國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

Inspired  by  the  perspectives  from  transaction  cost  economics  and  politics,this  paper  demystifies  the  hierarchical  and  authoritative  relationships  betweensupervising and operating agencies within the budgetary process. We unravel theblanket category of transaction costs and break it down into empirically verifiableelements,  including  incomplete  and  asymmetric  information,  agency  problems,transaction   costs,   stakeholder   redistribution,   ideology   and   incentives,   etc.Political  hazards  are  identified  as  being  crucial  determinants  of  the  choice  ofpolitical governance in budget execution and the transactional attributes that giverise to such hazards are also pointed out. The agencies in our analysis incur costsdue to their provision of comprehensive budget design and tax revenue allocation,and are thus faced with a trade-off between providing incentives and reducing expost  costly  enforcement.  Extending  transaction  cost  politics  into  the  budgetarydomain suggests that transaction costs in the current political market do not leadthe project’s political stakeholders to move toward more efficient outcomes andactually result in significant enforcement costs. Framing the issue as a budgetaryadministration and project delivery problem, this paper highlights the challengesin using separation of power panels when the goals of the panels are uncodifiable.This  paper  concludes  by  offering  ideas  for  institutional  engineering  and  theestablishment   of   a   special   subsidy.   Furthermore,   this   paper   argues   thatreformulating  self-liquidating  analysis  and  carefully  justifying  the  authority  andobligation  relationships  between  agencies  should  play  an  important  role  inreducing transaction costs, ensuring enforceability of agreements, and achieving more efficient budgeting outcomes.