This article presents evidence that high-ranking public officials in the Ministry of Strategy and Finance in South Korea affect local budget allocation. Applying a regression model on a uniquely constructed panel dataset, I found that the growth rate of the per-capita National Subsidy, which is a subcomponent of the national budget susceptible to discretionary behaviors, increases approximately 7 percent in the hometowns of high-ranking bureaucrats. To validate these findings and address causality, I conducted a battery of auxiliary robustness checks, which yielded confirmatory results. This study also found that enhancing transparency in the budget allocation system can alleviate concerns about bureaucratic hometown favoritism, providing suggestive evidence of bureaucrats’ rent-seeking behaviors without government transparency.

We investigate allocation of funds by citizens across management options addressing impairments to coastal water quality. We study systematic variation in citizen allocation of funds to adaptive versus preventative strategies including the impact of referundum choices and test whether allocations will be impacted by cuing in the design of the referendum. Two key policy insights from our results: citizens who vote no on a water quality referendum have different preferences over allocating funds and providing cues to voters influenced allocation behavior. These results can assist decision makers in thinking about language used to communicate coastal water quality issues, particularly budget referenda.

This research develops a multiregional optimal control model that incorporates regional allocation of a public budget for controlling invasive plants when regionally differential recreation demand functions and species control costs are present. Our equimarginal condition for optimal budget allocation equates the relative marginal economic benefits per dollar spent across regions. The model was applied to Florida Public Conservation Land regions, and results indicate that the magnitude of an annual management budget affects its distribution among species management regions, but the size of the intrinsic growth rate does not affect the pattern of budget allocation among regions.