pareto improving campaign finance policy this paper argues that campaign finance policy in the form of contribution limits and matching public financing can be pareto improving even under very optimistic assumptions concerning the role of campaign advertising and the rationality of voters the optimistic assumptions are that candidates use campaign contributions to convey truthful information to voters about their qualifications for office and that voters update their beliefs rationally on the basis of the information they have seen the argument also assumes that campaign contributions are provided by interest groups and that candidates can offer to provide policy favors to attract higher contributions

the two faces of janus institutions policy regimes and macroeconomic performance in greece greece the two faces of janus institutions policy regimes and macroeconomic performance the clear change in policy regime in greece around 1974 offers an opportunity to assess the extent to which economic performance depends on institutional underpinning for twenty years up to 1974 greece enjoyed rapid growth high investment and low inflation during the next twenty years growth and investment collapsed and inflation became high and persistent i describe the political background to such clear institutional change and the nature of the two economic regimes the first providing coordination and commitment mechanisms to sustain adequate returns for high investment the second failing to do so the same change in political climate after 1974 raised public sector deficits and debt fuelling a trade deficit and monetary expansion entry to the ec did not cause the economic slowdown in greece but transfers from the ec did mask the underlying problem delaying necessary adjustment recent attempts to reverse greece s fortunes are in the right direction but as yet inadequate george alogoskoufis

common agency and coordination general theory and application to government policy making we develop a model of common agency with complete information and general preferences with nontransferable utility and we prove that the principals nash equilibrium in truthful strategies implements an efficient action we apply this theory to the construction of a positive model of public finance where organized special interests can lobby the government for consumer and producer taxes or subsidies and targeted lump sum taxes or transfers the lobbies use only the nondistorting transfers in their noncooperative equilibrium but their intergroup competition for transfers turns into a prisoners dilemma in which the government captures all the gain that is potentially available to the parties

comovement in international equity markets a sectoral view abstract we investigate shifts in correlation patterns among international equity returns at the market level as well as the industry level we develop a novel bivariate garch model for equity returns with a smoothly time varying correlation and then derive a lagrange multiplier statistic to test the constant correlation hypothesis directly applying the test to weekly data from germany japan the uk and the us in the period 1980 2000 we find that correlations among the german uk and us stock markets have doubled whereas japanese correlations have remained the same both dates of change and speeds of adjustment vary widely across countries and sectors

macroeconomic policy in a two party system as a repeated game this paper considers the interaction of two parties with different objectives concerning inflation and unemployment and rational and forward looking wage setters if discretionary policies are followed an economic cycle related to the political cycle results in equilibrium this cycle is significantly different from the traditional political business cycle reputational mechanisms due to the repeated interaction of the two parties and the public or commitments to a common policy rule can improve upon the discretionary outcome by reducing or eliminating the magnitude of the economic fluctuations

exchange rate volatility and intervention implications of the theory of optimum currency areas we show that variables pointed to by the theory of optimum currency areas ocas help to explain patterns of exchange rate variability and intervention across countries but oca considerations affect exchange market pressures and intervention in different ways exchange market pressures mainly reflect asymmetric shocks while intervention largely reflects the variables that oca theory suggests cause countries to value stable exchange rates small size and the extent of trade links intervention and exchange market pressure also vary with the structure of the international monetary system

evolution of international stock and bond market integration influence of the european monetary union abstract this paper examines the dynamic relationship between daily stock and government bond returns of selected countries over the past decade to infer the state and progress of inter financial market integration we proceed to empirically investigate the influence of the european monetary union emu on time variations in inter stock bond market integration segmentation dynamics using a two step procedure first we document the downward trends in time varying conditional correlations between stock and bond market returns in european countries japan and the us second we investigate the causality and determinants of this interdependent relationship in particular whether the various macroeconomic convergence criteria associated with the emu have played a significant role we find that real economic integration and the reduction in currency risk have generally had the desired effect on financial integration but monetary policy integration may have created uncertain investor sentiments on the economic future of the emu thereby stimulating a flight to quality phenomenon

asymmetric increasing trends in dependence in international equity markets abstract this paper investigates asymmetric increasing trends in dependence in major international equity markets to this end we develop a multiple regime smooth transition copula garch model and address several important questions including the number of regimes and the existence of increasing asymmetric trends in dependence our results suggest that two or three regimes are sufficient for describing the dependence trends in international equity markets over the last 35 years with significant asymmetric increases in addition the implied time series of three dependence measures show a wide variety of dynamics demonstrating the usefulness of our framework to describe asymmetric increasing dependence trends finally we evaluate the economic significance of our empirical finding based on the 99 value at risk and expected shortfall our result indicates that both risk measures have increased approximately 20 over the last 35 years in major equity markets

a general equilibrium model of congressional voting in this paper we specify a model in which congressmen constituents and campaign contributors simultaneously decide on behavior constituents and contributors desire to influence the voting behavior of congressmen congressmen on the other hand want to be elected and vote accordingly we empirically test this model using roll call voting on eight bills dealing with economic regulation and find support for the model our results indicate that part of the voting behavior of congressmen may be explained by noneconomic factors we also find that unions and businesses as campaign contributors are sometimes influential unions are more often influential than is business ideological factors are also important in explaining voting

price dynamics among u s electricity spot markets combining recent advances in causal flows with time series analysis relationships among 11 u s spot market electricity prices are examined results suggest that the relationships among the markets vary by time frame in contemporaneous time the western markets are separated from the eastern markets and the electricity reliability council of texas at longer time frames these separations disappear even though electricity transmission between the regions is limited it appears the relationships among markets are not only a function of physical assets such as transmissions lines among markets but by similar and dissimilar institutional arrangements among the markets

home bias in global bond and equity markets the role of real exchange rate volatility abstract this paper focuses on the role of real exchange rate volatility as a driver of portfolio home bias and in particular as an explanation for differences in home bias across financial assets we present a markowitz type portfolio selection model in which real exchange rate volatility induces a bias towards domestic financial assets as well as a stronger home bias for assets with low local currency return volatility we find empirical support in favour of this hypothesis for a broad set of industrialized and emerging market countries not only is real exchange rate volatility an important factor behind bilateral portfolio home bias but we find that a reduction of monthly real exchange rate volatility from its sample mean to zero reduces bond home bias by up to 60 percentage points while it reduces equity home bias by only 20 percentage points

party politics and the reemergence of social pacts in western europe conventional accounts of the reemergence of social pacts in western europe argue they are a governmental response to economic pressures in particular the requirements for joining the european monetary union emu the authors analyze three case studies the netherlands ireland and austria to illustrate the usefulness of an alternative explanation centering on electoral calculations by political parties in choosing pacts parties forge social pacts not only to deal with economic problems but also when they perceive them to be helpful in reducing the potential electoral costs of economic adjustment and wage policies alternatively parties may forgo negotiations with social partners for electoral gain the authors extend the analysis to seven additional countries to apply the analysis more broadly by combining the separate literatures on political economy and party politics they are able to shed new light on the dynamics of social pacts in western europe

returns synchronization and daily correlation dynamics between international stock markets the use of close to close returns underestimates returns correlation because international stock markets have different trading hours with the availability of 16 00 london time stock market series we find dynamics of daily correlation and covariance estimated using two non synchroneity adjustment procedures to be substantially different from their synchronous counterparts conditional correlation may have different signs depending on the model and data type used other findings include volatility spillover from the us to the uk and france and a reverse spillover which is not documented before also unlike previous findings we found the increase in daily correlation is prominent only under extremely adverse conditions when a large negative return has been registered

a model of political competition in the underlying space of ideology this study makes use of the concept of ideology to answerimportant questions of political competition i develop amulticandidate model in which voters use ideology as asimplifying device that helps them to choose a candidate in anoisy environment three important results arise for thehomogeneous polity case first the candidate with moreresources is the one more likely to win the election second a merger between two parties might yield to a higher expectedplurality for the candidate of the newly formed party third political convulsion yields to a decrease in the expectedplurality for the incumbent candidate

explaining international stock correlations with cpi fluctuations and market volatility this paper investigates the dynamic correlations among six international stock market indices and their relationship to inflation fluctuation and market volatility the current research uses a newly developed time series model the double smooth transition conditional correlation with conditional auto regressive range dstcc carr model findings reveal that international stock correlations are significantly time varying and the evolution among them is related to cyclical fluctuations of inflation rates and stock volatility the higher lower correlations emerge between countries when both countries experience a contractionary expansionary phase or higher lower volatilities

reassessing the integration of european electricity markets a fractional cointegration analysis this study extends existing literature on the assessment of electricity market integration in europe by developing and testing hypotheses on the convergence of electricity wholesale prices and adopting a time varying fractional cointegration analysis in addition the potential impacts of some special events that may affect system capacity new interconnection market coupling increase in share of intermittent generation on spot and forward markets are considered and evaluated daily spot prices from february 2000 to march 2013 of nine european electricity spot markets apx uk apx nl belpex epex fr epex de ipex nordpool omel and ote and month ahead prices in four markets french british german and dutch from november 2007 to december 2012 are investigated results show that unit root tests which are generally used in the literature to test market integration are inadequate for assessing electricity spot market convergence because spot prices are found to be fractionally integrated and mean reverting time series furthermore spot price behaviour and their association with different markets change over time reflecting changes in the eu electrical system one month ahead prices by contrast were found to have become more resilient to shocks and to follow more stable trends

trade and price variation in an integrated european power market this paper examines the potential gains in terms of increased social surplus from integrating the power markets in europe and assesses the scope for free seasonal and diurnal trade in a setting of third party access tpa we construct an equilibrium model at the level of the wholesale markets taking account of the existing power generating infrastructure of varying flexibility as well as the existing transmission network interconnecting the countries involved the model indicates an overall gain from integrating the power markets electricity prices are substantially reduced for all regions involved thus implying a significant redistribution of income from producers to consumers trade flourishes with regions establishing themselves as either pure exporters pure importers or as intermediaries acting as transit countries

long run relations in european electricity prices this paper analyses the interdependencies existing in wholesale electricity prices in six major european countries the results of a robust multivariate long run dynamic analysis reveal the presence of four highly integrated central european markets france germany the netherlands and austria the trend shared by these four electricity markets appears to be common also to gas prices but not to oil prices the existence of a common long term dynamics among electricity prices and between electricity prices and gas prices can be explained by the similarity of the market design across europe and by the same marginal generation technology since standard unit root and cointegration tests are not robust to the peculiar characteristics of electricity prices time series we also develop a battery of robust inference procedures that should assure the reliability of our results copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

the copula garch model of conditional dependencies an international stock market application abstract modeling the dependency between stock market returns is a difficult task when returns follow a complicated dynamics when returns are non normal it is often simply impossible to specify the multivariate distribution relating two or more return series in this context we propose a new methodology based on copula functions which consists in estimating first the univariate distributions and then the joining distribution in such a context the dependency parameter can easily be rendered conditional and time varying we apply this methodology to the daily returns of four major stock markets our results suggest that conditional dependency depends on past realizations for european market pairs only for these markets dependency is found to be more widely affected when returns move in the same direction than when they move in opposite directions modeling the dynamics of the dependency parameter also suggests that dependency is higher and more persistent between european stock markets

emu and european government bond market integration in this study we adopt the capm based model of bekaert and harvey 1995 to compare the differences in the relative importance of two sources of systemic risk world and eurozone on government bond returns in two groups of countries in eu 15 results show that euro markets are less vulnerable to the influence of world risk factors and more vulnerable to emu risk factors however they are only partially integrated for their part the markets of the countries that decided to stay out of the monetary union present a higher vulnerability to external risk factors

how do experts forecast sovereign spreads this paper assesses how forecasting experts form their expectations about future government bond spreads using monthly survey forecasts for france italy and the united kingdom between january 1993 and october 2014 we test whether respondents consider the expected evolution of the fiscal balance and other economic fundamentals to be significant drivers of the expected bond yield differential over a benchmark german 10 year bond our main result is that a projected improvement of the fiscal outlook significantly reduces expected sovereign spreads this suggests that credible fiscal plans affect market experts expectations and reduce the pressure on sovereign bond markets in addition we show that expected fundamentals generally play a more important role in explaining forecasted spreads compared to realized spreads

dynamics of persistence in international inflation rates characteristics of inflation play a key role in policy formulation and market analysis several studies have analyzed inflation persistence and reached diverging conclusions in this paper we investigate the dynamics of inflation persistence using fractionally integrated processes and find that there has been a clear decline in inflation persistence in the united states over the past two decades we also show that the presence of fractional integration in inflation successfully explains previous diverging results lastly we provide some international comparisons to examine the extent to which there has been a commensurate decline in inflation persistence in the other g7 economies

the political economy of social democratic economic policies the pasok experiment in greece this article looks at the political economy of social democratic economic policies it focuses on those policies that seek to extend democracy to the social and economic spheres and examines why such experiments have met with limited success in the past it compares external constraints on the viability of such policies such as the freedom of capital movements and globalization with internal constraints since social democratic policies rely on promoting coordination and cooperation between economic agents and groups it is argued that an important but often neglected internal constraint is the extent to which social democracy can draw upon or if they are lacking foster those institutions within society which promote coordination and cooperation the paper examines in detail the social democratic experience of pasok in greece and draws some conclusions for the wider relevance of the future viability of social democratic economic policies copyright 1998 by oxford university press

how does liquidity affect government bond yields the paper explores the determinants of yield differentials between sovereign bonds using euro area data there is a common trend in yield differentials which is correlated with a measure of aggregate risk in contrast liquidity differentials display sizeable heterogeneity and no common factor we propose a simple model with endogenous liquidity demand where a bond s liquidity premium depends both on its transaction cost and on investment opportunities the model predicts that yield differentials should increase in both liquidity and risk with an interaction term of the opposite sign testing these predictions on daily data we find that the aggregate risk factor is consistently priced liquidity differentials are priced for a subset of countries and their interaction with the risk factor is in line with the model s prediction and crucial to detect their effect

interest groups campaign contributions and probabilistic voting this essay develops a simple model to analyze the impact of campaign contributions on electoral policy decisions of candidates for office interest groups here are firms that select contributions under the assumption that candidates policies and opposing groups donations remain unaltered candidates however recognize that their policy choices affect contributions campaign contributions are used by candidates to affect policy oriented voters perceptions of candidates positions in this framework the introduction of campaign contributions may affect candidates electoral policies and if they do then they benefit surely exactly one of the two interest groups

trends in stock bond correlations abstractprevious studies document the existence of long run trends in comovements in the stock and bond markets following these findings this article examines possible trends in stock bond return correlations to this end we introduce a trend component into a smooth transition regression str model including the multiple transition variables of aslanidis and christiansen 2012 the results indicate the existence of significant decreasing trends in stock bond correlations for many advanced safer countries in addition although stock market volatility continues to be an important factor in stock bond correlations the short rate and yield spread become only marginally significant once we introduce the trend component our out of sample analysis also demonstrates that the str model including the volatility index and time trend as the transition variables dominates other models furthermore we find a significant increase in stock bond correlations for riskier euro countries around the beginning of th

emu and european stock market integration the launch of the single currency in europe in january 1999 was preceded by a period of regulatory harmonization convergence in bond yields and inflation rates and strict fiscal policy across the eurozone countries we examine whether the 1990s also were characterized by increased stock market integration the results indicate that as forward interest differentials benchmarked against germany and inflation differentials benchmarked against the three best performing states shrank toward zero stock markets converged toward full integration the united kingdom a country that chose not to enter the eurozone shows no such increase in stock market integration

dynamics of international integration of government securities markets abstract this paper investigates the dynamics of international government bond market integration in six of the g7 economies over two decades leading up to the global crisis it examines whether such integration had been significant the extent to which integration at the short and long end of the yield curve differed the nature of such integration and the extent of the decoupling of the long rates from short rates these issues are investigated using the rigorous smooth transition copula garch model framework the results show that integration at the long end of the yield curve had been increasing had become pronounced and was significantly greater than at the short end decoupling between the short and long end of the yield curve was notable with important implications for the efficacy of monetary policy in the period before the crisis

campaign contributions as a commitment device we explore the idea that the influence of interest groups in elections may have positive economic effects since the investment decisions of firms determine economic growth and employment voters have a common interest in making their governments commit to policies that encourage private investments however governments may renege on promises for economic stability and choose excessively leftist policies campaign contributions by firms tend to restrain the scope for such opportunism and provide a commitment device this is achieved if firms after the policy is chosen contribute to the governing party or to its rivals

informative and persuasive campaigning in this paper we use a simple downsian spatial model to analyze the properties of campaign contributions we first consider campaign contributions that are intended to inform voters of candidate positions we show that it is difficult to construct arguments in a downsian spatial model for why some voters would choose to contribute to a candidateand the candidate would want to spend the money contributed to inform voters of his position we then define persuasive campaign expenditures as those that are intended to convince an individual to vote for a candidate regardless of the candidate s position on issues in the presence of persuasive campaign expenditures some voters have an incentive to contribute to one or both candidates and the candidates have an incentive to spend the money we show why the nature of persuasive campaign expenditures may explain both their growth in recent years and the increasing advantage of incumbency

the structure of class conflict in democratic capitalist societies the article presents a theory of class conflict between workers and capitalists who pursue their material interests under a form of societal organization that combines private ownership of instruments of production with representative political institutions there exist economic and political conditions under which both classes would simultaneously choose courses of action that constitute a class compromise workers consent to the institution of profit and capitalists to democratic institutions through which workers can effectively press claims for material gains when these conditions hold and a compromise is in force the role of the state consists in institutionalizing coordinating and enforcing the terms of a compromise that represents the preferences of workers as well as capitalists the combination of private ownership of the instruments of production with representative political institutions based on widespread suffrage constitutes a compromise between workers who consent to the private appropriation of profit by owners of capital and capitalists who accept the democratic institutions through which workers can make effective claims for an improvement of their material conditions this form of societal organization was con

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

structural dependence of the state on capital a central claim of both marxist and neoclassical political theory is that under capitalism all governments must respect and protect the essential claims of those who own the productive wealth of society this is the theory of structural dependence of the state on capital using a formal model the internal logic and the robustness of the theory is examined we conclude that in a static sense the theory is false virtually any distribution of consumption between wage earners and owners of capital is compatible with continual private investment once an appropriate set of taxes and transfers is in place yet the state may be structurally dependent in a dynamic sense policies that once in place redistribute income without reducing investment do reduce investment during the period in which they are anticipated but not yet implemented

simulating power integration in latin america to assess challenges opportunities and threats abstract integration of electricity markets started to spread under the world wide trend to economic liberalization while some regions are managing better than others lessons both political and technical highlight challenges ahead that need to be overcome since the early 2000s panama colombia ecuador and peru have decided to integrate their electricity markets eventually creating an enormous latin american electricity exchange ranging from mexico to chile this poses opportunities and threats to the region as it involves cooperation trust and the will to overcome difficulties that may arise in this direction we developed a system dynamics model linked to an iterative algorithm to assess the likely effects of integration on both system expansion and security of supply the model helps us understand the logic of the long term system behavior under different policies assuming market coupling as the dispatch mechanism based on theoretical grounds and after analyzing simulation results under different scenarios we conclude that the integration of electricity markets may render important opportunities regarding security of supply and efficiency and consequently energy might be supplied at lower prices using cleaner technologies however benefits largely depend on policy regulation and technical issues

legislators and interest groups how unorganized interests get represented this paper derives a supply price for public policy using a constrained maximization model in the model three sets of agents each have preferences over outcomes organized interest groups offer campaign contributions to improve their own wealth voters offer votes to obtain outcomes closer to their most preferred outcomes and legislators seek both campaign contributions and votes to obtain reelection a given legislator s supply price for policy is shown to depend on the productivity of his effort as determined by committee assignments priority and ability and by the preferences of his unorganized constituency in the home district two extreme assumptions about the effectiveness of campaign spending in eliciting votes are used to illustrate the comparative statics properties of the model the prediction of the model is that interest groups will in general seek out legislators whose voters are indifferent to the policy the interest group seeks thus voters who do have preferences over policy are in effect represented even though they are not organized

policy watch congressional campaign finance reform while campaign finance reform attracts a lot of attention it seems unlikely that such reform at least in it current guise will have a large impact on the functioning of the american political system recent studies have called into question the conventional wisdom that challenger campaign spending is especially effective suggesting that attempts to close the gap between incumbent and challenger spending will have a smaller than expected impact on election outcomes while it is safe to conclude that pacs wield some influence it is not clear that limiting cash contributions will have a substantial effect

deregulation of the nordic power market and environmental policy abstract a common nordic power market will reduce total co 2 emissions in the nordic countries as compared to a situation of autarky and thus reduce the aggregate cost of complying to strict national co 2 emission targets a common market for co 2 emission permits may reduce the aggregate cost further but this cost reduction will be smaller the harsher the co 2 emission constraints are the economic gain of introducing a common nordic power market will be particularly large in the case of a swedish nuclear power phase out in this case the cost reduction of introducing a common market for co 2 emission permits will not be very large