two party competition with persistent policies abstract when campaigning for reelection incumbent parties promises to voters are constrained by their records in office while opposition parties can use their time away from power to develop new platforms in this paper i introduce incumbent policy persistence in a dynamic game of electoral competition between two policy motivated parties and characterise the long run outcomes of its markov perfect equilibria incumbents reduced policy flexibility leads to alternation in power and policy dynamics that converge to alternations at policies equally preferred by the median voter convergence of policies towards the median is a robust equilibrium outcome while convergence to the median is not while alternations far from the median are never limits of equilibrium dynamics alternations close to the median can be reached only if policy dynamics start exactly there i show that these results are robust to voters being forward looking and to limited policy commitment by parties

the role of technology in industrial change implications for regional policy rothwell r 1982 the role of technology in industrial change implications for regional policy reg studies 16 361 9 this paper discusses the factors underlying the current world economic crisis it presents data suggesting that since 1945 certain structural changes have taken place between manufacturing output and employment which correspond to the upswing prosperity and downswing periods of the 4th kondratiev long wave while a confluence of factors is required to trigger a kondratiev upswing the main enabling condition is seen to be new technology a currently emerging bunch of new techno economic capabilities will force the world economy into the 5th kondratiev upswing during this period a preferred vehicle for regional regeneration will be the technology based new small firms this implies the need for regional innovation policies and the establishment of a regional innovation infrastructure

candidate reputations and the incumbency effect abstract a major shortcoming of the classical median voter model is that its central prediction convergence of platforms to the median voter s ideal is seldom observed one reason is that the classical model neglects the importance of voter expectations as a determinant of votes here we associate voters expectations about candidates with past as well as current candidate pronouncements and assume that incumbents whose actions are consistent with their reputations are perceived as less risky than challengers in equilibrium candidates choose distinct platforms typically neither adopts the median voter s ideal point either candidate may win depending on how well the incumbent s reputation reflects current voter tastes and how relatively risky the electorate perceives the challenger to be

party system institutionalization and government formation in new democracies party systems provide the essential structure of the coalition bargaining environment stability in party systems ensures the presence of regularities that can be observed in government formation but most empirical research focuses on established democracies in new democracies party systems are less institutionalized which means that interactions between parties can be unpredictable and has significant implications for coalition formation this article presents the first study of coalition formation in new democracies that employs an empirical design comparable to that of the leading research on western europe the author uses a new data set of potential coalitions in central and eastern europe to examine three explanations for government formation that arise when party systems are weakly institutionalized the results show first that incumbency is a disadvantage for governments in new democracies when formation occurs postelection this disadvantage is due to high levels of electoral volatility caused by policy failure and clientelistic practices incumbents are advantaged when formation takes place midterm as weak party system institutionalization leads to an inchoate pattern of interaction between opposition parties which therefore fail to provide a viable alternative second the presence of former dominant parties influences government formation by stifling the development of programmatic competition instead programmatic competition is subjugated to contestation based on historical enmities and third established parties collude to exclude new parties from coalition formation a possible indicator that a party system is becoming more institutionalized the article provides new insights into the importance of routinized and stable political practices and institutions

the glass ceiling in politics formalization and empirical tests there is a scarcity of women at the apex of political power as well as a lack of methods to disentangle the potential sources of this under representation this article suggests a four step method to test for whether women s under representation can be explained by the existence of a glass ceiling we emphasize that this concept implies discrimination in promotions within the political organization that the discriminatory promotions increase in severity at the top levels of power and that they increase in severity during an individual s career trajectory the proposed method is applied to subnational politics in sweden a long standing world leader in women s descriptive representation the results support the conjecture that a glass ceiling is hindering elected women s rise to political power in this context

incumbency advantages in the canadian parliament we apply a regression discontinuity approach to determine incumbency advantages in the canadian parliament finding that incumbents enjoy a 9 4 11 2 increased probability of winning over non incumbents owing to the presence of multiple parties an incumbency advantage in terms of vote share does not always translate to an increased probability of winning because incumbents do not necessarily obtain votes from their closest opponent also under the assumption that strategic exit is not an issue we are able to split the incumbency advantage into party incumbency and individual candidate incumbency components finding that the advantage is almost entirely due to the individual on utilise une approche par la methode de regression avec discontinuite pour determiner les avantages qu il y a aetre l elu en place dans les elections au parlement du canada on decouvre que les elus en place ont une probabilite de gagner de 9 4 a 11 2 de plus que leurs adversaires a cause de la presence de multiples partis politiques l avantage de l elu en place en termes de proportion du vote ne se traduit pas toujours par une probabilite accrue de gagner parce que les elus en place ne capturent pas necessairement les votes de leur plus proche adversaire de plus en presumant qu il ne s agit pas de sortie strategique on peut departager l avantage de l elu en place en composantes correspondant a l effet de parti et l effet de l individu on decouvre que l avantage est presque completement attribuable a l individu

is the japanese economy in a liquidity trap abstract a random coefficient estimation procedure is used to estimate the time profile of the interest rate elasticity of japanese money demand contrary to the prediction of the liquidity trap hypothesis the absolute value of the elasticity is found to decline at lower levels of interest rates

decentralisation and accountability in infrastructure delivery in developing countries many developing countries are experimenting with decentralisation of public service delivery to elected local governments instead of bureaucrats appointed by a central government we study the resulting implications in a theoretical model in which the central government is uninformed about local need and unable to monitor service allocations bureaucrats charge bribes for services as monopoly providers resulting in underprovision of services especially for the poor local governments are directly responsive to their citizens needs but may be subject to capture by elites effects of decentralisation on service volumes efficiency and equity are analysed under different financing arrangements for local governments the theme of the 2004 world development report is summarised by its opening paragraph too often services fail poor people in access in quantity in quality but the fact that there are strong examples where services do work means governments and citizens can do better how by putting poor people at the center of service provision by enabling them to monitor and discipline service providers by amplifying their voice in policymaking and by strengthening the incentives for providers to serve the poor problems of accountability associated with traditional modes of delivery involving centralised bureaucracies include cost padding service diversion limited responsiveness to local needs limited access and high prices charged especially to the poor 1 many developing countries have thus begun to experiment with initiatives to increase accountability of service providers by providing greater control rights to citizen groups these include decentralisation of service delivery to local governments community participation direct transfers to households and contracting out delivery to private providers and ngos the programmes include a wide range of infrastructure services water sanitation electricity telecommunications roads and social services education health and welfare programmes countries where such trends have gathered

capture and governance at local and national levels 135 despite the importance of this issue not much systematic research appears to have been devoted to assessing the relative susceptibility of national and local governments to interestgroup capture here we describe a model of two party electoral competition with probabilistic voting behavior and lobbying by specialinterest groups based on david baron 1994 and gene grossman and elhanan helpman 1996 that helps identify determinants of relative capture at different levels of government these include relative levels of voter awareness and interest group cohesiveness electoral uncertainty electoral competition heterogeneity of districts with respect to inequality and the electoral system while some of these uphold the traditional madisonian presumption others are likely to create a tendency for lower capture at the local level so the net effect is theoretically ambiguous this suggests that the extent of relative capture may be context specific and needs to be assessed empirically

a statistical model for multiparty electoral data we propose an internally consistent and comprehensive statistical model for analyzing multiparty district level aggregate election data this model can be used to explain or predict how the geographic distribution of electoral results depends upon economic conditions neighborhood ethnic compositions campaign spending and other features of the election campaign or characteristics of the aggregate areas we also provide several new graphical representations for help in data exploration model evaluation and substantive interpretation although the model applies more generally we use it to help resolve an important controversy over the size of and trend in the electoral advantage of incumbency in great britain contrary to previous analyses which are all based on measures now known to be biased we demonstrate that the incumbency advantage is small but politically meaningful we also find that it differs substantially across the parties about half a percent for the conservatives 1 for the labor party and 3 for the liberal party and its successors also contrary to previous research we show that these effects have not grown in recent years finally we are able to estimate from which party each party s incumbency advantage is predominantly drawn

political selection and persistence of bad governments we study dynamic selection of governments under different political institutions with a special focus on institutional flexibility a government consists of a subset of the individuals in the society the competence level of the government in office determines collective utilities e g by determining the amount and quality of public goods and each individual derives additional utility from being part of the government e g rents from holding office we characterize the dynamic evolution of governments and determine the structure of stable governments which arise and persist in equilibrium in our model perfect democracy where current members of the government do not have veto power over changes in governments always leads to the emergence of the most competent government however any deviation from perfect democracy to any regime with incumbency veto power destroys this result there is always at least one other less competent government that is also stable and can persist forever and even the least competent government can persist forever in office we also show that there is a nonmonotonic relationship between the degree of incumbency veto power and the quality of government in contrast in the presence of stochastic shocks or changes in the environment a regime with less incumbency veto power has greater flexibility and greater probability that high competence governments will come to power this result suggests that a particular advantage of democratic regimes with a limited number of veto players may be their greater adaptability to changes rather than their performance under given conditions finally we show that royalty like dictatorships may be more successful than junta like dictatorships because in these regimes veto players are less afraid of change

a general framework for predicting returns from multiple currency investments abstract this paper examines the ability of several popular forecasting models to predict future returns on financial assets denominated in the five major reserve currencies the paper generalizes the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity arch model by relaxing some of the underlying restrictive assumptions forming what we call extended arch models the paper uses this generalization as well as general versions of the random coefficient rc model in order to predict the rates of return out of sample predictions based on these models are generated and compared with those of a random walk process and a univariate arch model the main implication of the results is that while direct arch estimation can improve on forecasts made on the basis of a random walk model even better forecasts can be made by generalizing the arch process by allowing the coefficients to be time varying thus the paper provides an empirical implementation of recent work that suggests a method for computing optimal multiple currency mean variance portfolios

ten years of the urban programme 1981 91 the impact and implications of its assistance to small businesses this paper presents the findings of a comparative study of small business land and premises support schemes operating under the urban program me up in the london boroughs of wandsworth and haringey the results of this study are used to evaluate whether politics makes a difference to policy outcomes in local areas the article indicates that there are crucial differences in the policies of the two boroughs studied and that several key elements of the two boroughs different approaches to small business support were particularly successful such as low business rates and the targeting of niche market businesses however both boroughs failed to integrate effectively their up policies within a wider economic development strategy given that the type of small business support policies examined here continue to form an important part of contemporary local economic policy the author argues that these findings offer important lessons it is recommended that this issue of co ordination must be addressed by al

policy review section in this policy review section gerry stoker of the institute of local government studies presents a critical review of the role of urban development corporations udcs in comparing the experience of the udcs consideration is given to the varying nature of the land and property market in each udc area to the relationship with local authorities and other local bodies and the regeneration strategies pursued by the udcs this is followed by an assessment of the impact of the udcs in economic social and political terms in the second article john britton of the university of toronto examines the theoretical case for interventionist public policies to assist the innovation process in small and medium sized enterprises these arguments are supported by a review of the experience of various national support programmes introduced in the uk in particular the manufacturing advisory service introduced in 1978 and the design advisory service launched in 1982

employment change in independent owner managed high technology firms in great britain there is a growing volume of literature that points to the potential for small technology based firms to achieve substantial employment growth as a direct consequence of such work this sector of any economy has attracted increasing attention from national and local governments concerned with finding ways of revitalising economically deprived localities and creating employment opportunities this paper provides up to date empirical evidence surrounding the ability of small high technology firms to create additional jobs in great britain in addition key founder and business characteristics are isolated which are significantly associated with employment change in growing high technology firms over the 1986 to 1992 period with respect to factors influencing these high levels of employment growth a high firm size in 1986 was found to act positively on employment growth as was a graduate level education for the key founder on the finance side firms which had access to and used a multiplicity of sources of start up finance tended to grow faster futher on the basis of our results we would suggest and recommend a government policy which at the firm level actively encourages high technology firm start ups who record higher rates of survival than firms in more conventional sectors as well as providing support for existing high technology firms who have already demonstrated the inclination and ability to grow in employment size

money and votes reconsidered congressional elections 1972 1982 the evolution of congressional campaign finance over the past decade is characterized by steady growth in campaign spending and other notable changes in campaign finance practices the main purpose of the research reported here was to determine whether these changes have altered the effects of campaign spending on election outcomes this required reexamination of auxiliary questions concerning how sending effects operate and can be measured it also required facing the limits of what analysis of aggregate campaign spending data can tell us about money in elections replication of ols and 2sls analyses of campaign spending effects produced solidly consistent results over the six congressional elections held between 1972 and 1982 taken at face value the evidence is overwhelming that the challenger s level of spending has a strong impact on the vote whereas that of the incumbent has virtually no impact at all but the evidence remains open to doubt on two grounds one is the probable inadequacy of the 2sls model or perhaps any possible model leaving the issue of simultaneity bias unsettled if bias remains the estimates exaggerate the electoral effects of the challenger s campaign expenditures the issue cannot be resolved with more of the same data but rather requires data of a different sort surveys taken over the course of a sample of campaigns would do the trick meanwhile i think it would be foolish to make policy on the assumption that bias is in fact substantial the greatest likelihood remains that restrictions on campaign money will have the general effect of hurting challengers jacobson 1979 the other doubtful albeit equally stable finding is that incumbents do not gain votes by spending in campaigns no incumbent seems to believe it and there is at least circumstantial evidence from for example the 1982 elections that their skepticism is quite justified if so the problem lies in the limits of what aggregate data of the kind analyzed here can tell us few incumbents do not spend heavily when they are strongly challenged if both candidates spend beyond the point needed to become thoroughly familiar to voters then the substance of the campaigns the contents of campaign messages become the dominant factors incumbents may need to spend money in order to change the message as new circumstances arise to frame new issues that would help them most or damage them least to win the battle of establishing the real issues like nonincumbents sitting members may sometimes need to spend beyond a certain threshold to remain competitive but nearly all of them do so when the necessity arises so aggregate spending data are largely uninformative how the money is spent rather than how much is what matters the two most notable developments in congressional campaign finance have opposing implications national party organizations particularly the republican have assumed an increasingly important role in financing campaigns greater central control leads to a more efficient distribution of the party s collective campaign resources which among other things promises to raise the overall level of electoral competition it also leads to more coordinated campaigning with greater emphasis on national themes and programs thus it should foster more cooperation and loyalty among fellow partisans in congress but pacs have also grown in numbers and in financial importance because most concentrate on gaining access to incumbents they do little to make elections more competitive because they usually pursue narrowly defined interests their influence fragments the congress and weakens party coalitions in this and other ways parties and pacs are natural rivals the most consequential decisions taken in the next round in campaign finance policy will be those which affect the relative importance of parties and pacs see u s congress 1984 for comments on this and other current campaign finance issues

the marginals never vanished incumbency and competition in elections to the u s house of representatives 1952 82 the average vote margin enjoyed by incumbent candidates for the u s house of representatives increased sharply during the 1 960s despite this and contrary to assumptions common in the literature on recent congressional elections electoral data show that house incumbents are no safer now than they were in the 1950s the marginals properly defined have not vanished the swing ratio has diminished little if at all and competition for house seats held by incumbents has not declined vote margins increased without adding to incumbent security diminishing competition or dampening swings because the heterogeneity of interelection vote swings increased at the same time

decentralizing antipoverty program delivery in developing countries we study the effects on accountability in government service delivery of decentralizing administration of an antipoverty program while governments at both central and local levels are vulnerable to antipoor policy biases owing to political capture centralized delivery systems are additionally prone to bureaucratic corruption owing to problems in monitoring bureaucratic performance decentralizing the delivery system promotes cost effectiveness and improves intraregional targeting at low program scales but interregional targeting may deteriorate as central grants to high poverty regions shrink owing to high capture of local governments by local elites in such regions

the anatomy of job loss and job creation some speculations on the role of the producer service sector wood p a 1986 the anatomy of job loss and job creation some speculations on the role of the producer service sector reg studies 20 37 46 studies of recent employment trends in the united kingdom have highlighted job losses arising from restructuring by large manufacturing firms this paper examines the relationships between this and other shifts in labour demand emphasizing the complexity of change and especially the growing importance of producer services jobs are likely to continue to be transferred between increasingly interrelated manufacturing and service activities and the corporate and competitive segments of the economy the implications of these trends for sub regional economic change are examined and areas are identified which may be particularly favoured by producer service employment growth these include london industrial towns in the south east and freestanding cities and non industrial towns in the north

do special economic zones induce developmental spillovers evidence from india s states abstract do special economic zones induce local development research drawing on the case of china s special economic zones suggests that subnational polities can target the location of export zones in order to catalyze local and regional socioeconomic development since 2006 a number of indian states have pushed forward similar zones in the face of accusations of land grabbing arguing that the zones will be engines for improvement in exports employment and infrastructure i argue that local development spillovers are an important albeit previously understudied dimension by which to evaluate the effects of special economic zones i then present the first systematic analysis of the developmental effects of india s sezs leveraging an original dataset on their locations together with 2001 and 2011 census data containing a host of social and economic developmental variables the findings show these sezs have failed to bring about local socioeconomic development to explain this absence of developmental spillovers i provide a theoretical framework based on the crucial role of political economy incentive structures facing local politicians i outline the mechanism through which indian state politicians use state owned development corporations for rent capture undermining the potential effectiveness of sezs and leading to their developmental failures the combination of available means for extracting rents and the limited political constraints on such rent extraction leads to a lack of developmental spillovers this framework can also help to explain the difference in the effects of sezs in india and in china these findings have theoretical importance for understanding the conditions under which subnational polities can use export zones and other export policies to catalyze development and practical implications for understanding the mixed pattern of sez success across the world

a typology of new manufacturing firm founders in wales performance measures and public policy implications abstract a typology of new manufacturing firm founders in wales is presented factors associated with the parental entrepreneurial background employment history and the characteristics of the founder s previous employer prior to start up are explored through the adoption of principal components analysis and cluster analysis a typology of new firm founders is detailed on the basis of 14 characteristics the six founder types are shown to have different abilities to generate new jobs create new wealth and export their manufactured products public policy should not solely be concerned with the number of new firms and the rate of new firm foundation different founder types have established new firms of variable quality in terms of potential for job generation wealth creation and ability to export on a competitive basis there is no shortage of potential new firm founders in wales and public policy should aim to discourage those individuals who are clearly unsuitable for entrepreneur ship if the objective of policy is geographical welfare there is the case for extra assistance to be directed to those regions associated with deep seated factors that make them less conducive to successful entrepreneurial formation and development assistance could vary according to local need in the cause of regional equity policy measures and schemes could be restricted to those areas with the lowest levels of entrepreneurial potential government in this way could minimize its financial commitment to new firms policy while maximizing its effectiveness finally it is suggested that public policy should be targeted to those founder types in problem areas who have the greatest potential for establishing successful new ventures

incumbent challenger and open seat elections in a spatial model of political competition in groseclose am j political sci 45 862 886 2001 candidates with asymmetric valence scores and varying degrees of policy motivation simultaneously choose divergent policies i take a version of the groseclose model with policy motivated candidates and extend it to allow for sequential policy announcements this may be a suitable approach for incumbent challenger elections because the incumbent s policy is typically known before the challenger s i show that policy divergence is greater when candidates announce policies sequentially as opposed to simultaneously i also show that policy motivated incumbents benefit from a first mover advantage

entrepreneurship and regional development some conceptual issues o farrell p n 1986 entrepreneurship and regional development some conceptual issues reg studies 20 565 574 this paper attempts to clarify and improve understanding of the concept of entrepreneurship in national and regional development the nature of entrepreneurship is discussed and it is shown that the entrepreneur and the capitalist are conceptually distinct that it is useful to differentiate between the entrepreneurial and managerial functions and that the essence of the concept is the initiation of entrepreneurial acts when the individual is behaving in an innovative way under uncertainty the distinction between entrepreneurship and arbitrage is briefly clarified and the relationship between entrepreneurship and large organizations is discussed our understanding of spatial variations in entrepreneurial behaviour is currently insufficient for the purpose of explanation and policy prescription

new firms and rural industrialization in east anglia gould a and keeble d 1984 new firms and rural industrialization in east anglia reg studies 18 189 201 the paper analyses key aspects of the formation of new independent manufacturing firms in east anglia between 1971 and 1981 special attention is paid to trends in formation rates over time to the spatial bias of new firm origins towards both rural areas and the cambridge region and to the location character and impact of high technology new firms original findings include the contention that spatial variations chiefly reflect variation in the occupational structure of the resident workforce together with industrial mix plant size and previous industrial immigration some implications for government policy to new firms are discussed

does legislative turnover adversely affect state expenditure policy evidence from indian state elections the effect of legislative turnover on the size and composition of government expenditures in indian states over the 1980 2000 period is examined the paper finds that excessive turnover in indian state elections results in inefficient government expenditure policy first the higher the turnover the larger the government size second excessive turnover affects the allocative efficiency of government expenditures by skewing the composition of government spending toward pure consumption and away from more productive investment expenditures third the effect of turnover on fiscal policy is not linear public consumption expenditure is convex in turnover while public investment expenditure is concave in turnover

the quality of political institutions and the curse of natural resources we propose a theoretical model to explain empirical regularities related to the curse of natural resources which emphasises the behaviour and incentives of politicians we extend the standard voting model to give voters political control beyond the elections this gives rise to a new restriction that policies should not give rise to a revolution our model clarifies when resource discoveries might lead to revolutions namely in countries with weak institutions it also suggests that for bad political institutions human capital depends negatively on natural resources while for high institutional quality the dependence is reversed this finding is corroborated in cross section regressions

explaining recent trends in new firm formation in the uk some evidence from south hampshire mason c m 1989 explaining recent trends in new firm formation in the uk some evidence from south hampshire reg studies 23 331 346 the paper contributes to the debate on the reasons for the increase in business start ups in the uk since the late 1970s it compares the results of a survey of new manufacturing firms started since 1979 in south hampshire with a previously conducted survey of firms started between 1976 and 1979 the study provides partial support for the recession push explanation the post 1979 cohort contained a higher proportion of firms started by founders who were unemployed redundant although there was no evidence to support other aspects of the recession push explanation the study fails to support structural change explanations in addition there was no evidence that government assistance to small businesses had been a significant factor in the formation of the post 1979 cohort of new businesses mason c m 1989 une explication des tendances recentes en faveur de la creat

overcoming the zero bound on nominal interest rates with negative interest on currency gesell s solution an economy is in a liquidity trap when monetary policy cannot influence either real or nominal variables of interest a necessary condition for this is that the short nominal interest rate is constrained by its lower bound typically zero the paper considers two small analytical models one old keynesian the other new keynesian possessing equilibria where not only the short nominal interest rate but nominal interest rates at all maturities can be stuck at their zero lower bound when the authorities remove the zero nominal interest rate floor by adopting an augmented monetary rule that systematically keeps the nominal interest rate on base money including currency at or below the nominal interest rate on non monetary instruments the lower bound equilibria are eliminated thus allowing an economic system to avoid the trap or to escape from it this rule will involve paying negative interest on currency that is imposing a carry tax on currency an idea first promoted by gesell the administration costs associated with a currency carry tax must be set against the benefits of potentially lower shoe leather costs and lower menu costs which are made possible by the its introduction there are also output gap avoidance benefits from eliminating the zero lower bound trap

economic populism partial deregulation of transport fuels and electoral outcomes in india abstract the indian political class is known to employ populist albeit economically unsustainable measures to replace intrinsic valence especially shortly prior to election windows such measures include loan waivers interest rate concessions provision of free electricity for agriculturists etc the union government s leverage to maneuver and to micro manage retail fuel prices within partially deregulated environments is hypothesized to provide incumbents with an advantage over rival contestants in the electoral process this paper analyzes the evolution in the retail prices of diesel and petrol gasoline and the transfer of such evolution into the inflation index of the all commodity basket it is observed that when international benchmark prices are relatively low and domestic inflation is moderate the transfer occurs within about 42 weeks during periods of high oil prices frequently above usd 100 a barrel and high inflation higher than 5 00 5 50 prices of petroleum distillates tend to feed into overall inflation more rapidly within about 34 40 weeks the study covering a total of 82 elections for the central and state provincial governments during the period 2000 to 2013 concludes that even as patterns of manipulation of prices are apparent ceteris paribus such leverage does not necessarily seem to translate into favorable electoral outcomes this conclusion reiterates observations that economic im prudence may not necessarily determine electoral outcomes and that the basis for electoral choices made by the indian voter consumer remains subjective

old voters new voters and the personal vote using redistricting to estimate the incumbency advantage we provide new estimates of the size of the personal vote in u s house elections from 1872 to 1990 we take advantage of the natural experiment that attends decennial redistricting every ten years most incumbents are given new districts that contain a combination of old and new territory by contrasting an incombent s vote in the new part of the district with his or her vote in the old part of the district we can estimate the magnitude of the personal vote the vote that the incumbent receives because he or she represented the voters in the past our estimates confirm prior work that shows that a large fraction of the incumbency advantage owes to the personal vote as opposed to challenger quality unlike past research we are able to estimate the relationship between district partisanship and the personal vote we find a significant interaction which shows that incumbents develop larger personal votes in areas where they are electorally most vulnerable here is no doubt that incumbents today have a substantial advantage over nonincumbents in u s house elections the overall size of this advantage has been fairly well established as has the fact that incumbents electoral strength has increased dramatically over the postwar period measured in terms of vote share the overall incumbency advantage grew from a modest 1 3 percentage point edge in the 1940s and early 1950s to a 7 10 percentage point edge in the 1980s and early 1990s 1 there is much less agreement about the sources of the incumbency advantage and the causes of its growth congressional scholars have identified a variety of factors that may be responsible which can be grouped into three broad categories the first and the focus of this paper is electoral advantage that stems from a legislator s homestyle members of the house are reputedly very responsive to their constituents in turn their constituents reward them with their votes mayhew 1974b fenno 1974 and others detail the sorts of activities that legislators do to build a widely known and respected name including casework frequent visits to the district position taking on issues and securing federal benefits a second source of the incumbency advantage is candidate quality incumbents may win because they are the best candidates running and they do noticeably worse when they face state legislators and other experienced challengers finally incumbency may simply act as a voting cue a label which voters rely on because party has become less relevant assessing the importance of these different factors has significant implications for our normative evaluations of the modern congress and our understanding

developing indicators to inform local economic development in england based on a conceptual framework of 11 factors that are widely perceived to be the major determinants of local economic development led 29 indicators were identified to measure these factors pri

why did the incumbency advantage in u s house elections grow theory a simple rational entry argument suggests that the value of incumbency consists not just of a direct effect reflecting the value of resources such as staff attached to legislative office but also of an indirect effect reflecting the fact that stronger challengers are less likely to contest incumbent held seats the indirect effect is the product of a scare off effect the ability of incumbents to scare off high quality challengers and a quality effect reflecting how much electoral advantage a party accrues when it has an experienced rather than an inexperienced candidate hypothesis the growth of the overall incumbency advantage was driven principally by increases in the quality effect methods we use a simple two equation model estimated by ordinary least squares regression to analyze u s house election data from 1948 to 1990 results most of the increase in the incumbency advantage at least down to 1980 came through increases in the quality effect i e the advantage to the incumbent party of having a low quality challenger this suggests that the task for those wishing to explain the growth in the vote denominated incumbency advantage is to explain why the quality effect grew it also suggests that resource based explanations of the growth in the incumbency advantage cannot provide a full explanation

challenger entry and voter learning we develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters given incumbent failure in office challenger entry is more likely but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed at the same time challenges to incumbents who perform well can neutralize a voter s positive assessment of incumbent qualifications how a voter becomes politically informed can in turn deter challengers of different levels of competence from running depending on the electoral environment the model permits us to sharpen our understanding of retrospective voting the incumbency advantage and the relationship between electoral competition and voter welfare while pointing to new interpretations of and future avenues for empirical research on elections

new firm formation and regional development the italian case garofoli g 1994 new firm formation and regional development the italian case reg studies 28 381 393 the italian case appears to have had a very high firm birth rate mainly in manufacturing in comparison with the experience of other economically advanced countries regional differentiation in new firm formation has been very high in italy in the analysed period 1987 1991 the paper deals with the hypotheses to be tested for the interpretation of the regional differentiation in firm birth and analyses the problem of the choice of socio economic variables which must be examined the results of the regression analysis prove that production structure and mainly local productive specialization firms size social structure and professional employment structure are the most important explanatory variables for new firm formation and for its regional differentiation the level of local demand does not seem to be a significant factor and increases in unemployment appear to reduce firm births all t

contrasting experience of recession and spatial restructuring british shipbuilders plessey and metal box peck f w and townsend a r 1984 contrasting experience of recession and spatial re structuring british shipbuilders plessey and metal box reg studies 18 319 338 trends in aggregate economic indicators in the recent recession conceal marked variations in the experience of different industrial corporations within the meso economic sector in the uk this paper demonstrates such variations by comparing the nature of employment decline in three major uk corporations british shipbuilders plessey and metal box despite similar employment profiles since 1977 these three corporations have experienced very different trends in output productivity and profitability suggesting that their respective job losses have occurred for different reasons the origins of these job losses are examined in detail concentrating in particular on the regional incidence of major redundancies and closures the conclusion summarizes the factors which influence job loss and suggests extending the analysis to wider groups of

the runner up effect exploiting regression discontinuity designs in brazilian indian and canadian first past the post elections we document that second place candidates are substantially more likely than close third place candidates to run in and win subsequent elections since both candidates lost the election and had similar electoral performance this is the effect of being labeled the runner up selection into candidacy is unlikely to explain the effect on winning subsequent elections and we find no effect of finishing in third place versus fourth place we develop a simple model of strategic coordination by voters that rationalizes the results and provides further predictions that are supported by the data

electoral cycles in electricity losses in india abstract a third of electricity in india is lost each year where losses refer to power that is supplied but not billed utilizing data from the power corporation of uttar pradesh india s most populous state we study the politics of electricity losses examining annual data over four decades we document that up s electricity losses tend to increase in periods immediately prior to state assembly elections drawing upon geographically disaggregated data for the period 2000 09 we observe higher line losses just prior to the 2002 and 2007 state elections our analysis shows that the incumbent party was more likely to retain the assembly seat as line losses in the locality increased we interpret these results as corroboration that political parties deliberately redirect electricity to flat rate and unbilled users in a context of chronically inadequate supply political factors appear to affect line losses in ways that technical and economic factors alone cannot explain

the disadvantaged incumbents estimating incumbency effects in indian state legislatures this paper estimates the incumbency effects using a large dataset on state legislative elections in india during 1975 2003 i use a regression discontinuity design rdd that estimates the causal effect of incumbency by comparing candidates in closely fought elections i find that there is a significant disadvantage to incumbency in indian state legislative elections and the adverse effect of incumbency has increased after 1991 also the incumbency disadvantage is higher in states that have lower availability of public goods such as health centers and lower employment poverty and per capita income

new technology based firms in innovation networks symplectic and generative impacts abstract the traditional body of research on new technology based firms reflects the linear sequential view of the technological innovation process the modern innovation theory views the innovation process as a complex interative process that is essentially systemic in character the systemic view of the technological innovation process largely remains to be implemented in research on new technology based firms the present study represents an attempt to bridge this gap by applying a systemic approach to research on new technology based firms the empirical part of the present study develops and empirically tests a model that classifies new technology based firms into science based firms and engineering based firms the two categories are defined in terms of the functional relationship between the new technology based firm and the articulation process of basic technologies in the model new technology based firms are analyzed in terms of the systemic knowledge conversion process to which they are attached the model receives support in three empirical databases compiled among new technology based firms in finland the united kingdom and silicon valley the analysis of the silicon valley database is the first ever systematic survey of the spin off firms of stanford university

a reform dilemma in polarized democracies abstract we study the feasibility and efficiency of policy reforms in democracies we develop a simple election model where i reforms are costly for voters and politicians and these costs increase with the extent of policy change and ii politicians differ in their ability to carry out reforms efficiently we identify a so called reform dilemma which manifests itself in two variants from a static perspective low reform ability politicians are elected when political parties are polarized who then impose high costs on citizens for each reform step this property of elections arises as low reform ability is a substitute for policy commitment from a dynamic perspective incumbents may choose socially undesirable policies to align the social need for reform with their own reform ability and are thus re elected regardless of their reform ability

explaining the oil advantage effects of natural resource wealth on incumbent reelection in iran why does natural resource wealth prolong incumbency using evidence from parliamentary elections in the islamic republic of iran the author shows that natural resource revenues boost incumbent reelection rates because they are used to provide public or private goods to constituents which incentivizes voters to reelect incumbents over challengers to test this hypothesis the author employs originally assembled data on five parliamentary elections in iran 1992 2008 in longitudinal hierarchical regression analyses at the district and province levels by leveraging iran s mixed member electoral system he shows that the resource incumbency mechanism works primarily in single member districts with little evidence of an incumbency advantage for politicians in resource rich multimember districts building on the rentier theory of natural resource wealth the results suggest that voting for the incumbent is attributable to patronage and public goods distribution the findings offer new insights into the understudied context of iranian legislative elections illustrate the mechanisms driving the relationship between resource wealth and incumbency advantage at the subnational level in a nondemocratic setting and highlight the mediating effects of electoral institutions on the resource incumbency relationship

evaluation and understanding in local economic policy recent evaluative studies of local economic policy have emphasised the measurement of policy impacts and cost effectiveness above all else more effort could usefully be made to understand the mechanisms by which policy effects are produced and the circumstances which condition their effectiveness the paper outlines a simple conceptual framework to help explain in broad terms why local industrial policies are or are not effective at creating employment the framework is illustrated with examples drawn from an initiative in london this involved the provision of financial assistance to local firms but did not prove very successful at creating or securing jobs partly because circumstances were unfavourable and the problems deep seated the implication is that for local policies to be effective in these conditions wider ranging and more carefully targeted interventions are required

candidate quality the personal vote and the incumbency advantage in congress most political observers agree that incumbent legislators have a considerable advantage over nonincumbents in modern congressional elections yet there is still disagreement over the exact source of this advantage and the explanation for its growth over time to address this debate we utilize a unique set of historical elections data to test for the presence of an incumbency advantage in late nineteenth century house elections 1872 1900 we find a modest direct effect of incumbency and a substantial candidate quality effect moreover the cartel like control of ballot access by nineteenth century political parties created competition in races that the modern market like system simply does not sustain our results suggest that candidate quality is a fundamental piece of the puzzle in understanding the historical development of the incumbency advantage in american politics

the impact of campaign spending on votes in multiparty elections abstract the impact of candidate campaign spending on votes and abstention in multiparty elections is estimated from the specification of a structural model of voter behavior this model accounts for the endogeneity of campaign spending as well as the heterogeneity in voter preferences empirical results are estimated from aggregate actual election data the results demonstrate the importance of spending during the campaign period and voter heterogeneity with respect to these expenditures the own and cross expenditure vote share elasticity estimates reveal that political campaign spending not only redistributes voters across parties but also decreases the size of the abstaining group of the electorate

entrepreneurship and rural industrialization comparing urban and rural patterns of locational choice in israel abstract the role of the local entrepreneur in the development of rural industrialization is often overlooked based on an empirical survey of entrepreneurs in both urban and rural areas in israel this paper shows that the rural setting scores less favorably than the urban for nearly all those locational attributes that would attract industrial development consequently the chances of attracting external initiatives to rural areas would seem slim instead it is argued that a strategy for rural industrial development needs to be based on the mobilization of indigenous entrepreneurial potential for which the rural setting provides a subjective relative advantage

empirical analysis of the exchange rate channel in japan abstract this paper analyzes the significance of the exchange rate channel one of the transmission mechanisms of monetary policy it is important to evaluate this channel for japan because yen depreciation has been proposed as a policy to move the economy out of a liquidity trap our results suggest that in the past monetary expansion resulted in yen depreciation in the long and short run however there is no evidence to support the view that yen depreciation facilitated economic growth therefore we conclude that use of the exchange rate as a mechanism to boost the real economy was in our sample period at least premature

atomistic and systemic approaches to research on new technology based firms a literature study the dominating view of new technology based firms is that these firms are driven by a heroic entrepreneur who pursues aggressive growth new technology based firms are expected to sooner or later develop tangible products with which new market niches are created and existing ones penetrated often the only perceived economic impact of new technology based firms is one delivered through rapid organic growth

productive decentralization or indigenous growth small manufacturing enterprises and regional development in central portugal lewis j r and williams a m 1987 productive decentralization or indigenous growth small manufacturing enterprises and regional development in central portugal reg studies 21 343 361 small firms are crucial to the portuguese economy and have been important in the recent expansion of industrial activity away from core regions a survey of the formation and development of manufacturing enterprises in four contrasting rural locations within the central region tested the relevance of explanations based on north italian evidence of productive decentralization and spatial spread however analysis of employment characteristics inter firm linkages and conditions of firm formation reveals the dominance of independent and indigenous growth in the present wave of industrialization variations in firm characteristics between industrial sectors and economic environments indicate the need for more effective promotion policies not least to contain intra regional inequalities lewis j r et williams a m 1

estimating incumbency advantage without bias in this paper we prove theoretically and demonstrate empirically that all existing measures of incumbency advantage in the congressional elections literature are biased or inconsistent we then provide an unbiased estimator based on a very simple linear regression model we apply this new method to congressional elections since 1900 providing the first evidence of a positive incumbency advantage in the first half of the century incumbency advantage is the most frequently studied factor in the last 15 years of congressional elections research discovery of the increase in incum bency advantage has sparked controversy over its origins historical pattern cur rent magnitude and electoral democratic and policy consequences even the most basic descriptive information about incumbency advantage is flawed be cause every previous measure based on aggregate data in this literature is plagued by selection bias inconsistencies and inefficiencies we prove this result and also propose a new unbiased and statistically efficient measure that is very easy to calculate congressional elections from 1900 to the present fit our theoretical model our empirical reanalyses do not challenge the existing scholarly consen sus that incumbency advantage is much larger than it once was however we do challenge the prevailing belief that incumbency advantage was nonexistent and the evidence that it was negative in house elections during the first half of this century alford and brady 1988 we show instead that the average advantage of incumbency in these elections was about two percentage points in section 1 of this paper we define incumbency advantage and section 2 gives an intuitive sense of the problems identifying it even in ideal electoral sys tems section 3 formally proves that sophomore surge and retirement slump are biased estimates of incumbency advantage and section 4 briefly reveals the flaws

do voters affect or elect policies evidence from the u s house there are two fundamentally different views of the role of elections in policy formation in one view voters can affect candidates policy choices competition for votes induces politicians to move toward the center in this view elections have the effect of bringing about some degree of policy compromise in the alternative view voters merely elect policies politicians cannot make credible promises to moderate their policies and elections are merely a means to decide which one of two opposing policy views will be implemented we assess which of these contrasting perspectives is more empirically relevant for the u s house focusing on elections decided by a narrow margin allows us to generate quasi experimental estimates of the impact of a randomized change in electoral strength on subsequent representatives roll call voting records we find that voters merely elect policies the degree of electoral strength has no effect on a legislator s voting behavior for example a large exogenous increase in electoral strength for the democratic party in a district does not result in shifting both parties nominees to the left politicians inability to credibly commit to a compromise appears to dominate any competition induced convergence in policy

political market characteristics and the provision of educational infrastructure in north india in this paper we are concerned with the provision of schools in rural north india particularly with whether such provision is determined by the demographic and economic characteristics of the region or whether local democracy also plays a role we find that the probability that a governing party loses an election has a positive effect on the provision of schooling infrastructure while the margin of victory of the governing party has a negative effect political reservation for members of the scheduled castes scs has a positive effect on schooling infrastructure in villages with a large sc population but a negative effect overall

service induced campaign contributions and the electoral equilibrium candidates for office are modeled as promising services such as support for legislation and intervention in the bureaucracy to interest groups in exchange for campaign contributions an electoral equilibrium is characterized in which candidates choose service contribution offers and interest groups choose whether to contribute the model provides several explanations of congressional incumbents success in over 90 percent of their reelection contests a recognition advantage a high personal valuation of the office a lower cost of providing services and policy alignment with high demand interest groups the model yields predictions that are consistent with empirical findings on the relation between campaign contributions and election outcomes

private business sales environments in the united kingdom abstract when an owner manager of a business firm decides to sell the company it is not a trivial decision whether it is a sale forced by circumstances outside company control or a positive strategic choice it is certainly significant moreover the method of exit the advice taken and the deal that is eventually struck will clearly affect the nature of the owner s eventual lifestyle in such circumstances there are four choices open to the owner 1 sale to a third party 2 sale to the management and or employees 3 public quotation on the stock exchange 4 liquidation this research first analyzes the magnitude of activity in the united kingdom in each of the above categories during the five year period 1983 1987 the results show very clearly that there is a strategic loosening taking place in the corporate marketplace more firms are being sold and more owner managers are choosing to exit from ownership of their firms moreover the most frequently used exit route by far is that of the private advertized sale the second part of this paper analyzes in detail the data for the private advertized sale by means of principal component analysis and cluster analysis seven ecological incubator environments were constructed at a county level significant differences were observed between the environments in respect to private advertized sales private advertized sales rates and industrial structure these results show clearly that the nature of the supply of owner managers wishing to realize their ownership is geographically biased and is in part a reflection of the existing industrial and commercial base

using multimember district elections to estimate the sources of the incumbency advantage in this article we use a novel research design that exploits unique features of multimember districts to estimate and decompose the incumbency advantage in state legislative elections like some existing related studies we also use repeated observations on the same candidates to account for unobserved factors that remain constant across observations multimember districts have the additional feature of copartisans competing for multiple seats within the same district this allows us to identify both the direct office holder benefits and the incumbent quality advantage over nonincumbent candidates from the same party we find that the overall incumbency advantage is of similar magnitude as that found in previous studies we attribute approximately half of this advantage to incumbents quality advantage over open seat candidates and the remainder to direct office holder benefits however we also find some evidence that direct office holder benefits are larger in competitive districts than in safe districts and in states with relatively large legislative budgets per capita