Government Finance
Gorina, Eugenia and Jen Sidorova. 2024. Effects of a Defined Contribution Retirement Plan on Teacher Attrition. Public Budgeting and Finance, online first.
In 2006, Alaska reformed its defined-benefit (DB) teacher retirement system by creating a mandatory 401(k)-style defined-contribution (DC) plan for new hires. The new plan increased benefit portability and transferred the investment risk from the employer to the employee. Using individual teacher data for 2005-2017, we show that the reform increased teacher attrition. We also observe, however, that it did not lead to the loss of human capital. The paper contributes to the discussion of the design of DB-DC transitions that can maintain incentives for public sector employment.
Kim, Dongwoo, Cory Koedel, Gorina, Eugenia, James Harrington. The Incidence of Social Security Taxes on Teacher Wages and Employment. Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, accepted October 2024.
We study the incidence of Social Security taxes on teacher wages and employment. On average, we estimate teachers with Social Security coverage take home 9.6 percent less in wages than observationally similar teachers in similar districts without Social Security coverage. This accounts for three-fourths of the 12.4-percent total Social Security tax. Moreover, our analysis suggests this is likely a lower-bound estimate of the true incidence of Social Security taxes—under reasonable assumptions, we cannot rule out full (100 percent) tax incidence on teacher wages. We find no evidence of tax incidence on teacher staffing levels.
Gorina, Eugenia. 2023. Book review “Understanding Municipal Fiscal Health: A Model for Local Governments in the USA. Maher, Craig, Sungho Park, Bruce D McDonald, and Steven C. Deller. 2023. New York: Routledge, 329 pages.” Public Administration Review, online first.
Goodman, Doug, Evgenia Gorina, Romeo Abraham*, Brett Cease*, Edward French. 2023. Voters, Neighbors, and City Performance in Sustainability Transitions. Public Integrity 25 (4): 365-379. Pre-print
While most city governments in the United States acknowledge the importance of clean and healthy natural environment, their commitment to environmental sustainability varies widely. Scholarship on why some cities pursue the environmental agenda more than others is still evolving. This research adds to the model of municipal sustainability adoption by showing negative effects of residents’ political conservatism and positive effects of environmentally conscious neighboring cities on local sustainability action. The analysis of data for government finances and employment over the Great Recession also shows that commitment to sustainability was not associated with any distinct patterns in spending, debt or employment. Taken together, these findings point at a non-neutral role of social factors in sustainability transitions and suggest that cities pursuing the environmental mission can withstand tough economic times without substantial performance tradeoffs.
Gorina, Evgenia and Trang Hoang.* 2020. Pension Reforms and Public Sector Turnover. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 30 (1): 96-112.
Over the past decade, many states have reformed their retirement systems by reducing benefit generosity, tightening retirement provisions, introducing non-defined-benefit (DB) plan options and even replacing DB plans with defined-contribution plans. Many of these reforms have affected post-employment benefits that public workers will receive when they retire. Have these reforms also affected the attractiveness of public sector employment? To answer this question, we use state-level data from 2002 to 2015 and examine the relationship between state pension reforms and public employee turnover following the reforms. We find that employee responsiveness to the reforms was tangible and that it differed by reform type and worker education. These results are important because the design of public retirement benefits will continue to influence the ability of the public sector to recruit and retain high-quality workforce.
Gorina, Evgenia, Maher, Craig and Sungho Park. 2019. Toward a Theory of Fiscal Slack. Public Budgeting and Finance, 39 (4): 48-74.
Though the fiscal slack literature has advanced over the past decade, more research is needed for a systematic understanding of the determinants and uses of fiscal reserves at the local level. This paper reviews theory and empirical evidence on the determinants of municipal fiscal reserves offers a conceptual framework for analyzing fiscal reserves accumulation and tests a series of hypotheses using a panel of 2007–2012 financial data for 145 U.S. cities from 21 states. Generalized least squares models show that unassigned general fund balances and unrestricted net assets are positively associated with general fund surpluses in the previous year and with local household incomes, while not being related to measures of fiscal risk, revenue effort, and voter characteristics. Overall, the findings suggest a relatively stronger influence of the capacity to save than the need to save on local fiscal reserves.
Gorina, Evgenia. 2018. City Revenue Structure and Unfunded Pension Liabilities. State and Local Government Review 50 (3): 189-202.
A growing body of research shows that economic, demographic, and institutional factors affect public pension funding. Most of these findings are based on the analysis of complete retirement systems, which are often funded by multiple plan sponsors. This article offers one of the first empirical analyses of the determinants of pension funding at the level of a city government that acts as a plan sponsor, often for more than one plan. Models predicting unfunded liabilities for a large national sample of cities over 2003–2012 suggest that city fiscal autonomy and reliance on property taxes are additional pieces of the pension underfunding puzzle.
Wang, Jing and Evgenia Gorina. 2018. Fiscal Effects of Annexation: Evidence from a Large National Sample of Urban Municipalities. Growth and Change 49 (4): 612-635.
This paper examines the relationship between annexation and municipal finance and addresses a gap in the literature by studying the role of revenue structure and fiscal constraints. Using a large national sample of urban municipalities, the analysis shows that territorial expansion by itself does not influence municipal fiscal outcomes with the exception of large single parcels annexations which increase spending. We also observe negative effects of population changes on revenues and spending per capita. Since population changes typically accompany annexation, we conclude that annexing cities tend to use their added tax base to spread the revenue burden more widely rather than to increase the size of government. An important implication of this study is that state-imposed fiscal constraints do not hamper annexation success and that comprehensive urban development policies may be needed to accommodate growth and development after annexation.
Gorina, Evgenia, Maher, Craig and Marc Joffe. 2018. Local Fiscal Distress: Measurement and Prediction. Public Budgeting and Finance. 38 (1): 72-94.
During and after the Great Recession, many local governments were compelled to declare fiscal emergencies, lay off workers, and cut services while others weathered the recession without needing to take such actions. In this paper, we construct an action-based measure of fiscal distress using comprehensive annual financial reports, budgets, and media coverage and then use it as a dependent variable to model fiscal distress as a function of past financial performance and socio-economic environment. The empirical models show the relative importance of fiscal reserves, debt, and revenue composition in predicting local fiscal distress.
Clark, Anna* and Evgenia Gorina. 2017. Emergency Financial Management in Small Michigan Cities: Short-term Fix or Fiscal Sustainability. Public Administration Quarterly, 41 (3): 532-568.
Emergency financial management is a relatively recent and unique form of municipal governance that is designed to address local fiscal crises by concentrating the decision making power in the hands of a temporarily appointed chief executive. In this paper, we examine practices of emergency financial management in three Michigan cities in the Detroit metropolitan area to understand the role of emergency financial managers in helping the cities to address chronic fiscal distress. Through the analysis of data from comprehensive annual financial reports, we show that emergency financial management tends to produce budgetary-level improvements in fiscal condition. We also discuss policies that can assist emergency financial managers in bringing longer-term fiscal health to struggling cities.
Chapman, Jeffrey and Evgenia Gorina. 2012. Effects of the Form of Government and Property Tax Limits on Local Finance in the Context of Revenue and Expenditure Simultaneity. Public Budgeting and Finance, 32 (4): 19-45.
This paper examines the impact of the form of government and state-imposed property tax limits on municipal finance. We suggest that municipal revenues and expenditures are determined concurrently and estimate revenue and expenditure functions as simultaneous equations. We use the instrumental variable approach and fixed effects to address revenue and expenditure endogeneity. By testing the model on a cross-section of rich municipal data for fiscal year 2002, we find evidence that revenues and expenditures are simultaneously determined, that potentially binding state-imposed property tax limits effectively restrict local revenues and that the form of government is a significant predictor of local expenditures.
Chapman, Jeffrey and Evgenia Gorina. 2012. Municipal Fiscal Stress and the Use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF). Town Planning Review, 83 (2): 195-203. Lead paper.
Gorina, Evgenia. 2019. Other People’s Money: Financing Public Goods in Texas. in Texas Yesterday and Today: Readings in Texas Politics and Public Policy, editors Euel Elliott and Doug Goodman. Great River Learning: Austin, TX.
LABOR Migration
Agadjanian Victor and Evgenia Gorina. 2019. Economic Swings, Political Instability and Migration in Kyrgyzstan. European Journal of Population 35 (2): 285-304. Full text
Individual-level migration responses to economic fluctuations and political instability remain poorly understood. Using nationally representative survey data from Kyrgyzstan, we look at variations in levels and propensities of internal and temporary international migration and relate them to changes in the economic and political environment in that Central Asian nation in the first decade of the century. A multinomial event history model predicting yearly risks of both types of migration detects no clear association of internal migration risks with episodes of heightened political instability but shows a decrease in those risks in response to the strongest economic shock of the observation period. In comparison, international migration risks, while also insensitive to political turmoil, appear to increase at the time of the most pronounced economic downturn. The results also point to instructive patterns in migration propensities by type of area of residence, education, gender, and ethnicity. These findings are interpreted in light of complex intersections of demography with politics, economy, and culture in this transitional Eurasian setting.
Gorina, Evgenia and Victor Agadjanian. 2019. Belonging and Political Participation: Evidence from the 2011 President Election in Kyrgyzstan. Europe-Asia Studies 71(9), 1562-1583. Full text
This study examines the effects of social embeddedness on interest in politics and electoral behaviour using data from a nationally representative survey conducted shortly after the 2011 presidential election in Kyrgyzstan. We find that interest in politics is positively associated with community trust, public sector employment and a sense of national belonging. Controlling for the effects of interest in politics, community trust and public sector employment are also positively associated with voting in this election, whereas evidence on ethno-cultural inclusion is mixed. These findings highlight the role of social embeddedness in political participation in young post-communist democracies.
Gorina, Evgenia, Agadjanian, Victor and Natalya Zotova. 2018. Migrant Women’s Economic Success in Russia: Objective Reality and Subjective Assessment. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (9): 1584-1603. on PubMed
This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the outcomes of labour migration by focusing on the effects of migrant legal status on the economic and perceptual measures of migration success. To study the effects of legal status, we use a sample of Central Asian migrant women who work in Russia and of their native counterparts who occupy the same positions on the labour market. Similar to the studies in the developed settings, we find that a temporary legal status is associated with an earnings penalty and that permanent legal status corrects this earning disparity. We also find that both temporary and permanent migrant status is positively associated with perceptions of pay inequality but that, irrespective of these perceptions, both types of migrants are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs than natives. We interpret these findings within the legal and social context of migrant economic incorporation in Russia and relate them to the findings from other migrant-receiving settings.
Agadjanian, Victor, Evgenia Gorina, and Cecilia Menjivar. 2014. Economic Incorporation, Civic Inclusion, and Social Ties: Plans to Return Home among Central Asian Female Migrants in Moscow, Russia. International Migration Review, 48 (3): 577-603. Lead paper.
This study uses data from a survey of female labor migrants from three Central Asian countries – Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – in Moscow, Russia, to examine factors that influence these women's plans to return to their home countries. The conceptual framework considers three types of factors of migrants' attachment to the host society – economic incorporation, civil inclusion, and social connectedness – while also accounting for migrants' ties to their homelands. The results of multivariate analyses point to the importance of sector and type of employment, income, legal status, experience of ethnically motivated harassment, and social ties to adults relatives and friends in the host society in shaping return plans. In contrast, connections in the home country do not appear to influence the likelihood of having plans to return. These findings are contextualized within the political, socioeconomic, and ethnocultural reality of the post-Soviet world and related to the cross-national scholarship on return migration.