manifestations of state power in exemplary urban settings, the architecture of urban immigration control is not recognisable through grand buildings or walls, but rather through its momentary presence and continuously shifting location: ad hoc identity controls in public spaces, roadblocks in neighbourhood streets or raids against workplaces. Building on fieldwork conducted in the Malaysian city of George Town, this article takes an interest in how migrants navigate this urban borderscape in order to avoid exploitation and encounters with the police. Read through Asef Bayat's notion of ‘street politics’, the article shows how migrants use the means (made) available to them in order to extend their room to manoeuvre. While such tactics are often driven by the force of necessity, they do nonetheless cumulatively encroach on the state's ability to produce migrants as (un)wanted or even (il)legal subjects in the city. Through this, migrants also challenge the very notion of what an exemplary urban space is as well as who is considered a legitimate part of it.     

Land Value Taxation and New Housing Development in Pittsburgh

ABSTRACT Incentive and liquidity effects of Pittsburgh's land value tax system are hypothesized to encourage new housing development. To test this hypothesis, an econometric model is estimated using building permit data for the dependent variable and tax rates and other determinants of new housing demand and supply for the independent variables. For the case of new housing, it is shown that the incentive effect is significant but the liquidity effect is not. The incentive effect is found to encourage increases in the number of new units constructed in Pittsburgh rather than increases in the average cost of new units.     

The challenge of sustainable tourism development in the Maldives: Understanding the social and political dimensions of sustainability

Issues of power and politics are central to the development of the tourism sector and its prospects for contributing to sustainable development. This is demonstrated through a case study of the evolution of tourism in the Maldives, a luxury tourism destination where the government has followed a consistent policy of ‘quality tourism’ that has often been cited as a prime example of sustainable tourism. However, recently concerns have been raised about environmental degradation, human rights abuses, connections between the political and economic elite, and huge economic disparities associated with tourism here. Research on sustainable tourism needs to recognise the state's pivotal role in directing tourism development and consider how states balance the competing interests of other powerful tourism stakeholders.     

Regional Economic Activity and Petroleum Industry Incentive Policies: Utah's Uintah Basin

ABSTRACT Proponents of petroleum industry subsidies often assert that such policies will have positive economic implications for rural communities. This paper examines the economic impacts of such a policy in Utah. Specifically, this paper quantifies the direct and indirect economic and fiscal impacts of a tax credit granted for oil and gas well workovers in Utah's Uintah Basin. The analysis is made possible by an input-output model constructed specifically for Utah's oil producing economy. The tax credit policy was found to generate a net fiscal loss for the state. However, it does generate employment in the Uintah Basin. The total per job cost to the state of generating an average of one job per year for 5 years through the tax credit policy is $24,056 (1991 dollars). However, if the public expenditure impacts are taken into account, then the cost per job could be as high as $48,423 (1991 dollars). Whether there are other ways to generate the same employment gains at a lower cost was lost in the political debate surrounding this petroleum industry tax credit.     

Explaining urban governance in the midst of political transformation: The city of Macao

This paper takes a close look at the urban governance and political culture of Macao, the world largest casino city. Macao has experienced spectacular economic growth since gaming liberalisation in 2002 and China's Free Individual Travel scheme launched in 2003. However, the booming gaming sector has crowded out other sectors of Macao. It has not only made the city's economy mono‐structured and consequently extremely vulnerable to external shocks and fluctuations but also induced serious social divisions and political controversies within the local community. By tracing the root cause of the ongoing dilemma and crisis in the mode of governance, the dynamic relationships between formal and informal institutions, consensus politics and the social group culture are intensively discussed in a historical context. In fact, the sustainable development of the former Portuguese colony has largely been hindered by its residents' passive attitudes toward political communication, non‐transparent urban governance, the absence of a middle class and the dominance of pro‐establishment social groups.     

Social vulnerability to climate‐induced natural disasters: Cross‐provincial evidence from Vietnam

This paper conducts an analysis of the socioeconomic determinants of Vietnam's cross‐provincial variations in natural disaster vulnerability. The purpose is twofold: (i) to capture disaggregated vulnerability variations normally obscured by national statistics, thereby providing more nuanced insights into Vietnam's vulnerability to natural disasters; and (ii) to take advantage of the fact that the overall political system and key institutional structures to a large extent are constant across Vietnam's provinces, which makes the analysis a novel addition to the many disaster studies based on cross‐national variations. The paper's analysis indicates that much of Vietnam's cross‐provincial variations in natural disaster fatalities and economic costs can be explained by differences in key socioeconomic factors. High provincial rates of inequality, poverty and infant mortality, for instance, appear to drive up natural disaster fatalities. Local adaptation efforts should focus as much on these broader socioeconomic dimensions as they focus on the geophysical susceptibility to natural hazards of individual areas.     

Finalising the nation: The Indonesian military as the guarantor of national unity

Abstract: The Indonesian military sees itself as the guarantor of national unity, the state's last line of defence against separatist movements. This paper argues that the military's methods for maintaining national unity have been counterproductive. Its counter‐insurgency wars in Aceh and Papua have exacerbated the sense of alienation from Indonesia that the people in these provinces have felt. In this post‐Suharto era of political reform, the military has been unable to recognise that its old methods have failed, even after its obvious failure in East Timor, whose people, after living under a 24‐year military occupation, rejected continued integration with Indonesia in a referendum in 1999. The fact that the politicians in the legislative and executive branches of the state have tended to encourage the military to persist with its old methods suggests that the military by itself should not be faulted. Only political resolutions, such as the Helsinki agreement for ending the conflict in Aceh – an agreement that resulted more from the devastation of the December 2004 tsunami than from the Indonesian military's counter‐insurgency warfare – offer any guarantee of national unity.     

Highway Accessibility,Location Rents,and the Efficiency of Metropolitan Area Tax Base Sharing

One solution that has been proposed for the fiscal disparities in fragmented metropolitan areas is the sharing of taxes generated by commercial and industrial property. A criticism of this proposal is that it distorts the efficient pattern of business locations resulting when an implicit market for business locations is allowed to develop through the independent fiscal behavior of communities and the optimizing location behavior of businesses. Critics recognize that the efficiency argument against sharing a metropolitan area's business tax base must be qualified to the extent that local governments possess location advantages which enable them to extract rents from business firms. This paper presents an empirical analysis which permits a partition of the local property tax payments from industrial firms into accessibility location rents and compensation payments to the community for the negative externalities of industrial development. The empirical analysis suggests that approximately 40 percent of the industrial taxes received by communities in this analysis represents accessibility location rents. It is concluded that these receipts could be redistributed through a metropolitan area tax base sharing program without affecting the efficiency of the implicit market for business locations.