Wasteful spending cultures: State inefficiency and policy narrativesThe article introduces the concept of “wasteful public spending cultures” in the framework of state efficiency studies. The concept refers to learned behavioral patterns in the inertial work of government agencies. A case study from Colombia is presented. The study reports practices that lead to the wasteful procurement of armored cars to be used by the government. The role of policy narratives is crucial to understanding these “cultures,” as they contribute to replacing and downgrading technical discussions about inefficiency, favoring institutional traditions that include incrementalism. The work contributes to the interdisciplinary body of literature on government inefficiency, as it incorporates the role of storytelling, narratives, and cost-effectiveness calculations. The case study highlights the need to understand the complexity around spending practices in order to improve them.
Keywords:
State efficiency; policy narratives; armored government cars; wasteful spending; culture
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Source: Elaborated by the author based on Tucarro.com, Revista Motor, Autocosmos.com, Average TRM: Banco de la República, Own calculations.
Note: the group of bars to the left shows the quotient of the nominal local car price of a Chevrolet Tahoe in each country and the average annual household spending of the respective country. The group of bars to the right shows the quotient of a similar Toyota Land Cruiser and the GDP per capita.Source: Elaborated by the author. Calculations based on data from DANE, the World Bank, Kelly Blue Book, Kakaku Japan, Tucarro.com, and several car dealership websites in Japan.
Note: The first group of bars to the left shows the gap between Colombia’s p.c. GDP and those of the United States and Japan. The next group of bars shows the sales price of the average car in each country for 2019. Then, the next group shows the average household spending of each country for 2018 and 2019. The three remaining groups of bars show a comparison of local prices (converted to USD) of selected cars from the AMP list, following the most accurate reference that could be compared, as models are not always identical. While macroeconomic variables hint to a lower payment capacity on the side of the Colombian economy, the right side evinces higher costs when it comes to purchasing the cars in Colombia, compared to the US and Japan.Source: Elaborated by the author. Calculations are based on data from DANE, the World Bank Kelly Blue Book, Kakaku Japan, Tucarro.com, and several car dealership websites in Japan. The Toyota Prado was not available in the US market for the exact same model that was compared, hence it is not applicable.
Note: The index depicts the gap between procurement prices (costs) and technically-viable prices (costs). The lower the result, the lower the cost-effectiveness. The higher the results, the more convergence there will be among prices (costs), meaning that the chosen or bid vehicle is close to an optimal car category, while still fulfilling the technical armoring requirements.Source: Elaborated by the author. Calculations based on AMP data from 2019.