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Legislative Professionalism and Budget Punctuations in State Government Sub‐Functional Expenditures
Author(s) -
RYU JAY EUNGHA
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
public budgeting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1540-5850
pISSN - 0275-1100
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5850.2011.00978.x
Subject(s) - incrementalism , legislature , state (computer science) , government (linguistics) , public economics , economics , information processing , accounting , business , political science , politics , law , computer science , psychology , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , neuroscience
Contrary to budgetary incrementalism, disproportionate information processing theory revealed that budget outcomes show episodic but dramatic changes as well as stabilized ones. A relatively less explored question is why such budget punctuations occur. Disproportionate information processing theory suggests that decision‐makers' lack of information processing capacity and institutional frictions are the main reasons for budget punctuations. Empirical analyses imply that governmental expenditures are exposed to varying levels of available information and institutional frictions and patterns of budget punctuations differ across the different types of governmental expenditures. The findings in this paper reveal that whether enhanced staff assistance for individual legislators can increase or decrease budget punctuations highly depend on the programmatic and institutional nature of state government sub‐functional expenditures.