political competition and the politicization of the state in east central europe the expansion and politicization of the postcommunist state even among the reform leaders of czech republic hungary poland and slovakia has confounded early expectations that the state would s

the leadership factor in african policy reform and growth in 1997 the world bank s two vice presidents for sub saharan africa attributed a significant improvement in africa s growth prospects to a new generation of leaders replacing their once largely statist and corrupt predecessors of 48 african leaders holding office on 1 january 1999 22 were in power a decade earlier and eight ten years before that examination of ten countries with focus on kenya and zambia raises the question why after these incumbents had created such an economic catastrophe were socio political structures unable to replace them with better leaders there are no clear answers the literature on the political economy of economic reform has tended to focus on interest group analysis with only a few studies according a major role to the emergence of individuals whose vision and initiative launch their countries onto paths of rapid growth promoting reform in africa encounters many difficulties yet there is increasing evidence that action by national leaders to raise agricultural production and promote the export of labor intensive manufactures would greatly enhance the prospects for accelerated growth the paper urges other social scientists to help us learn more about how african social structures can create power bases for individuals with the vision to promote and sustain economic reform

economic statism private capital and the dilemmas of accumulation in nigeria abstract nigeria s persistent economic stagnation is attributable to a mutually reinforcing political dynamic comprising a weak developmental state and pervasive rent seeking within the private sector this syndrome was a source of nigeria s initial economic crisis in the early 1980s and it continues to impede structural adjustment initiatives economic policy reform has been compromised by state strategies designed to preserve the gains of elite rentier groups while private entrepreneurs have responded to policy change by seeking new rental havens in finance and other nontradable sectors in consequence structural adjustment has failed to elicit a supply response or to generate significant political support for a more propitious enabling environment nigeria s experience reinforces the perception that changes in nominal incentives must be accompanied by broader institutional transformation if economic reform is to be effective

shifting fortunes the political economy of financial liberalization in nigeria abstract on the recommendation of the world bank nigeria began to liberalize its financial sector in 1986 contrary to the prediction of financial repression theory savings and investment decline in the wake of banking deregulation by 1995 the nigerian financial system was in a state of collapse the paper locates the main failure of nigeria s financial deregulation in the political and institutional setting of reform the institutional mechanisms needed to supervise and regulate banking under the new system were absent while private sector banking capacities were weak moreover financial liberalization was quickly captured by a clientalist state as a means of reallocating rents to strategic constituents an additional precipitating factor was macroeconomic instability the paper points to the importance of incorporating political and institutional variables into any model of financial reform or transformation

trade taxes and tribute market liberalizations and the new importers in west africa this paper examines dynamics of state business relations in the era of trade liberalization in senegal and cote d ivoire it challenges the orthodox view that replacing nontariff barriers such as licenses and quotas with tariffs depoliticizes trade reduces commercial rent seeking activities and creates a level playing field which will encourage underground activities to surface allowing the state to capture more revenue the paper illustrates that liberalization failed to suppress commercial rent seeking helped to encourage the ascendancy of new politically connected merchant groups the mourides in senegal and the lebanese in cote d ivoire and to some degree increased tax evasion leading to the further erosion of state revenue flows the cases show that trade centered rentierism is rooted in structural features of these west african economies

household saving in developing countries first cross country evidence although most studies have relied on domestic or private sector saving data this article uses household data available from the u n system of national accounts for a sample of 10 countries household saving functions are estimated using combined time series and cross country observations in order to test households responses to income and growth rates of return monetary wealth foreign saving and demographic variables the results show that income and wealth variables affect saving strongly and in ways consistent with standard theories inflation and the interest rate do not show clear effects on saving which is also consistent with their theoretical ambiguity foreign saving and monetary assets have strong negative effects on household saving which suggests the importance of liquidity constraints and monetary wealth in developing countries

the local electoral impacts of conditional cash transfers evidence from a field experiment abstract i assess the impacts of targeted government transfers on a local incumbent s electoral performance i use the randomized roll out of a cct program in the philippines although the program was usually implemented in all villages in a municipality a subset of beneficiary municipalities were randomly selected to receive the program in a randomly selected subset of villages a number of municipalities are tightly controlled by political dynasties and thus i can test whether the effects are dependent upon the political environment in a competitive political environment incumbent vote share is 26 percentage points higher in municipalities where the program was implemented in all villages than in municipalities where the program was implemented in half of them the program had no impact in municipalities with low levels of political competition further there is evidence consistent with the argument that incumbents compensated households in control villages by redistributing their own budget there

foreign aid and statehood in africa has foreign aid destroyed state institutions in africa african states depend on development assistance to conduct basic government operations yet few of these states are well governed or effective at providing public goods the two trends mounting foreign aid and static or diminishing state performance raise an obvious question is aid dependency contributing to misrule and state failure in africa many critics argue the two phenomena are related i find they are not my analysis fails to show a negative association between aid receipts and two measures of democracy and economic freedom instead the evidence is consistent with a small positive relationship between aid and these indicators of state performance since the international community seems bent on reducing foreign aid an important issue is how african states can maintain and improve their performance with less foreign assistance

bureaucracy and growth we revisit the hypothesis that a weberian bureaucracy enhances economic growth theoretically we develop arguments for why such a bureaucracy may enhance growth and discuss plausible counterargume

authenticity is contagious brand essence and the original source of production it is well established that differences in manufacturing location can affect consumer preferences through lay inferences about production quality in this article the authors take a different approach to this topic by demonstrating how beliefs in contagion the notion that objects may acquire a special aura or essence from their past influence perceptions of authenticity for everyday consumer products and brands specifically they find that due to a belief in contagion products from a company s original manufacturing location are viewed as containing the essence of the brand in turn this belief in transferred essence leads consumers to view products from the original factory as more authentic and valuable than identical products made elsewhere the authors further reveal that consumers who are higher in sensitivity to contagion are more likely to exhibit this effect and that activating the concept of contagion enhances preferences for products made in the brand s original factory the authors clos

the difficult transition from clientelism to citizenship lessons from mexico author s fox jonathan a abstract electoral competition is necessary but not sufficient for the consolidation of democratic regimes not all elections are free and fair nor do they necessarily lead to actual civilian rule or respect for human rights if there is more to democracy than elections then there is more to democratization than the transition to elections but in spite of the rich literature on the emergence of electoral competition the dynamics of political transitions toward respect for other fundamental democratic rights is still not well understood political democracy is defined here in classic procedural terms free and fair electoral contestation for governing offices based on universal suffrage guaranteed freedoms of association and expression accountability through the rule of law and civilian control of the military although analyses of democratization typically acknowledge that these are all necessary criteria most examine only electoral competition this study however develops a framework for explaining progress toward another necessary condition for democratization respect for associational autonomy which allows citizens to organize in defense of their own interests and identities without fear of external intervention or punishment

the long gestation and brief triumph of import substituting industrialization abstract as a set of ideas and practices import substituting industrialization became the dominant development strategy after wwii this article examines the highly diverse origins of what became a kind of consensus one that was most explicitly articulated through the ecla cepal school inspired by raul prebisch explicit attention is paid to the congruence of economic strategy and political formations as the washington consensus displaces the ecla consensus one must ask how those developing countries that have not yet industrialized may do so in the absence of high levels of protection

does welfare conditionality reduce democratic participation the past 20 years have witnessed a shift to work based welfare conditionality within the advanced welfare states as access to social benefits are increasingly predicated on individuals agreeing to behavioral conditions related to participation in the labor market existing literature on the political consequences of this shift offers contradictory expectations while new paternalists claim that it should increase political participation among benefit recipients others argue that it has a depressive effect the majority of existing studies rely on cross sectional analyses which leaves them open to charges of selection bias utilizing multiple longitudinal research designs this article finds that conditionality has a depressive effect on patterns of democratic engagement welfare conditionality reduces political and civic participation political interest and efficacy and personal efficacy in disaggregating conditionality s effects across two client groups the article finds largely positive effects a

economic regulations red tape and bureaucratic corruption in post communist economies summary should state regulatory involvement in the economy necessarily generate corruption while excessive regulatory burden is often treated as a cause of corruption this paper argues otherwise it distinguishes regulatory policy or de jure regulatory regimes from regulatory implementation and offers a more nuanced argument about the relationship between state regulations and bureaucratic corruption the analysis of business survey data covering 25 post communist economies demonstrates that mechanisms of regulatory implementation rather than heavy handed regulatory policy are responsible for bribery this analysis draws attention to the theoretical distinction between different types of regulatory hurdles and their differential effects on the quality of governance

determinants of consumption and savings behavior in developing countries the determinants of savings generally and the specific effects of government policies on savings and consumption are pivotal forces in investment and economic growth the hall hypothesis states that consumption is a function of lifetime permanent income rather than income in each period independently changes in interest and tax rates money supply or government expenditure will affect permanent income and hence consumption and savings only if they are unexpected and thus not already incorporated in the estimation of permanent income we are unable to reject the hall hypothesis in tests for developing countries when we allow for varying interest rates we do find evidence of a negative effect of inflation on consumption and a positive relationship between the real interest rate and consumption the evidence for the hall hypothesis also suggests that ricardian equivalence may be valid this is barro s hypothesis that the effect on savings is the same whether government deficits are financed through taxation or debt our preliminary testing however does not support ricardian equivalence savings is the part of one s current income that is not spent on current consumption and it constitutes a large part of a nation s aggregate savings and investment and thus is a major determinant of the growth of future income and consumption households balance the tradeoffs between current and future consumption possibilities when making their individual consumption decisions understanding the determinants of households consumption behavior has been central to macroeconomics the three main theoretical approaches to this issue are keynesian consumption theory the life cycle permanent income hypothesis under rational expectations and the theory of the infinitely lived agent or altruistically linked consumers the theories differ in the extent to which they explain the observed consumer behavior and in their predictions regarding the effects of government policies on individual savings behavior for instance increased taxes higher nominal interest rates or an increase in the money

maize milling market reform and urban food security the case of zimbabwe abstract government policy in much of eastern and southern africa has encouraged the development of highly centralized large scale milling facilities which has in turn promoted the consumption of highly refined and expensive maize meal compared to that produced by small scale hammer mills policies to develop competitive small scale milling facilities in urban areas are apparently neglected because of the conventional perception in eastern and southern africa that urban consumers strongly prefer the refined industrially milled meals and are not responsive to price differences between various types of maize meals results of consumer and miller surveys in zimbabwe call into question the validity of these perceptions simulation analysis also indicates that the elimination of policy constraints that block small scale millers access to grain would reduce overall marketing costs thereby allowing higher producer prices lower consumer prices and or lower government subsidies the case of zimbabwe suggests that market reform may considerably reduce the magnitude of the tradeoff between governments food security and budget minimization objectives

a cross national investigation on how ethical consumers build loyalty toward fair trade brands although fair trade has recently experienced rapid growth around the world there is lack of consumer research that investigates what determines consumers loyalty toward fair trade brands in this research we investigate how ethical consumption values ecv and two mediating variables fair trade product beliefs ftpb and fair trade corporate evaluation ftce determine fair trade brand loyalty ftbl on the basis of two empirical studies that use samples from the u s and korea we provide evidence demonstrating that the manner in which ecv influence ftbl differs in the u s and korea in the u s ecv determine ftbl only indirectly via ftpb whereas in korea they determine ftbl directly as well as indirectly via ftce we discuss theoretical and managerial implications of these findings

on measuring the shadow price of uncommitted fiscal resources in africa abstract underevaluation of the opportunity cost of uncommitted fiscal resources in african countries results in approval of development projects which later collapse when local budget support for operation and maintenance is not forthcoming a cobb douglas production function is presented using as factors a the civil service establishment and b real government expenditure on complementary goods and services assuming tangency in the early 1970s before civil service expansion notwithstanding fiscal stringency led to compression of b plausible parameters yield a current marginal product of b that is twice or more the tangency value implying a shadow price of 2 0 for uncommitted fiscal resources

conditional cash transfers the case of progresa oportunidades conditional cash transfer cct programs innovate by conditioning transfers to poor families on investments in the human capital of children and other family members the mexican cct program progresa oportunidades began in 1997 and has served as a model for many of the now over sixty countries with ccts around the world in large part due to its initial evaluation with an experimental design and numerous follow up studies this article reviews the literature on the development evaluation and findings of progresa oportunidades summarizing what is known about program effects taking into account corrections for multiple hypothesis testing

consumer animosity in the global value chain the effect of international production shifts on willingness to purchase hybrid products the escalation of international offshoring and outsourcing in recent years has resulted in a proliferation of hybrid products for the typical multinational enterprise with multiple country affiliations for branding design manufacture assembly and parts sourcing however little has been written regarding the impact of consumer animosity on such hybrid activities or the role of universal values in a hybrid production animosity model in this paper we extend the consumer animosity literature to a firm s global integration activities for hybrid products we posit that consumers willingness to purchase wtp a complex hybrid product is negatively affected by partial production shifts to an animosity evoking country and that self reported animosity toward the country predicts lower wtp above and beyond consumer ethnocentrism and perceived product quality in addition we hypothesize a negative relationship between conservation values and wtp hybrid foreign products and a positive relationship between openness values and wtp hybrid foreign products a study of 319 us consumers revealed consistent support for these hypotheses with the exception of the conservation values wtp relationship practical implications and future research directions are discussed

who delivers partisan clients in the argentine electoral market why do some parties fail to benefit from patronage in pork ridden political systems this article analyzes the interaction between patronage and partisanship to explain why some incumbents are more likely to benefit from pork politics than others we explain such differences by focusing on political parties access to resources supply side and voters dependence on fiscal largesse demand side we show how these differences affect the patron s choice of public sector wages and employment we use subnational level data to show different electoral returns from patronage for the two major political coalitions in argentina peronism and the ucr alianza and their effect on preferences over public sector wages and employment w hy do some political parties fail to benefit from patronage in pork ridden political systems this article analyzes the interaction between patronage and partisanship to explain why some incumbents are more likely to benefit from pork politics than others we explain returns to patronage by highlighting differences in the political parties access to resources supply side and the voter s dependence on public sector jobs demand side we propose that just as political parties cater their policies to particular groups of voters they pursue different strategies when allocating pork in exchange for support on the supply side we highlight the importance of partisan biases in the fiscal and electoral institutions that regulate the access and distribution of public resources on the demand side we show that patronage is a distributive mechanism that provides different returns to voters with different skills and labor market expectations

the impact of federal spending on house election outcomes while it is widely believed by academics politicians and the popular press that incumbent members of congress are rewarded by the electorate for bringing federal dollars to their district the empirical evidence supporting that claim is extremely weak one explanation for the failure to uncover the expected relationship between federal spending and election outcomes is that incumbents who expect to have difficulty being reelected are likely to exert greater effort in obtaining federal outlays since it is generally impossible to adequately measure this effort the estimated impact of spending is biased downward because of an omitted variable bias we address this estimation problem using instrumental variables for each house district we use spending outside the district but inside the state containing the district as an instrument for spending in the district federal spending is affected by a large number of actors e g governors senators mayors and other house members in the state delegation

parastatal pay policy in africa abstract public enterprises have grown to represent a significant share of modern sector employment in many african economies with wage and employment issues near the top of the policy agenda in africa attention should be given to public enterprise compensation and employment policies after describing the institutions which govern public enterprise pay in a number of sub saharan countries the paper considers the policy dilemma in choosing between the two basic alternative pay setting regimes for public enterprise enterprise wage autonomy versus unified salary scales with the civil service

the politics of liberalizing zambia s maize markets abstract this paper discusses the process of agricultural liberalization in zambia the central argument is that maize markets have been more quickly and fully liberalized than maize input markets because the perceived political risks of liberalizing input markets are greater than those of liberalizing maize markets and because economic interest groups benefited from maize liberalization while similar interests benefited from continued government interventions in input markets these finding imply that in order to understand the prospects for economic liberalization in new democracies we must disaggregate both civil society and markets

client perceived performance and value in professional b2b services an international perspective drawing from the resource based view and a contingency approach the authors develop and test a model of the antecedents of client perceived value in the context of international professional business to business services consultants engineers project management it consultants etc in a developing economies setting further we examine the effects of key moderators e g country of origin coo firm s international experience client s buying experience on client perceived performance and value the results generally support the hypotheses that client perceived performance is impacted by a firm s internal resources e g technical skills customer orientation innovation in addition this relationship is contingent upon the coo effect while client perceived value is moderated by the client s buying experience the findings can guide practitioners as to the key drivers of client perceived value and under what conditions this value is maximized

internal adjustments to falling civil service salaries insights from uganda abstract real basic salaries of civil servants in many developing countries have fallen during the past 15 years little is known however as to how the civil service personnel structure and pay system have responded to the salary cuts civil service basic salaries fell drastically in uganda during 1975 1988 the adaptive responses of the civil service are identified allowances have not increased to cushion the salary cuts as is alleged to have happened in many developing countries the adaptive responses have had negative effects on efficiency and equity within the civil service they have reversed the decline in the public wage bill the raison d etre for deep salary slashes in the first place

coordination risk and cost impacts on economic development in poor rural areas this paper addresses issues relevant to a critical problem in economic development how to get rapid pro poor economic growth in poor rural areas in africa and south asia where most of the world s dollar a day poor live it examines constraints to the development of coordinated exchange systems in poor rural areas focusing on the core problem of thin markets and low density of economic activity in these areas transaction cost and risk analysis is integrated into a conventional neoclassical production economics framework to describe the existence of low level equilibrium traps in transactions and supply chains and to generate important insights for development policy

trends in poverty and destitution in wollo ethiopia 1 abstract according to several studies poverty in rural ethiopia has fallen significantly since the early 1990s thanks to improved governance and economic liberalisation policies this paper presents several arguments that challenge this view the first questions the methodological foundations of the data from which these positive trends are derived we argue that the original sampling frame was too small and unrepresentative to provide a basis for extrapolating national poverty levels or trends the second argument questions the conceptual underpinnings of these studies poverty estimates based on levels of current consumption fail to allow for non income dimensions of wellbeing nor for confounding factors such as seasonality annual rainfall and food aid receipts the third strand considers alternative sources of data on changes in wellbeing in ethiopia recent qualitative studies report that the poor perceive themselves as poorer and more vulnerable than poverty headcount figures suggest finally we

the impact of agricultural liberalisation on food security in malawi abstract the donor supported structural adjustment programmes have not impacted favourably on livelihoods food security and the general welfare of the poor in malawi this resulted from the prescription of wrong policy packages and limited attention to poverty alleviation policies policies have tended to concentrate on promoting market and price mechanisms less on addressing production constraints and non economic barriers to broad based economic growth there are losers and winners as a result of policy reforms in agricultural produce marketing the losers are mainly the smallholder farmers in the category of net food buyers low income or wage earners in urban and semi urban areas and smallholder farmers in remote areas the winners are smallholder farmers in the category of net food sellers private traders institutional traders and the state marketing agency the paper analyses the impact of pricing policy and market deregulation on the state marketing organisation and on the private marketing system highlighting the lessons to be learned and making recommendations on how to improve the food security situation at the household level

do conditional cash transfers affect electoral behavior evidence from a randomized experiment in mexico this article reexamines the argument that targeted programs increase pro incumbent voting by persuading beneficiaries to cast ballots against their first partisan choice the evidence comes from the randomized component of progresa the pioneering mexican conditional cash transfer cct program experimental data show that early enrollment in the program led to substantive increases in voter turnout and in the incumbent s vote share in the 2000 presidential election the experiment also reveals that opposition parties vote shares were unaffected by the program thus the electoral bonus generated by ccts may be best explained by a mobilizing rather than persuasive mechanism these findings are difficult to reconcile with the notion that the electoral effects of ccts are a result of prospective concerns triggered by threats of program discontinuation or endogenous program enrollment instead the evidence in this article suggests that ccts mobilizing effects are compatible with programmatic politics

state failure and success in uganda and zimbabwe the logic of political decay and reconstruction in africa abstract this article uses the post colonial experiences of uganda and zimbabwe to demonstrate both the strengths and weaknesses of competing theoretical explanations for problems of state and economic failure in africa it shows that they all explain some but not all of these processes it demonstrates the crucial role of contextual circumstances and ongoing structural changes in each country in determining the success or failure of policy regimes and of current prospects for a long term transformation to liberal democratic capitalism

country of origin effects in developed and emerging markets exploring the contrasting roles of materialism and value consciousness despite growing evidence about differences in the attitudes and behaviors of consumers in emerging and developed markets there is little research on the differences in country of origin coo effects on their evaluation behavioral intentions bis and actual purchase of imported products this paper introduces a new conceptual framework incorporating consumer ethnocentrism cet materialism mat and value consciousness vc to hypothesize several differences in the influence of coo effects on consumers from developed and emerging markets a web based study with 1752 consumers in four countries representing two developed markets the uk and the usa and two emerging markets china and india shows significant differences in the moderating influence of cet mat and vc on the effects of coo on the evaluations and bis for a fictitious passenger car brand and on the actual choice of car brands owned by them the findings highlight the importance of looking beyond cet at other relevant psychographic variables to understand the differences in motivations underlying consumer perceptions and behavior towards imported products

social status culture and economic performance in analysing the differences in productive capacity among economies it is usual to concentrate on the physical aspects of the population the different attributes of capital including human capital and on the available production technologies societies also differ in culture in ways which are relevant for economic performance the sociological literature recognises that different occupations have different social status and that workers benefit not only from the wage they receive but also from being associated with a particular occupation cultural differences among societies may translate into different status of occupations and can therefore affect the choice of education and occupation and consequently the equilibrium level of output and wages conversely the economic choices of individuals influence the social status of occupations in particular it is well established by sociological research that the social status of an occupation is influenced by economic attributes such as the average wage and the average level of education in the occupation a major objective of our work is to illustrate that sociological and economic approaches can be combined within a unified framework this is in contrast to some social scientists who view the two approaches as competing with each other phelpsbrown i 977 ch 4 in this paper we construct a simple general equilibrium model in which both wages and status are determined endogenously we show that changes in the demand for status triggered by changes in preferences or in income distribution influence the wage structure the level of aggregate output and economic welfare the link between status and aggregate output is created by the fact that differences in occupational status imply occupational wage differences among workers of the same skill the larger is the demand for status the larger is the wage gap and the lower is aggregate output our discussion of status is closely related to the economic analysis of discrimination against ethnic or racial groups becker i 97 i arrow i 973

the political effects of agricultural subsidies in africa evidence from malawi across sub saharan africa agricultural subsidy programs have again become a common strategy for combatting rural poverty increasing agricultural production and reducing food insecurity despite a large literature examining subsidies effects on output and welfare little is known about their political effects this paper examines malawi s agricultural input subsidy programme one of the largest and most expensive programs implemented which was launched by the government in 2005 we examine whether the incumbent party the democratic progressive party headed by president bingu wa mutharika benefited from malawi s subsidy program by examining a longitudinal dataset of 1 846 rural malawians interviewed in 2008 and again in 2010 the individual level data show no evidence that the subsidy program was targeted to mutharika s co ethnics or co partisans our analysis further demonstrates that the subsidy program increased support for the incumbent party these results suggest that even when parties are unable or unwilling to target distributional programs at the local level they may nonetheless derive political benefits as anti poverty programs including agricultural subsidies to small scale farmers become increasingly common across the continent our results suggest that they may help to explain patterns of party affiliation and vote choice particularly where traditional patterns of partisan affiliation related to ethnic or regional identities weaken

why has africa grown slowly we distinguish between policy and destiny explanations of africa s slow growth during the past three decades policies were poor high export taxation and inefficient public service delivery and destiny was adverse landlocked tropical locations and terms of trade deterioration during the 1990s africa s economic policies improved although with considerable variation both between countries and between policies trade and exchange rate policies improved much more than service delivery thus the differing explanations of past slow growth imply different predictions for growth in the coming decade we argue that poor public economic services are likely to be the binding constraint

the failed africanization of commerce and industry in kenya abstract in the 1970s a number of authors challenged the dependency perspective with respect to kenya they maintained that a viable domestic capital class nurtured by state sponsorship had emerged since independence this article questions the revisionist interpretation of state business relations in kenya kenya does possess a dynamic entrepreneurial sector led mainly by kenyan indians government efforts to aid african entrepreneurs or to establish a vigorous state capitalist sector have been ineffective this is evident from surveys of the state enterprise sector private manufacturing and commerce revisionist authors tended to overestimate the capacity of kenyan state agencies to implement policy goals and they neglected the political context of africanization as an instrument of ethnic patronage for state leaders

party system competition and private sector development in africa abstractdemocratic transitions by many african countries have generated much analysis of the organisational features of political parties or their role in voter mobilisation during elections yet scholars have largely overlooked how parties negotiate economic policymaking or interact with the private sector in countries that are incipient democracies and emerging markets this article argues that the stability or fragmentation of the party system affects patterns of private sector development and shapes linkages between the state business and labour it compares mozambique and zambia to demonstrate how variations in party system characteristics influence the relationship between economic and political interests

why is capital so immobile internationally possible explanations and implications for capital income taxation the evidence on international capital immobility is extensive including the lack of international portfolio diversification real interest differentials across countries and the high correlation between domestic savings and investment the authors develop a model with asymmetric information between countries that helps rationalize all the above observations and then examine the implications of this model for optimal domestic tax policy without asymmetric information past work showed that small open economies should not impose corporate income taxes with asymmetric information the optimal policy instead involves government subsidies to capital imports some omitted factors that argue against subsidizing capital imports are explored briefly copyright 1996 by american economic association

country image and consumer based brand equity relationships and implications for international marketing this paper examines the relationships between consumers country level and product level images of a country and the equity they associate with a brand from that country using canonical correlation analysis results from mallintercept surveys conducted in an australian state capital city indicated that the consumer based equity of a brand was significantly associated with both the macro and micro images of the country of origin of the brand the relationship between these two sets of constructs was found to be positive as well as product category specific furthermore each consumer based brand equity dimension contributed differently to the relationship according to the product category while the contribution of both country image dimensions macro and micro was also product category specific results also showed that cars as a product category are more sensitive to country image than televisions these findings have direct and important implications for international marketers

food market reform the changing role of the state abstract the liberalization and privatization of food markets has been an important feature of economic reform programmes in many developing countries and donor conditionality has been applied to this end however the agenda needs to move beyond this to the establishment of efficient and equitable marketing systems a major constraint on this has been the weak base of theoretical and empirical knowledge about the characteristics of food markets on which reform programmes have been built three principal areas are identified where further research policy experimentation and sharing of experience are required the role of the state in relation to collective action by market participants the problem of food price instability and the delivery of support to the small scale private sector that has taken over many marketing functions

africa s overgrown state reconsidered bureaucracy and economic growth how close is the link between outsized states and economic stagnation in africa this article shows that african public bureaucracies are not as large as often portrayed that they have been getting smaller and that reducing their size alone has not bee n a prescription for economic revival to the contrary the countries with higher levels of public employment such as botswana and mauritius are apt to have the better economic records these findings suggest that a superabundance of public personnel is not in itself a major impediment to growth in africa too much attention has been paid to quantitative or first generation bureaucratic problems and too little attention has been given the second generation issues of bureaucratic quality

thinking about developmental states in africa during much of the 1980s and 90s a literature emerged suggesting that developmental states were impossible in africa the arguments given ranged from cultural ones about the pervasive nature of clientalism to structural ones on the dependence of african economies or the atypical levels of rent seeking in african economies this paper argues that africa has had states that were developmental in both their aspirations and economic performance it further argues that these experiences need to be examined critically for useful lessons an exercise that has been hindered by an excessive levelling of the african political and economic landscapes

neopatrimonialism and the political economy of economic performance in africa critical reflections during the past two decades neopatrimonialism has become the convenient all purpose and ubiquitous moniker for african governance the school of thought behind this research program which the author refers to as the neopatrimonialism school has produced an impressive literature on africa its analysis informs policymakers and its language permeates media reportage on african states while neopatrimonialism has long been a focus of development studies in recent times it has assumed politically and economically exigent status the school identifies causal links between neopatrimonialism and economic performance and makes predictions drawing from what is referred to as the logic of neopatrimonialism neopatrimonialism is said to account for trade policies hyperinflation economic stagnation low investment in infrastructure urban bias andultimately the lack of economic development in africa this article examines the empirical basis of predictions and policy prescriptions it argues that while descriptive of the social practices of the states and individuals that occupy different positions within african societies the concept of neopatrimonialism has little analytical content and no predictive value with respect to economic policy and performance

food marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa a survey abstract this article surveys the empirical record of grain marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa over 1930 1995 the paper addresses five key issues with major implications for food policy throughout africa a why the anticipated supply response to market liberalization has not yet occurred b why the common assumption of state taxation of farmers to support a cheap food policy does not apply in most of the countries in the region c why the temporary successes of the state led approach to stimulating smallholder grain production were unsustainable d why the elimination of government food subsidies associated with market reform has not adversely affected consumers and e why the fiscal cost of the marketing systems at least initially worsened rather than improved after the reforms were implemented in most countries the key future challenges for marketing policy are how to develop coordinated and financially sustainable input finance and commodity marketing systems for raising productivity growth in smallholder agriculture while overcoming inherited agricultural dualism and how to mitigate the effects of food price instability in a cost effective manner

can africa s saving collapse be reversed private saving in sub saharan africa declined from more than 11 percent of disposable income in the 1970s to less than 8 percent in the 1980s and only partially recovered to less than 9 percent in the 1990s this article analyzes the determinants of private saving in sub saharan africa seeking to explain the region s dismal performance and identify policies that could help to reverse the region s decline in saving the analysis shows that in sub saharan africa causality runs from growth to investment and perhaps to private saving whereas a rise m the saving rate granger causes an increase in investment the empirical analysis of private saving in sub saharan africa and other regions over 1970 95 suggests that private saving in africa can be explained by standard behavioral models according to these models private saving in africa lags behind that in other regions most notably the high performing asian economies because of the region s lower per capita income high young age dependency ratio and high dependence on aid the combined effects of these factors substantially outweigh africa s advantage from its lower public saving and higher government consumption finally analysis of the experiences of kenya zimbabwe and botswana provides further insight into the saving process in sub saharan africa

targeting the poor in mexico an evaluation of the selection of households into progresa abstract in this paper we conduct an evaluation of the targeting method used by health education and nutrition program progresa of mexico to identify beneficiary households we address two key questions a how well does progresa s targeting perform and b how does the program perform in terms of its impact on poverty alleviation relative to other feasible methods and transfer schemes the first question is accomplished by comparing progresa s method to an alternative selection method based on household consumption which is our preferred measure of welfare we employ the concepts of undercoverage and leakage and find that progresa selection method is more effective in identifying the extremely poor localities or households but less so when it comes to distinguishing among localities or households in the middle of the scale to address the second question we compare the potential impact of progresa on poverty alleviation against uniform transfers that involve no targeting at all targeting based on consumption and geographic targeting i e targeting at the locality level rather than at the household level we find that progresa s method of targeting households outperforms uniform coverage and targeting at the locality level in terms of reducing the poverty gap and severity of poverty indices even after taking into account the economic costs of targeting but the closeness of progresa s performance to what could be achieved by geographic targeting alone raises some serious questions about the costs and benefits associated with the practice of household targeting within poor localities

can public private partnerships leverage private investment in agricultural value chains in africa a preliminary review summary public private partnerships ppps may be one way of increasing the level of private sector investment into poorly performing agricultural value chains this paper considers a range of ppp mechanisms that respond to different market failures affecting such chains and draws on principal agent theory to illustrate the challenges it reviews emerging experience with a number of these mechanisms along with experience from other sectors that may shed light on generic problems of implementing ppps in africa while finding some positive impacts on investment it notes that state failures can also undermine ppp effectiveness as the evidence base is still limited it calls on organizations promoting innovative ppps to disclose available information for critical examination

economic crisis and policy choice the politics of adjustment in the third world the acute economic pressures of the 1980s have forced virtually all of latin america and africa and some countries in asia into painful austerity programs and difficult economic reforms scholars have intensively analyzed the economics of this situation but they have given much less attention to the political forces involved in this volume a number of eminent contributors analyze the politics of adjustment in thirteen countries and nineteen governments drawing comparisons not only across the full set of cases but also within clusters selected to clarify specific issues why do some governments respond promptly to signs of economic trouble while others muddle indecisively for years why do some confine their response to temporary macroeconomic measures while others adopt broader even sweeping programs of reform what leads some countries to experiment with heterodox approaches while most however reluctantly pursue orthodox courses why confronted with intense political protest have some governments persisted while others have altered or abandoned course the answers to these questions are political not economic and they are examined here by thomas m callaghy stephan haggard miles kahler robert r kauman joan m nelson and barbara stallings

food marketing liberalization and trader entry evidence from madagascar abstract food marketing liberalization was expected to induce massive trader entry and competitive markets in africa despite evidence of trader entry enterprise expansion remains difficult and many claim market power persists though perhaps in different hands this paper confronts this puzzle of substantial market entry that might not foster competition data from madagascar reveal distinct groups within rural food marketing channels separated by intraindustry mobility barriers that limit entry to a few niches moreover individuals place within the rural marketing network is defined largely by a priori social identity so the experience of food marketing liberalization varies across socially distinct subpopulations

incorporating marginal citizens and voters the conditional electoral effects of targeted social assistance in latin america in this article we study how social assistance shapes election results across latin america case studies in several countries have found electoral effects yet it remains unclear whether and how effects vary cross nationally and whether electoral effects are due to mobilization or persuasion we theorize that programs mobilize non voters and convert the opposition simultaneously but that the effects vary based on country level political and programmatic differences using 2012 americasbarometer data we develop a unified cross national model that confirms that public assistance makes recipients more likely to turn out and once at the polls to vote for the incumbent compulsory voting laws and program politicization magnify the electoral effects of social assistance but effects do not vary by presidential ideology or program conditionalities these findings are consistent with the perspective that latin american voters are boundedly rational retrospective agents whose behavioral choices depend on t

false promise or false premise the experience of food and input market reform in eastern and southern africa abstract the literature on the effects of agricultural market reform in africa is sharply divided and inconsistent this article attempts to reconcile opposing viewpoints on the effects of food and input market policy reform in eastern and southern africa drawing from studies of ethiopia kenya malawi zambia and zimbabwe we argue that a major source of the controversy stems from assumptions that countries have actually moved to a liberalized market environment we find that many of the most fundamental elements of the reform programs either remain unimplemented were reversed within several years or were implemented in such a way as to negate private sector investment incentives a framework is developed for explaining why some countries have been able to liberalize their food and fertilizer markets while others have not these findings have implications for how donor assistance and policy oriented research can more constructively contribute to an improved policy environment

market reform as a stimulus to particularistic politics we know little about how market reform affects political development especially citizens behavior market reform advocates prescribe that citizens should reduce their reliance on the state turn to nonstate actors for assistance and obtain limited state goods and services through their membership in certain social categories not their particular traits an analysis of three mass surveys and 232 interviews the author conducted in central asia along with additional data from 24 postcommunist countries reveals that market reform can have effects opposite from those prescribed individuals may make particularistic demands of government officials instead of relying on nonstate actors this occurs in countries where state economic intervention was substantial and where reforms reduced the state s economic role but failed to develop market enhancing institutions under these conditions individuals informally seek resources from state officials because nonstate actors do not offer substitute resources and

institutions transaction costs and economic growth this essay develops a theoretical framework which explores the historical obstacles to economic growth these obstacles are examined in the context of the political economic institutional framework of economies in history and consequent transaction costs that determine economic performance and growth the essay concludes with specific suggestions for the study of economic growth

donors and domestic policy makers two worlds in agricultural policy making in recent decades many developing countries have moved from taxing their agricultural sector to subsidizing it a phenomenon referred to as overshooting using ghana and uganda as case study countries this study aims to contribute to explaining this phenomenon by examining the role of policy beliefs the study is based on the advocacy coalition framework and relies on discourse analysis as analytical method in depth interviews with policy actors in both countries served as empirical basis a quantitative analysis of the transcripts was used to identify different discourse coalitions and a qualitative analysis was conducted to examine the discourses and identify their underlying policy beliefs the paper identified far reaching differences in the agricultural policy beliefs between domestic policy makers and donors regarding the question what does it actually take to develop small holder agriculture the evidence from this analysis highlights the role that divergent policy beliefs can play in influencing agricultural policy choices

electoral competition with rationally inattentive voters how do voters allocate costly attention to alternative political issues and how does selective ignorance of voters interact with policy design by politicians we address these questions by developing a model of electoral competition with rationally inattentive voters rational inattention amplies the eects of preference intensity because voters pay more attention where stakes are higher the model has many potential applications and those that we discuss in more detail imply that extremist voters are more attentive and inuential public goods are under provided divisive issues receive more attention and less transparent candidates choose more extreme policies endogenous attention can also lead to multiple equilibria explaining how poor voters in developing countries can be politically empowered by welfare programs

the state and economic stagnation in tropical africa abstract politics while only one strand in the explanation of africa s massive economic problems is nonetheless a significant factor a central conundrum facing postcolonial political leaders is how to govern and hold together unintegrated peasant societies in the absence of legitimacy personal rule a particular mode of patrimonial governance provides an answer permitting regime survival and the advancement of political insiders but personal rule has an economically destructive tendency that only shrewd political leadership and propitious world economic conditions can check if uncontrolled certain political practices corrode bureaucratic and legal rationality and promote the misallocation of scarce public resources the result can be a downward spiral of interrelated political and economic decline that is increasingly difficult to reverse

the effect of distance and road quality on food collection marketing margins and traders wages evidence from the former zaire abstract food price variation is typical of the food economies of many low income countries the presence or absence of road infrastructure is perceived to be one of the main determinants of this variation this analysis shows that in the case of the former zaire food price dispersion is significant both across products and across regions it is demonstrated that transportation costs explain most of the differences in food prices between producer regions and that road quality is an important factor in the transportation costs however food prices decrease relatively faster than transportation costs increase and traders wages are higher on bad roads

financial liberalization in sub saharan africa what do we know abstract beginning from the early 1980s countries in sub saharan africa embarked on financial liberalization policies with a view to reversing the ill effects of financial repression this paper provides a survey of financial liberalization in sub saharan african countries over the period 1980 to 2004 our review of empirical studies showed that financial liberalization has had diverse and contrasting effects on savings investment and economic growth most studies found a significant positive effect of financial liberalization on investment whereas its effect on savings has been largely insignificant the evidence on the effect on economic growth is inconclusive as different studies find contrasting results it is found that financial liberalization policies have not had the desired and expected results as both financial and macroeconomic variables have not improved following financial liberalization in these countries this calls for a rethinking of financial liberalization in sub saharan african countries it is important that financial liberalization is carried out in a stable macroeconomic environment in addition to this there should be a building and reform of institutions and the strengthening of prudential regulation following this financial liberalization can be embarked upon but it must be properly sequenced and not rushed

does financial reform raise or reduce saving the effect of financial liberalization on private saving is theoretically ambiguous not only because the link between interest rate levels and saving is itself ambiguous but also because financial liberalization is a multidimensional and phased process sometimes involving reversals using principal components we construct 25 year time series indices of financial liberalization for each of eight developing countries chile ghana indonesia korea malaysia mexico turkey and zimbabwe these are employed in an econometric analysis of private saving in these countries our results cannot offer support for the hypothesis that financial liberalization will increase saving on the contrary the indications are that liberalization overall and in particular those elements that relax liquidity constraints may be associated with a fall in saving

state intervention for food price stabilisation in africa can it work abstract although its arguments may have more general applicability this paper discusses the desirability and options for the stabilisation of staple food prices principally in eastern and southern africa it addresses three broad questions i why is stabilisation of food grain prices desirable ii what is technically feasible and iii can the governance and trade issues thrown up by suggested mechanisms be solved it considers a number of options for price stabilisation assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each and suggesting situations in which each may be appropriate

cash transfers clientelism and political enfranchisement evidence from brazil abstract this paper uses brazil s bolsa familia to show that redistributive policies that are shielded from the influence of political intermediaries can reduce incumbency advantage for mayors increase both electoral competition and candidate quality reduce support for clientelistic parties and lead incumbents to increase redistributive spending the paper exploits a nonparametric multivariate regression discontinuity design and employs a novel identification strategy for the variation in program coverage the theory proposes that cash transfers by reducing the vulnerability of poor voters make clientelism a less attractive strategy to incumbent mayors consequently incumbents reallocate effort away from the practice into public good distribution

savings and the terms of trade under borrowing constraints the authors examine the extent to which permanent terms of trade shocks have an asymmetric effect on private savings using a simple three period model they show that if households expect to face binding constraints on borrowing in bad states of nature when the economy is in a long trough rather than a sharp peak savings rates will respond asymmetrically to favorable movements in the permanent component of the terms of trade in contrast with the predictions of conventional consumption smoothing models they test the asymmetric effects of terms of trade disturbances using an econometric model that controls for various standard determinants of private savings the results based on panel data for non oil commodity exporters of sub saharan africa for 1980 96 a group of countries for which movements in the terms of trade have traditionally represented a key source of macroeconomic shocks indicate that increases in the permanent component of the terms of trade measured using three alternative filtering techniques indeed tend to be associated with higher rates of private savings

politicians bureaucrats and targeted redistribution abstract the paper argues that for political reasons elected politicians are more likely to be engaged in targeted redistribution than appointed bureaucrats it uses the example of patronage jobs in the u s local governments to provide empirical support for this claim it shows that the number of public employees is higher for elected chief executives this difference is stronger in public services with bigger private public wage differential and it increases during election years it also finds that the number of public employees increases with the age of bureaucrats while there is no such relationship in the case of politicians which is consistent with younger bureaucrats having stronger career concerns

building social capital conditional cash transfers and cooperation abstract many conditional cash transfer cct programs have important social components and therefore can have an effect on social capital in 2007 we conducted a field experiment with 1451 subjects in cartagena colombia we interpret the behavior in the game as a measure of what in the literature has been called social capital we played the game in two similar and adjacent neighborhoods the treatment neighborhood pozon had been targeted for over 2 years by a cct program familias en accion the control neighborhood cienaga had not in 2008 with the program being implemented in both neighborhoods we played the same public goods game and were therefore able to implement a difference in differences strategy to estimate the impact of the cct on our measure of social capital in 2007 the level of cooperation we observed in the treatment neighborhood was considerably higher than that in the control one although similar in many dimensions the two groups turned out to be significantly different in some observable variables the positive result was robust to controls for these differences in 2008 we found that the level of cooperation was statistically identical across the two neighborhoods and similar to the levels observed in 2007 in the treatment one we conclude that the cct program did improve cooperation in analyzing the effect of the cct on cooperation we also look at other individual and group determinants of individual behavior in the game and we compare our measure based on behavior in the game to more traditional measures of social capital used in the literature that we collected in a context specific survey

estimating consumer willingness to pay for food quality with experimental auctions the case of yellow versus fortified maize meal in kenya biofortification of maize with provitamin a carotenoids is a new approach to the alleviation of vitamin a deficiencies in africa unfortunately these varieties are yellow or orange while consumers generally prefer white consumer willingness to pay for yellow and fortified maize was compared in experimental auctions in three regions in kenya the premium that consumers are willing pay for fortified maize 24 was higher than the discount they require to buy yellow maize 11 and in one zone consumers prefer yellow yellow color is therefore not an impossible obstacle for biofortified maize although it would clearly be easier to introduce this maize first in regions where yellow maize is currently grown

social norms savings behavior and growth we argue that many goods and decisions are not allocated or made through markets we interpret an agent s status as a ranking device that determines how well he or she fares in the nonmarket sector the existence of a nonmarket sector can endogenously generate a concern for relative position in for example the income distribution so that higher income implies higher status moreover it can naturally yield multiple equilibria it is thus possible to explain differences in growth rates across countries without recourse to differences in underlying preferences technologies or endowments different social organizations lead to different reduced form preferences which lead to different growth rates

cultural variations in country of origin effects abstract the authors examine the extent to which cultural orientation influences country of origin effects on product evaluations in two countries japan and the united states subjects were given attribute information about a mountain bike made in either japan or the united states the target product was described as either superior or inferior to competition respondents in japan evaluated the product that originated in the home country versus foreign country more favorably regardless of product superiority in contrast respondents in the united states evaluated the product that originated in the home country more favorably only when the product was superior to competition the authors explain these findings on the basis of the cultural psychological principles of individualism and collectivism specifically the authors show that the vertical dimension of individualism and collectivism explains country of origin effects the authors also discuss implications for global marketing strategies featurin

economic reform and political transition in africa the quest for a politics of development the 1980s were bracketed by crises in africa as protracted economic malaise was succeeded by a wave of political reform analysts have sought to understand the sources of economic decline as well as the political requisites for recovery in the region neoclassical and structuralist analyses have been challenged by state centric views of economic change the latter perspective emphasizes the need for capable developmental states as a basis for long term adjustment but a political theory of economic change is still lacking such a theory must address the institutional foundations of growth as well as the shifting basis of social coalitions in african regimes political liberalization suggests the possibility of a new setting for economic reform though the effects of political reform on institutions and coalitions remain ambiguous and democratization cannot be regarded as a panacea for the region s developmental failure future research must look more closely at the interests and structures in transitional regimes and scholars should adopt a more comparative vantage on africa s challenges of reform

assessing the impact of a school subsidy program in mexico using a social experiment to validate a dynamic behavioral model of child schooling and fertility this paper uses data from a randomized social experiment in mexico to estimate and validate a dynamic behavioral model of parental decisions about fertility and child schooling to evaluate the effects of the progresa school subsidy program and to perform a variety of counterfactual experiments of policy alternatives our method of validation estimates the model without using post program data and then compares the model s predictions about program impacts to the experimental impact estimates the results show that the model s predicted program impacts track the experimental results our analysis of counterfactual policies reveals an alternative subsidy schedule that would induce a greater impact on average school attainment at similar cost to the existing program

exploring the logic behind southern africa s food crises summary government action during food crises in southern africa frequently exacerbates the problems driving food staple prices well beyond import parity we argue that an inability to make credible commitments due largely to a lack of trust between public and private sectors contributes to this dynamic empirical policy analysis can facilitate resolution only within a consultative process involving a broad range of stakeholders the policies emerging from such a process are not likely to approximate first best recommendations yet the precise policies may be less important than the fact that they exist and that main stakeholders find them credible

the new institutional economics and development theory a brief critical assessment abstract in this paper we discuss strengths and weaknesses of transaction cost and imperfect information approaches to the economic theory of institutions particularly with reference to problems relevant to economic development

on tax efforts and colonial heritage in africa abstract one commonly observed phenomena about taxation in africa are regional differences and the fact that southern african countries have higher levels of shares of taxation in gdp this article argues that the major source of differences in tax effort is the colonial histories of various countries using standard measures of tax effort in a panel data framework and dividing colonial africa along forms of incorporation into the colonial system it shows that african countries and others with similar colonial histories have higher levels of tax effort however the difference disappears when we control for the colonial factor these results hold under different model specifications

welfare spending and political conflict in latin america 1970 2010 abstract we study an age old question in political economy does government spending on welfare ensure peace this question was at the heart of the european welfare state model of the early 20th century and remains relevant today in face of rising inequalities and political conflict yet there is limited empirical evidence about this question we make use of a panel of 12 latin american countries over the period 1970 2010 to show that welfare spending has led to substantial reductions in conflict across the region this effect is more pronounced when associated with reductions in inequality and increasing social and institutional trust

after the decision implementing policy reforms in developing countries abstract implicit in many reform proposals is a model of the policy process that is roughly linear a proposed reform gets on the agenda for government action a decision is made on the proposal and the new policy or institutional arangement is implemented either successfully or unsuccessfully this article presents an alternative interactive model of implementation that focuses on the conflict and reactions that are evoked by efforts to bring about changed policy or institutional contexts for development and the resources that policy makers and managers are likely to require to sustain a reform in the face of such reactions central to the analysis is the assertion that characteristics of the reform being implemented will largely determine the kind of conflict it engenders where such reaction is likely to become manifest and what resources are needed for sustainability the analysis suggests a framework for the strategic management of reform initiatives

beyond ses a resource model of political participation this paper develops a resource model of political participation the resources considered are time money and civic skills those communications and organizational capacities that are essential to political activity these skills are not only acquired early in life but developed in the nonpolitical institutional settings of adult life the workplace organizations and churches and synagogues these resources are distributed differentially among groups defined by socioeconomic status a two stage least squares analysis shows these resources have powerful effects on overall political activity thus explaining why socioeconomic status has traditionally been so powerful in predicting participation we disaggregate overall activity into three kinds of acts those that involve giving time those that entail donating money and voting each requires a different configuration of resources resulting in different patterns of stratification across various political acts

government subsidies and presidential election outcomes evidence for a developing country summary we explore the effects of government subsidies on presidential elections in chile in 1989 99 we use a panel with three periods the elections of 1989 1993 and 1999 and 229 counties we correct for the potential simultaneity problem deriving from the fact that an incumbent facing a difficult political scenario might react by increasing subsidies to improve his her electoral performance our results indicate that the greater the coverage of these types of programs i e the percentage of people receiving subsidies the higher the votes for the incumbent

pork barrel politics and electoral returns at the local level does the targeted spending of public resources provide electoral benefits for incumbents despite the attention of scholars to that question the empirical results are mixed thus far the present paper supplies insights into the electoral benefits of discretionary funding on local elections i study the consequences of pork barrel politics in 7355 competitive mayoral elections in slovakia between 2006 and 2018 finding that more grants from the central government enhance the likelihood of mayors winning reelection the same advantage applies to mayors whose municipalities receive grants in local election years the effects of the number of grants obtained as well as the timing of their distribution are however moderated by municipal population more specifically a larger number of grants and resources obtained near the end of the mayoral term provides electoral benefits only to small town mayors but give no advantage to the mayors of larger urban areas