profits and politics coordinating technology adoption in agriculture abstract this paper examines the political economy of government led coordination of economic activity in a simple two sector model in which individuals choice of agricultural technology affects industrialization we demonstrate the existence of multiple equilibria the economy is either characterized by the use of a traditional agricultural technology and a low level of industrialization or the use of a mechanized technology and a high level of industrialization relative to the traditional technology use of the mechanized technology increases output but leaves some population groups worse off we show that the distributional implications of choosing the mechanized technology restrict the possibility of pareto improving coordination by an elected policy maker even when we allow for income redistribution

women as policy makers evidence from a randomized policy experiment in india this paper uses political reservations for women in india to study the impact of women s leadership on policy decisions since the mid 1990 s one third of village council head positions in india have been randomly reserved for a woman in these councils only women could be elected to the position of head village councils are responsible for the provision of many local public goods in rural areas using a dataset we collected on 265 village councils in west bengal and rajasthan we compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved village councils we show that the reservation of a council seat affects the types of public goods provided specifically leaders invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of their own genders

districting and government overspending theories of government spending driven by a common pool problem in the fiscal revenues pool predict that greater districting of a political jurisdiction raises the scale of government this paper presents evidence on this and related predictions from a cross section of city governments in the united states the main finding is that when other plausible determinants of government spending are controlled for greater districting leads to a considerably greater scale of government activity the results also show that at large electoral systems do not and forms of government that concentrate powers in the office of the executive do break this relationship

collective learning tacit knowledge and regional innovative capacity lawson c and lorenz e 1999 collective learning tacit knowledge and regional innovative capacity reg studies 33 305 317 the paper reviews key ideas in the firm capabilities literature and shows how they can be usefully extended to develop a conception of collective learning among regionally clustered enterprises the paper also explores the relationship between codifiable and tacit knowledge in the innovation process and investigates the claim that tacit knowledge because it is difficult to transfer in the absence of labour mobility may constitute a basis for sustained regional competitive advantage the closing section uses case study material based on minneapolis and cambridge to illustrate the importance for innovation of a regional capability for combining and integrating diverse knowledge and of the sources of such capabilities as pre conditions for successful high technology regions lawson c et lorenz e 1999 l apprentissage collectif la connaissance implicite et la capacite regio

local government structure and the quality of minority neighborhoods one of the most long standing and controversial issues surrounding local government structure in the united states is how reformed political institutions have impacted minority neighborhoods a common belief is that reformism has harmed these neighborhoods but there is no empirical evidence on this issue drawing upon capital asset pricing theory this paper empirically investigates the effects of two reforms the council manager form of government and at large councilor elections on the quality of nonwhite neighborhoods quality is found to be higher in majority white places with at large as opposed to district based elections quality is not found to be affected by the form of government

why political reservations many countries are amending their political systems to set aside positions to groups such as women and racial or religious minorities that are perceived as being disadvantaged using evidence from india this article assesses the case for these reservations jel h4 o15 several countries have introduced procedures either explicit quotas or forms of gerrymandering to ensure political representation of disadvantaged groups such as women or ethnic minorities in 2001 quotas for women in parliaments were in force in more than 30 countries in india seats are reserved for historically disadvantaged groups scheduled castes or sc and scheduled tribes or st in federal or state legislative assemblies and for both historically disadvantaged groups and women at all levels of the panchayat system the system of decentralized decision making on the basis of evidence accumulated about the indian experience this paper reviews the case for reservation

good types in authoritarian elections the selectoral connection in chinese local congresses a new electoral design for subnational congress elections in china allows me to investigate the informational utility of authoritarian elections authoritarian regimes are notoriously bad at solving the moral hazard problem in the voter s agency relationship with politicians borrowing from the literature on political selection i theorize that authoritarian elections can nonetheless solve the adverse selection problem chinese voters can use their electoral power to select good types with personal qualities that signal they will reliably represent local interests i analyze original data from a survey of 4 071 chinese local congressmen and women including voter nominees and communist party nominees i find that voters do in fact overcome coordination difficulties to nominate and elect good types in contacting politicians about local problems after the elections however voters hedge their bets by contacting regime insiders too at these very local levels congressional representation by means of

dialect transaction cost and intra national trade evidence from china growing evidence emphasizes the important role of network effects on bilateral trade this paper proposes a new factor dialect difference which decreases social network across regions may incre

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

state responses to fiscal crises the effects of budgetary institutions and politics this paper explores the dynamics of state taxes and spending during the late 1980s when regional economic downturns and increased expenditure demands led to substantial state budget deficits more restrictive state fiscal institutions such as no deficit carryover rules and tax and expenditure limitations are correlated with more rapid fiscal adjustment to unexpected deficits political factors are also important when a single party controls the state house and the governorship deficit adjustment is much faster than when party control is divided in gubernatorial election years tax increases and spending cuts are both significantly smaller than at other times

revisiting the trade migration nexus evidence from new oecd data international migrants contribute to bilateral trade creation if their presence reduces information costs or entails additional demand for goods from their source countries using new data on stocks of foreign born individuals by skill class we try to separately quantify those two channels we assume that improved information affects host countries imports and exports symmetrically while the preference channel matters for imports only on average for differentiated goods both channels contribute evenly toward the total trade creating effect of migration in line with expectations the relative importance of the trade cost channel is largest for homogeneous goods and for high skilled migrants

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

border effects and the availability of domestic products abroad trade between countries could fall short of trade within a country because 1 the volume of international trade is less than the volume of domestic trade for a given product the intensive margin or 2 some goods that are sold domestically are simply not exported the extensive margin my theoretical model illustrates that either of these two factors could explain a given aggregate border effect i examine the empirical relevance of this distinction by isolating the fraction of total domestic production attributable only to exporters finding that around one half of the border effect may be attributed to each explanation jel classification f1 les effets de frontieres et la disponibilite de produits domestiques a l etranger le commerce entre pays peut etre moindre que le commerce a l interieur d un pays parce que 1 le volume de commerce international est moindre que le volume du commerce interieur pour un produit donne la marge intensive ou 2 certains biens qui sont vendus a l interieur d un pays ne sont tout simplement pas exportes la marge extensive un modele theorique montre que l un et l autre de ces facteurs pourraient expliquer un certain effet de frontiere au niveau agrege on montre l importance empirique de cette distinction en isolant la fraction de la production interieure totale attribuable strictement aux exportateurs et il s avere qu a peu pres la moitie de l effet de frontiere est attribuable a chacune des deux explications

industrial districts old wine in new bottles harrison b 1992 industrial districts old wine in new bottles reg studies 26 469 483 according to the theory of industrial districts a new wave of economic growth is being led in a number of regions in europe north america and east asia by spatially concentrated networks of mostly small and medium sized enterprises often using flexible production technology and characterized by extensive local interfirm linkages does this amount to a re emergence of the dominance of what urban and regional economists call agglomeration economies over the well known pressures on business to spatially disperse its operations neoclassical economic theorizing from marshall to perroux provides one perspective on the contemporary industrial district phenomenon another is afforded by granovetter s more recent elaboration of the ideas of embedding under and over socialization confronting each of these theoretical approaches with the other leads me to conclude that the industrial district prototypes involv

immigration and trade creation econometric evidence from canada immigrants may expand trade with their country of origin owing to superior knowledge of or preferential access to market opportunities the authors test this proposition using canadian trade data with 136 partners from 1980 to 1992 in an augmented gravity equation they find that a 10 percent increase in immigrants is associated with a 1 percent increase in canadian exports to the immigrant s home country and a 3 percent increase in imports they also find that among the primary categories of immigrants independents have the greater influence on trade immigration via the entrepreneur class appears to have less impact on trade than all other classes except refugees

the effect of the expansion of the voting franchise on the size of government this paper examines the claim that expansion of the voting franchise has been an important factor in the growth of government state government spending and state and local spending are explained using a panel of 46 states for 1950 88 elimination of poll taxes and literacy tests led to higher turnout particularly among the poor and a poorer pivotal voter as predicted we find that these changes a fall in the income of voters relative to state income and the ouster of republicans from state government led to a sharp rise in welfare spending but no change in other spending

intra national versus international trade in the european union why do national borders matter the first objective of this paper is to estimate border effects among european union countries in this context the specification of the gravity equation together with the choice of the distance measure are shown to be crucial for assessing the size of the border effect the second objective is to evaluate the determinants of the cross commodity variation in national border effects contrary to previous findings reported in the literature we show that trade barriers do provide an explanation in particular technical barriers to trade together with product specific information costs increase border effects whereas non tariff barriers are not significant our results further suggest that these barriers are not the only cause since the spatial clustering of firms is also found to matter

breaking the caste barrier intergenerational mobility in india we contrast the intergenerational mobility rates of the historically disadvantaged scheduled castes and tribes sc st in india with the rest of the workforce in terms of their education attainment occupation choices and wages using survey data from successive rounds of the national sample survey between 1983 and 2005 we find that intergenerational education and income mobility rates of sc sts have converged to non sc st levels during this period moreover sc sts have matched non sc sts in occupation mobility rates we conclude that the last 20 years of structural changes in india have coincided with a breaking down of caste based barriers to socioeconomic mobility

has democratization reduced infant mortality in sub saharan africa evidence from micro data does democracy help babies survive in sub saharan africa by using retrospective fertility surveys conducted in 28 african countries i compare the survival of infants born to the same mother before and after democratization to disentangle the effect of democracy from that of changes in population characteristics which is infeasible with country level statistics on infant mortality i find that infant mortality falls by 1 2 percentage points 12 of the sample mean after democratization in the post cold war period relevant aspects of democracy appear to be the combination of multiparty elections and leadership change

the impact of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition evidence from a natural experiment measuring the effect of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition is complicated because the stringency of ballot access regulations cannot be treated as being exogenous to candidates entry decisions this paper exploits the 1968 u s supreme court decision to strike down ohio s ballot access law as a natural experiment to overcome the endogeneity problem the evidence from difference in difference estimations suggests that the court s decision and the accompanying sharp decrease in ohio s petition requirements resulted in major parties facing a significant increase in competition from third party and independent candidates

tariff jumping dfi and export substitution japanese electronics firms in europe abstract analysis of micro data on japanese electronics firms establishes that the rapid increase in japanese manufacturing investments in the late 1980s has for a substantial part been induced by ec antidumping and other trade restricting measures targeting japanese firms evidence is found at the firm level that such tariff jumping investment has substituted for exports from japan on the other hand firms which invested in ec distribution activities acquired ec firms or produce components within a vertical keiretsu export relatively more to europe the latter finding suggests that subcontractor firms were able to expand components exports by supplying the european manufacturing plants of their parent firms

divided government fiscal institutions and budget deficits evidence from the states does partisan control of american state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels does divided control affect the government s ability to make hard decisions do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the american states from 1968 to 1987 we conclude that 1 aggregate state budget totals are driven by different factors under democrats and republicans the net result being that democrats target spending and taxes to higher shares of state level personal income 2 divided government is less able to react to revenue shocks that lead to budget deficits particularly where different parties control each chamber of the legislature and 3 unified party governments with restricted ability to carry deficits into the next fiscal year outside the south have sharper reactions to negative revenue shocks than those without restrictions

do parties matter for economic outcomes a regression discontinuity approach a long standing issue in political economics is to what extent party control makes a difference in determining fiscal and economics policies this question is very difficult to answer empirically because parties are not randomly selected to govern political entities this article uses a regression discontinuity design namely party control changes discontinuously at 50 of the vote share which can produce near experimental causal estimates of the effect of party control on economic outcomes the method is applied to a large panel data set from swedish local governments with a number of attractive features the results show that there is an economically significant party effect left wing governments spend and tax 2 3 more than right wing governments left wing governments also have 7 lower unemployment rates which is partly due to that left wing governments employ 4 more workers than right wing governments jel c21 d72 d78 h71 h72

the determinants of cross border equity flows abstract we explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross border equity flows between 14 countries 1989 1996 we show that a gravity model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs in which both information and the transaction technology play a role distance proxies some information costs and other variables explicitly represent information transmission an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors and the efficiency of transactions the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive once we control for the informational friction we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings

do politicians preferences correspond to those of the voters an investigation of political representation this paper investigates political representation by exploring the relationship between citizens preferences and the preferences of their elected representatives using swedish survey data the empirical analysis shows that voters and politicians have significantly different preferences for local welfare services implying that voters do not elect representatives with the same preferences as their own the results show that when comparing a politician of a certain age gender educational level and marital status with a voter with identical characteristics the politician still has preferences for a significantly higher level of spending on the locally provided services hence our results indicate that the representation of different socio economic groups does not necessarily lead to a larger degree of representation of these groups agendas moreover we find the observed difference to be largest for the least salient expenditure item we do however not find any evidence for differences in preferences between the two groups being associated with a decline in trust for politicians among voters

the politics of public good provision evidence from indian local governments this paper uses village and household survey data from south india to examine how political geography and politician identity impacts on public good provision we provide evidence that the nature of this relationship varies by type of public good for high spillover public goods residential proximity to elected representative matters in contrast for low spillover public goods sharing the politician s group identity is what matters jel d78 h40

inequality and personal income taxation the origins and effects of legislative malapportionment why does personal income taxation pit remain relatively low in many developing countries despite a period of democratic advancement and rapid economic growth this stylized fact is hard to reconcile with standard political economy models of taxation that expect democratic regimes to bring about redistribution in countries that suffer from high inequality this article argues that the details of political institutions are key to understand why pit remains low in many developing and unequal countries in particular we show how legislative malapportionment may prevent the use of personal income taxes as a major revenue source by skewing the distribution of political power across groups malapportionment is usually not exogenous but the result of design by those with political power at the transition or reform moment as such it depends on the structure of political and economic power in society based on a sample of more than 50 countries between 1990 and 2007 this article finds that a countries with

the political economy of the maoist conflict in india an empirical analysis we study the maoist naxalite conflict in india by constructing a comprehensive district level database combining conflict data from four different terrorism databases to socioeconomic and geography data from myriad sources using data on 360 districts for three time periods we find that land inequality and lower incomes are important factors behind the conflict exploiting the micro structure of the data we show that growth of incomes of scheduled tribes significantly decreases the intensity of the conflict finally we show that historical property rights institutions from colonial times that go back centuries affect present day conflict outcomes

the political economy of public goods some evidence from india we are interested in how public goods get allocated by a centralized state we use data on public goods and social structure from parliamentary constituencies in rural india to understand the allocation of these goods over the 1970s and 1980s national policies and political agendas during this period emphasized universal access to basic amenities and financed a rapid expansion in rural infrastructure we find evidence of considerable equalization in many of these facilities reflecting perhaps the importance of these commitments among the historically disadvantaged social groups those that mobilized themselves politically gained relative to the others measures of social heterogeneity that have been emphasized in the recent empirical literature on public goods are relevant but not overwhelming in their importance

immigrant links to the home country empirical implications for u s bilateral trade flows immigrants ties to their home countries can play a key role in fostering bilateral trade linkages immigrant ties include knowledge of home country markets language preferences and business contacts that have the potential to decrease trading transaction costs empirical results for the united states suggest that immigrant links have historically been important in increasing bilateral trade flows with immigrants home countries copyright 1994 by mit press

can mandated political representation increase policy influence for disadvantaged minorities theory and evidence from india accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities this paper exploits the institutional features of political reservation as practiced in indian states to examine the role of mandated political representation in providing disadvantaged groups influence over policy making ifind that political reservation has increased transfers to groups which benefit from the mandate this finding also suggests that complete policy commitment may be absent in democracies as is found in this case jel d72 d78 hl 1 h50

village elections public goods investments and pork barrel politics chinese style a key issue in political economy concerns the accountability that governance structures impose on public officials and how elections and representative democracy influence the allocation of public resources in this paper we utilise a unique set of survey data set from nearly 2450 randomly selected villages describing china s recent progress in village governance reforms and its relationship to the provision of public goods in rural china between 1998 and 2004 two sets of questions are investigated using an empirical framework based on a theoretical model in which local governments must decide to allocate fiscal resources between public goods investments and other expenditures the empirical analysis both in the descriptive and econometric analyses suggests that when the village leader is elected directly ceteris paribus the provision of public goods rises compared to when the leader is not elected directly by villagers thus in this way it is possible to conclude that democratisation at least at the village level in rural china appears to increase the quantity of public goods investment second we seek to understand the mechanism that is driving the results also based on the survey data we find that when village leaders who had been directly elected were able to implement more public projects during their terms of office they as the incumbent were more likely to be re elected in this way we argue that the link between elections and investment may be a rural china version of pork barrel politics

mobility and redistribution the ability of individuals to move freely from one jurisdiction to another is generally seen as a constraint on the amount of redistribution that each jurisdiction within a system of governments can undertake in this paper we look at this proposition by developing a positive analysis of income redistribution by local governments in a federal system we ask how much redistribution occurs when only local governments can have tax transfer instruments individuals can move freely among jurisdictions and voters in each jurisdiction are fully aware of the migration effects of redistributive policies local redistribution is shown to induce sorting of the population with the poorest households located in the communities that provide the most redistribution while the threat of out migration affects the potential for redistribution our results suggest that significant local redistribution is nonetheless feasible numerical computations indicate that the proportion of residents who are renters is a major factor affecting the local choice of level of redistribution

electoral rules and political selection theory and evidence from a field experiment in afghanistan voters commonly face a choice between competent candidates and those with policy preferences similar to their own this article explores how electoral rules such as district magnitude mediate this trade off and affect the composition of representative bodies and the quality of policy outcomes we show formally that anticipation of bargaining over policy causes voters in elections with multiple single member districts to prefer candidates with polarized policy positions over more competent candidates results from a unique field experiment in afghanistan are consistent with these predictions specifically representatives selected by elections with a single multi member district are better educated and exhibit less extreme policy preferences

who becomes a politician can a democracy attract competent leaders while attaining broad representation economicmodels suggest that free riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative

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

a natural experiment on discrimination in elections abstract we exploit a natural experiment to study discrimination in elections in illinois republican presidential primaries voters vote for delegates bound to presidential candidates but delegates names convey information about their race and gender we identify discrimination from variation in vote totals among delegates bound to the same presidential candidate and who face the same voters examining delegate vote totals from 2000 to 2016 we estimate nonwhite delegates receive 9 fewer votes we find essentially no gender discrimination negligible incentives for statistical discrimination costs to preferred presidential candidates and heterogeneity are consistent with an interpretation of this behavior as taste based

why have women become left wing the political gender gap and the decline in marriage the last three decades have witnessed the rise of a pohtical gender gap in the united states wherein more women than men favor the democratic party we trace this development to the decline in marriage which we posit has made men richer and women poorer data for the united states support this argument first there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the political gender gap higher divorce prevalence reduces support for the democrats among men but not women second longitudinal data show that following marriage divorce women are less more likely to support the democratic party

choosing the form of government theory and evidence from brazil this article proposes a model to study the main factors that influence the preferences of different population groups between presidential and parliamentary systems ceteris paribus the poor groups in the population tend to prefer a presidential system relatively more than the rich as the lower quality of their local accountability institutions e g local media and judicial courts makes them more vulnerable to the expropriation of rents by their legislators the model is able to account for the main stylised facts emerging from an analysis of referendum data from brazil

demystifying the role of culture in innovative regional economies james a 2005 demystifying the role of culture in innovative regional economies regional studies 39 1197 1216 within the regional learning and innovation literature the precise impact of regional culture on firms competitive performance remains unspecified in response this paper draws on research on utah s high tech industrial agglomeration embedded in a highly visible regional culture mormonism focusing specifically on computer software firms the paper first shows how the cultural embeddedness of firms in the region is best understood as a series of sustained tensions between 1 self identified regional cultural traits imported into the firm versus 2 key elements of corporate cultures known to underpin innovation second the paper measures the material impact of that regional cultural embedding on firms innovative capacities and hence abilities to compete finally it outlines the wider relevance of the author s work with regard to the spatial limits imposed on high tech cluster po

incomplete social contracts there is a long normative social contract tradition that attempts to characterize ex post income inequalities that are agreeable to all behind a veil of ignorance this paper takes a similar normative approach to characterize social decision making procedures it is shown that quite generally some form of majority voting is preferred to unanimity behind a veil of ignorance whenever society faces deadweight costs in making compensating transfers deviations from unanimity or ex post pareto optimality are ex ante efficient to the extent that they economize on costly compensating transfers put another way the optimal decision rule trades off the benefits of minority protection and those from greater flexibility jel h11 g33 g34 d63 p16 p48

reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan conducted between 2005 and 2009 in sierra leone the study observed the impact of pre analysis plan pap on local institutions by imposing participation requirements for marginalized groups including women and test for learning by doing effects in sierra leone on the individual and village level requiring women and young adults to take on leadership positions participate in project meetings and sign off on project finances does not have any persistent effect on their participation in local decision making or attitudes regarding leadership ability the project successfully established village organizations and tools to manage the project the distributions of the project s benefits were equitable and leakage was minimal there was a significant positive impact on the stock and quality of local public infrastructure however there are no detectible changes in the ability to raise funds for local public goods decision making process or social norms and attitudes funding for the study derived from the gobifo project the institutional reform and capacity building project ircbp the world bank development impact evaluation dime the horace w goldsmith foundation the international growth center 3ie and the national bureau of economic research nber african successes project

do elected leaders in a limited democracy have real power evidence from rural china abstract do elected leaders in an authoritarian regime have any real power does grassroots democracy in a one party state entail parochial problems making use of primary survey data covering two election cycles in a mountainous area of china where an administrative village consists of several natural villages nvs we find that elected village heads favor their home nvs in resource allocations especially when these nvs have a large population in contrast the home nvs of appointed communist party secretaries do not receive disproportionately more resources on average this pattern of resource allocation is compatible with the interest of village heads and suggests that as elected leaders village heads have some true power in resource distribution

does political competition lessen ethnic discrimination evidence from sri lanka abstract the impact of political competition on ethnic discrimination remains largely unexplored to address this gap this paper explores the relationship between the level of political competition and the probability of receiving government transfers among ethnic minorities in sri lanka in the run up to the national elections of 2000 the paper shows that making politicians dependent on the votes of members of ethnic groups other their own can encourage moderation in discriminatory practices towards ethnic minorities specifically we find that political competition positively influenced the distribution of government food stamps among sri lankan tamils who otherwise are less likely to receive food stamps relative to the sinhalese majority the negative impact of political competition on discrimination is higher when minorities form part of swing constituencies than when they form part of the base support for political parties lessons learnt here suggest that having built in incentives in the design of the electoral process for intergroup bargaining and cooperation in countries with ethnically heterogeneous societies can be an effective restraint on ethnic discrimination this is consistent with other research that considers political institutions to be a key lever for making ethnically divided societies more inclusive

economic reform voting and local political intervention evidence from india abstract this paper uses the indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how voters hurt by economic reforms respond regions more hurt by the tariff reform increased their support for both the party that initiated their suffering and parties with similar preferences in favor of poverty centric policies this response is surprisingly sophisticated where voters did not simply punish incumbents for negative income shocks and correctly discounted initial anti reform stances by opposition parties that later turned out to be false furthermore the strength of this voting response varied with both geography and local political incentives suggesting that the economic effects of reforms might vary substantially in large and decentralized democracies

endogeneity in count data models an application to demand for health care the generalized method of moments gmm estimation technique is discussed for count data models with endogenous regressors count data models can be specified with additive or multiplicative errors and it is shown that in general a set of instruments is not orthogonal to both error types simultaneous equations with a dependent count variable often do not have a reduced form which is a simple function of the instruments however a simultaneous model with a count and a binary variable can only be logically consistent when the system is triangular utilizing data from the british health and lifestyle survey 1991 1992 the gmm estimator is used in the estimation of a model explaining the number of visits to doctors with a self reported binary health index as a possible endogenous regressor if this regressor is truly endogenous one expects the pseudo likelihood estimate of its coefficient to be biased upwards indeed for the additive model the estimated coefficient of the binary health index decreases in value when the possible endogeneity of this regressor is taken into account further indication of endogeneity is given by the fact that the overidentifying restrictions are rejected in the multiplicative model but not in the additive model finally a model that includes predicted latent health instead of the binary health index is estimated in stages

does trade creation by social and business networks hold in services recent literature on the border effect has shown that the intensity of trade in goods is positively correlated with the migration stocks between any pair of countries regions the number of references for business networks is more limited but they are also related with a reduction on information costs in this article we investigate whether such a relation holds also for spanish domestic trade flows in consumer services to this end we use a gravity model rooted in the dixit stiglitz krugman theoretical framework and a unique data set on interregional trade flows for some of the main tourism service sectors namely accommodations and restaurants our industry specific analysis finds a large positive effect for restaurants but a more limited effect for accommodations forces driving the demand in each sector explain this result and suggest the idea that although social networks can act as a substitute of firms in some sectors at the same time they can enhance trade flows in other sectors we perform the

can gender quotas break down negative stereotypes evidence from changes in electoral rules abstract in this paper we analyze the effect of gender quotas on women s involvement in political activity by using a rich data set providing information on all italian local administrators who were elected from 1985 to 2007 gender quotas were introduced by law in italy in 1993 and were in force until 1995 because of the short period covered by the reform some municipalities never voted under the gender quota regime this allows us to identify a treatment and a control group and to estimate the effects of gender quotas by using a difference in differences estimation strategy our estimates show that women s representation in politics after the reform increased significantly more in municipalities that were affected by the reform than in municipalities that were not affected this result also holds true if we exclude from our analysis elections which took place during the period in which the reform was in force moreover the higher women s representation in gender quota municipalities is not related to the advantages that women who were elected during the reform have obtained from incumbency and does not seem to be driven by differences in temporal trends between southern and northern regions these findings suggest that affirmative actions can be of use in breaking down stereotypes against women

political jurisdictions in heterogeneous communities we investigate whether political jurisdictions form in response to the trade off between economies of scale and the costs of a heterogeneous population we consider heterogeneity in income race ethnicity and religion and we test the model using american school districts school attendance areas municipalities and special districts we find strong evidence of a trade off between economies of scale and racial heterogeneity we also find evidence of a trade off between economies of scale and income heterogeneity conversely we find little evidence that ethnic or religious heterogeneity shapes jurisdictions to clarify the direction of causality between heterogeneity and jurisdictions we exploit shocks to racial heterogeneity generated by the two world wars

segregation and the quality of government in a cross section of countries we provide a new compilation of data on ethnic linguistic and religious composition at the subnational level for a large number of countries using these data we measure segregation of groups within the country to overcome the endogeneity problem that arises because of mobility and endogenous in ternal borders we construct an instrument for segregation we find that more ethnically and lin guistically segregated countries i e those where groups live more spatially separately have a lower quality of government there is no relationship between religious segregation and governance trust is an important channel of influence it is lower in more segregated countries jel hi 1 h77 j15 017 z12 z13 racial and religious conflicts are often associated with poor politicoeconomic performance especially in developing countries economists have recently turned their attention to ethnolinguistic fractionalization as an explanation of differences in the pace of development starting with an influential paper by william easterly and ross levine 1997 since then many others have shown that fractionalization is negatively correlated with a host of policy outcomes and the quality of government 1 however many ethnically diverse countries the united states for instance are quite successful what makes different countries more or less capable of handling

dictators and oligarchs a dynamic theory of contested property rights in an economy with weak economic and political institutions the major institutional choices are made strategically by oligarchs and dictators the conventional wisdom presumes that as rent seeking is harmful for oligarchs themselves institutions such as enforcement of the property rights will emerge eventually we explicitly model a dynamic game between oligarchs and a dictator who can contain rent seeking the oligarchs choose either a weak dictator who can be overthrown by an individual oligarch or a strong dictator who can only be replaced via a consensus of oligarchs in equilibrium no dictator can commit to both i protecting the oligarchs property rights from the other oligarchs and ii not expropriating oligarchs himself we show that a weak dictator does not limit rent seeking a strong dictator does reduce rent seeking but also expropriates individual oligarchs we show that even though eliminating rent seeking is pareto optimal weak dictators do get appointed in equilibrium and rent seeking continues this outcome is especially likely when economic environment is highly volatile

networks and the disappearance of the intranational home bias abstract previous studies have shown that not only countries but also regions have a preference to trade within their administrative borders using unique trade flows data we also find a large home bias in spanish intranational trade however we show that this home bias tends to disappear once we take into account the higher density of social and business networks within regions than between regions we also find that the home bias does not disappear if intranational trade flows are measured in quantity rather than value this fact might explain why previous studies on other european countries still find an intranational home bias even when network effects are taken into account

how do senators vote disentangling the role of voter preferences party affiliation and senate ideology this paper develops a methodology for consistently estimating the relative weights in senator utility functions despite the fact that senator ideologies are unobserved the empirical results suggest that voter preferences are assigned only one quarter of the weight in senator utility functions the national party line also has some influence but the senator s own ideology is the primary determinant of roll call voting patterns these results cast doubt on the empirical relevance of the median voter theorem estimation of the model requires only roll call voting data making it widely applicable copyright 1996 by american economic association

legislative bargaining with reconsideration we present a dynamic model of legislative bargaining with an endogenously evolving default policy and a persistent agenda setter policy making proceeds until the agenda setter can no longer pass a new policy to replace an approved bill we prove existence and necessary conditions of pure strategy stationary equilibria for any finite policy space any number of players and any preference profile in equilibrium the value of proposal power is limited compared to the case that disallows reconsideration as voters are induced to protect each other s benefits to maintain their future bargaining positions the agenda setter in turn would prefer to limit his ability to reconsider the lack of commitment due to the possibility of reconsideration however enhances policy efficiency

regionalism in standards good or bad for trade regional agreements on standards have been largely ignored by economists and unconditionally blessed by multilateral trade rules the authors find theoretically and empirically that such agreements increase trade between participating countries but not necessarily with the rest of the world adopting a common standard in a region that is harmonization boosts exports of excluded industrial countries to the region but it reduces exports of excluded developing countries possibly because developing country firms are hurt more by an increase in the stringency of standards and benefit less from economies of scale in integrated markets mutual recognition agreements are more uniformly trade promoting unless they contain restrictive rules of origin in which case intra regional trade increases at the expense of trade with other especially developing countries the authors propose a modification of international trade rules to strike a better balance between the interests of integrating and excluded countries

women in politics evidence from the indian states abstract this paper uses panel data from the 16 larger states in india during the period 1967 2000 to study the effects of female political representation in the state legislatures on public goods policy and expenditure it finds that politicians gender affects policy but that their social position i e their caste should be taken into account as well female legislators in seats reserved for lower castes and disadvantaged tribes invest more in health and early education and favor women friendly laws such as amendments to the hindu succession act which was designed to give women the same inheritance rights as men they also favor redistributive policies such as land reforms in contrast female legislators from higher castes do not have any impact on women friendly laws oppose land reforms invest in higher tiers of education and reduce social expenditure the causal effect of female legislators is estimated using close elections between women and men

cultural distance and the us immigrant trade link using data from the world and the european values surveys we calculate cultural distances between the us and 54 immigrant home countries and examine the influences of cultural distance and immigrant populations on us imports from and exports to immigrants home countries during the years 1997 2004 our study indicates that for both us imports and exports the trade enhancing effect of immigrants partially offsets the trade inhibiting effect of cultural distance further decomposing our measure of cultural distance into two component dimensions and revisiting the immigrant trade relationship we find significant variation in the extent to which immigrants counter the trade inhibiting influences of the underlying dimensions of culture for both us imports and exports our findings have the implication that by countering the trade inhibiting influences of cultural differences between their home and host countries immigrants exert pro development effects

growing firms and the credit constraint restricted access to finance either debt or equity or both is potentially a significant constraint on the growth of small businesses financing problems arise primarily as a consequence of information asymmetries the adverse effects of these may in part be counteracted by the use of collateral as a signalling and bonding mechanism and or by the development of a good working relationship between lender and borrower if the form of information asymmetry differs for growth firms or if the effects of information asymmetries are less easily ameliorated then growing firms may be more adversely affected by credit constraints if growth is contingent upon access to credit then the generalised implications for the economy may be significant and detrimental using evidence from a survery of over 6 000 firms conducted in 1992 this paper addresses the extent to which growth firms are adversely affected by a credit constraint the results suggest that the credit constraint for growing firms per se is no greater but growth firms may still experience a credit constraint as a consequence of their relative youth however there is evidence to suggest that firms expecting to grow in the future do perceive a rather tighter credit constraint but this may be partly or wholly offset by a generally better relationship with their bank

electoral rules and minority representation in u s cities of minority representation majorities tend to disenfranchise minorities through strategic manipulation of electoral rules with the aim of explaining changes in electoral rules adopted by u s cities particularly in the south we show why majorities tend to adopt winner take all city wide rules at large elections in response to an increase in the size of the minority when the minority they are facing is relatively small in this case for the majority it is more effective to leverage on its sheer size instead of risking conceding representation to voters from minority elected districts however as the minority becomes larger closer to a fifty fifty split the possibility of losing the whole city induces the majority to prefer minority votes to be confined in minority packed districts single member district rules serve this purpose we show empirical results consistent with these implications of the model in a novel data set covering u s cities and towns from 1930 to 2000

a model of political competition with citizen candidates the authors develop a model of electoral competition in which citizens choose whether or not to run as candidates a winner implements her favorite policy the equilibrium number of candidates depends negatively on the cost of running and positively on the benefits of winning for some parameter values all equilibria under plurality rule have exactly two candidates whose positions are distinct two candidate elections are more likely under plurality rule than under a runoff system the candidates positions are less differentiated under a runoff system there exist equilibria under both systems in which some candidates have no chance of winning

representation in municipal government municipal governments play a vital role in american democracy as well as in governments around the world despite this little is known about the degree to which cities are responsive to the views of their citizens in the past the unavailability of data on the policy preferences of citizens at the municipal level has limited scholars ability to study the responsiveness of municipal government we overcome this problem by using recent advances in opinion estimation to measure the mean policy conservatism in every u s city and town with a population above 20 000 people despite the supposition in the literature that municipal politics are non ideological we find that the policies enacted by cities across a range of policy areas correspond with the liberal conservative positions of their citizens on national policy issues in addition we consider the influence of institutions such as the presence of an elected mayor the popular initiative partisan elections term limits and at large elections our results show that these institutions have little consistent impact on policy responsiveness in municipal government these results demonstrate a robust role for citizen policy preferences in determining municipal policy outcomes but cast doubt on the hypothesis that simple institutional reforms enhance responsiveness in municipal governments

valuing the vote the redistribution of voting rights and state funds following the voting rights act of 1965 the voting rights act of 1965 called one of the most effective pieces of civil rights legislation in u s history generated dramatic increases in black voter registration across the south we ask whether the increase in black voting rights was accompanied by an increase in blacks share of public spending we exploit a key provision of the act removal of literacy tests at registration for identification employing a triple difference framework over a 20 year period we find that counties with higher black population shares in former literacy test states saw greater increases in both voter turnout and state transfers than comparison counties in non literacy test states a finding that is consistent with models of distributive politics jel codes d72 h7 i2 j15 n32 copyright 2014 oxford university press