Soomi Lee

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the US federal government distributed US$800 billion in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to small businesses to preserve employment. Since PPP funding was transmitted through private banks, the characteristics of the regional banking market may have unevenly affected the programme's reach. This paper examines how variations in market concentration and the presence of community banks contributed to PPP disbursement in US counties. It finds that greater regional banking market concentration correlates with fewer PPP loans, but this negative relationship is mitigated by a greater presence of community banks in highly concentrated markets.

This chapter examines collaborative public management (CPM) in the context of the existing, fragmented regional governance structure. In particular, the chapter discusses the limitations of CPM in managing orderly land use planning and intra-regional fiscal inequity due to the inherent tension between localism and regionalism in American fiscal federalism. Researchers have shown that it is unlikely to solve issues involved in equity and redistribution by relying on voluntary inter-local collaboration. At the same time, however, they also acknowledge that local governments have resisted to a regional government and that state governments have hesitated to take action to create a politically accountable regional government. The challenge is to find a way of state’s direct action for region-wide planning and intra-regional redistribution while preserving local governments’ autonomy. As one of the examples, this chapter provides a regional fiscal redistributive policy, tax-base sharing that has been implemented in the Twin Cities metropolitan area since 1975.

We propose the concept of inclusive economic resilience to examine intra-regional economic recovery in American metropolitan areas after the Great Recession. Previous studies have treated regional and municipal economic resilience separately, with little attention to withinregion variations in economic resilience. We contribute to the understanding of regional economic resilience by focusing on intra-regional economic recovery in cities. We also introduce an important yet overlooked regional factor in the context of American federalism-fragmentation of local governments. Examining US metropolitan areas from 2007 to 2017, we find that different dimensions of local fragmentation exert different impacts on intra-regional economic resilience. Our results indicate that a large number of municipal governments and greater service responsibilities borne by special and school districts lead to uneven economic recovery. In contrast, similar fiscal responsibilities taken by municipal governments promote inclusive income recovery.

This paper examines the effect of home price distribution on the likelihood of parcel tax adoption in California school districts. A parcel tax is a regressive tax imposed as the same amount per unit of a property regardless of property values and requires a two-thirds supermajority vote to be adopted. Despite the growing role that local parcel taxes have in funding public education, it has not been fully understood how their regressive nature influences adoption. I argue that because the regressive tax imposes different marginal property tax rates for voters, the distribution of home prices within a district determines the likelihood of parcel tax adoption. Using the Heckman selection models with California school district level data, I find that a large gap in home values within a district significantly lowers the likelihood of parcel tax adoption.

This research note examines a relationship between public attitudes toward Universal Basic Income (UBI) and country-level social and economic conditions in 21 European Countries. Despite abundant theoretical and empirical research on, a comparative analysis on the public appetite for UBI has been available due to data limitation. This research note takes advantage of the 2016 European Social Survey to explore the connection between public support for UBI and the level of social protection and economic (in)security. 1

Large-scale social program expansions are underway in many Asian countries, but the
fiscal sustainability of those programs is uncertain. Despite the common belief that people are unwilling to pay more taxes in general, people in these countries are aware that an expansion of social programs entails higher taxes. Nonetheless, in the current literature, it is poorly understood who supports such an expansion even if it requires a tax increase. We examine the case of South Korea, where per capita income is comparable to that of advanced economies, though its welfare system is still under development. Analyzing a nationally representative sample, we find it is the politically independent middle class that most strongly resists a welfare expansion associated with tax increases.

To constrain legislative taxing power, 16 U.S. state constitutions require a supermajority in both chambers to increase or impose taxes. Existing studies report mixed results on the effect of the supermajority rules. In addition, it is little known how states respond to the rule and whether they circumvent them. This study documents states' administrative and judicial responses to the rule and tests if states circumvent the rule by increasing fees instead of taxes. The analyses using a state-level panel data from 1960 to 2008 reveal that (1) supermajority rules significantly increase a tax burden instead of decrease it, (2) the tax burden significantly falls for the first six after the rule adoption, but this effect decays over time, (3) this time-variant effect is substantially small, and (4) states do not increase fees to circumvent the rules.

I examine what motivates the recent surge in demand for welfare programs in South Korea.A pessimistic prospect of personal income increases the demand for redistribution.A negative perception of equal opportunity increases the demand for redistribution.Commonly known factors such as current income and political ideology have no effect.Since 2011, the demand for welfare programs has significantly increased in South Korea. Yet, the motivation behind the surge is under-explored. I argue that it is driven by changes in the income prospect due to increasing income inequality and deteriorating social mobility since the 1990s. I test the prospect of an upward mobility hypothesis using the 2009 Korean General Social Survey. I find that people with a pessimistic prospect of income and a negative perception of equal opportunity demand more redistribution. Commonly known factors such as current income and political ideology have no effect in Korea. Consistent with the prospect of upward mobility hypothesis, the motivation behind the demand for a welfare expansion and the emergence of welfare politics is a pessimistic income prospect in the lives of Koreans.