Shaoming Cheng’s research while affiliated with Florida International University and other places

Policy imitation likely occurs among similar jurisdictions. The extant literature primarily focuses on geographic proximity or ideological congruence, while overlooking multifaceted similarities in the diffusion of public policies. This study explores the adoption and spread of public–private partnerships (PPP) across China's cities, specifically examining the extent to which three distinctive similarity measures influence PPP policy imitation. In addition to geographic proximity and economic resemblance, equivalent positioning in China's administrative hierarchy captures a managerial aspect of similarity to understand policy imitation among resembling cities. Three corresponding spatial autoregressive panel models are used, respectively. The findings suggest that cities in China imitate their geographic, economic, and administrative peers while directing PPP investments. Relative closeness in the administrative hierarchy of cities exerts a greater influence on policy imitation than economic resemblance and spatial proximity.

Equity is a central value for public administration as a field and for the advancement of sustainability, yet it is disproportionately and significantly underrepresented and underprioritized in U.S. local governments’ sustainability priorities. Equity is referred to as one of the three essential “Es” in sustainability along with environment and economy. Since the first Minnowbrook Conference held in 1968, advancing social equity has become one of the chief goals of public administration as equity emerged as one of the discipline's four “Es” along with economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. In light of this, to what extent are public administrators’ concerns and efforts impactful in embracing and advancing social equity in sustainable development? With ICMA's 2015 Local Government Sustainability Practices Survey, this paper offers a unique understanding of localities’ tiered realization of sustainability priorities as well as factors correlated with ascending upwards through the tiered pathway of prioritizing sustainability orientation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

While government fiscal gap is traditionally considered a demand factor for the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) to deliver public services, a high level of fiscal gap may signal elevated financial risks to private partners and deter them from entering into PPP agreements. A causal mediation analytic framework is used to delineate the two distinct causal pathways. We develop a conceptual model and test derived hypotheses with data of Chinese prefecture-level cities during 2015–2017. The findings suggest that government fiscal gap has a positive impact on PPP adoption, through the mediating role of the debt position. The fiscal gap, as a risk factor, is negatively associated with PPP participation. Risk aversion of the private sector manifests more conspicuously as smaller PPP investment amounts than as a lower likelihood of PPP participation. The adverse effects of the fiscal gap associated with financial risks may entirely offset any positive impact.

Debts incurred by Chinese cities have skyrocketed. Policymakers and scholars are concerned with potential default risks and political, economic, and social impacts of a possible debt default. It has also drawn attention to drivers of the rapidly increasing municipal debts. This article examines the extent to which competition among Chinese cities affected the debts they accumulated. Drawing from the literature of local government strategic interaction and fiscal competition, we hypothesised that spillover effects might exist among Chinese cities’ decisions and behaviours to issue how much bonds. With access to a panel dataset of 285 cities over 2008–2016, we applied the spatial panel regression analysis to capture and gauge the spillover effects on debt accumulation of Chinese cities. Findings confirm the spillover effects among Chinese cities and support the role that inter-city competition has played in the rapid accumulation of municipal debts.

This paper illustrates the application of machine learning algorithms in predictive analytics for local governments using administrative data. The developed and tested machine learning predictive algorithm overcomes known limitations of the conventional ordinary least squares method. Such limitations include but not limited to imposed linearity, presumed causality with independent variables as presumed causes and dependent variables as presume result, likely high multicollinearity among features, and spatial autocorrelation. The study applies the algorithms to 311 non‐emergency service requests in the context of Miami‐Dade County. The algorithms are applied to predict the volume of 311 service requests and the community characteristics affecting the volume across Census tract neighborhoods. Four common families of algorithms and an ensemble of them are applied. They are random forest, support vector machines, lasso and elastic‐net regularized generalized linear models, and extreme gradient boosting. Two feature selection methods, namely Boruta and fscaret, are applied to identify the significant community characteristics. The results show that the machine learning algorithms capture spatial autocorrelation and clustering. The features generated by fscaret algorithms are parsimonious in predicting the 311 service request volume.

A salient characteristic of China’s public–pgrivate partnerships (PPPs) is the deep involvement of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), particularly those administered by the central/national government (CSOEs). In this research social network analysis (SNA) was used to examine the role of different actors in transport and environmental protection PPPs in China in the period 2012–17. The results largely confirm the resource-based view and resource-dependency theory, showing that while CSOEs are dominant in both sectors, their dominance and control is greatest in transport sector projects that are more dependent on their accumulated experience, expertise, human capital assets and managemgent skills, that their dominance has increased over time, and that it is aligned with the provincial distribution of Chinese CSOEs.

A salient characteristic of China's public-private partnerships (PPPs) is the deep involvement of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), particularly those administered by the central/national government (CSOEs). This paper integrates the approaches of resource-based view and resource-dependency theory to explain CSOEs' involvement in PPP networks. Built upon a network perspective, this paper differs from earlier studies in that it investigates the entire PPP governance network as a whole and all PPP participants' embedded network positions, rather than individual, isolated PPP transactions. Using a novel data source on PPP projects in the period of 2012-2017, social network analysis is conducted to test hypothesized network dominance of CSOEs' in forming PPPs, in light of CSOEs' superior possession of and access to strategic assets. Research findings suggest that CSOEs have a dominant influence and control power in PPP networks across sectors, over time, and throughout geographic space. It is also suggested that policy makers should reduce resource gaps between SOEs and private businesses, and only in so doing, presence and involvement of non-SOEs in China's PPPs can be enhanced.

Homeowner associations (HOAs), as a form of private residential governance, have grown exponentially in the United States, representing a profound transformation in urban governance. This paper examines the fiscal correlation between local municipal governments and private residential governments, and specifically, the extent to which the proliferation of HOAs in a municipality is related to municipal expenditures and revenues. Administrative data of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation are employed with spatial econometric methods for accounting for potential inter-jurisdictional spillover effects. Empirical evidence suggests that a greater presence of HOAs within a local municipality is associated with the municipality’s declining public expenditures and revenues for providing public services to local residents.

State tax and nontax incentives have been widespread in the United States, though their efficacy in job creation and economic development has been repeatedly questioned in the literature by scholars and policy makers. Why, then, do states persistently pursue these incentive policies? Using the newly developed Panel Database on Incentives and Taxes, we adopt a dynamic spatial Durbin panel model to account for both temporal and spatial dependence and to shed light on this question. Empirical evidence suggests a statistically significant and positive relationship between tax credits and tax burdens (i.e., elevated tax breaks are used to offset higher tax differentials). States therefore may seek to create a level playing field in business attraction and retention by overcoming tax disadvantages. Besides, high-serial dependence is present in the use of various tax credits, suggesting a high self-perpetuating tendency that tax breaks, once introduced, are likely to be persistent over time. States are also found to be engaged both in spatial competition or imitation among geographically proximate states, and in strategic benchmarking among states that are geographically distant but economically alike.