voter turnout and fiscal policy abstract in this paper we examine whether shocks in voting costs can impact elected representatives quality defined as the capacity to fund projects at the lowest cost using data on french municipalities and local variations in seasonal infections incidence as a shock on voting cost we estimate that higher incidence lowers voter turnout increases subsidies obtained by a municipality decreases harmful financial decisions and increases the municipality s investment in infrastructure we present a model where these predictions would hold in particular for municipalities with a high base level of turnout

women s suffrage political responsiveness and child survival in american history women s choices appear to emphasize child welfare more than those of men this paper presents new evidence on how suffrage rights for american women helped children to benefit from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution consistent with standard models of electoral competition suffrage laws were followed by immediate shifts in legislative behavior and large sudden increases in local public health spending this growth in public health spending fueled large scale door to door hygiene campaigns and child mortality declined by 8 15 or 20 000 annual child deaths nationwide as cause specific reductions occurred exclusively among infectious childhood killers sensitive to hygienic conditions

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

new firm startups technology and macroeconomic fluctuations new firm startup activity is examined within a framework pooling a cross section of 117 industries over six time periods between 1976 and 1986 a model is introduced relating startup activity both to elements of the business cycle in particular the macroeconomic growth rate the cost of capital and the unemployment rate and to industry specific characteristics especially the technological conditions underlying the industry the pooled cross section regression results suggest that macroeconomic fluctuations as well as industry specific elements contribute to startup activity while new firm startups respond positively to macroeconomic growth they are promoted by a low cost of capital and high unemployment rate a somewhat surprising result is that new firm startups are not apparently deterred in capital intensive industries and where r d expenditures play an important role the empirical results suggest that new firms may be able to overcome their inherent size and experience disadvantages in such markets through exploiting university research and pursuing innovative activity

technological learning environments and organizational practices cross sectoral evidence from britain this study explores the co occurrence of technological and organizational learning processes by analyzing the adoption and use of four types of human resource management hrm practices rewarding problem solving top down management and decentralization in the 1990s across different technological learning environments using a sample of british workplaces we show that the level of use of diverse hrm practices aimed at creating different learning incentives is persistently heterogeneous across technological learning environments suggesting that hrm forms an essential part of the technological learning structure of firms copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

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

cyclicality mortality and the value of time the case of coffee price fluctuations and child survival in colombia recent studies demonstrate procyclical mortality in wealthy countries but there are reasons to expect a countercyclical relationship in developing nations we investigate how child survival in colombia responds to fluctuations in world arabica coffee prices and document starkly procyclical child deaths in studying this result s behavioral underpinnings we highlight that 1 the leading determinants of child health are inexpensive but require considerable time and 2 as the value of time declines with falling coffee prices so does the relative price of health we find a variety of direct evidence consistent with the primacy of time in child health production

are small firms less efficient this paper compares the technical efficiency of small and medium sized enterprises smes with that of large firms and studies the factors influencing technical efficiency for taiwan s electronics industry unlike conventional studies we use two alternative approaches to control for the influence of size effect one is the two stage switching regression to correct for endogenous size effect on technical efficiency and the other is a metafrontier production function for firms in different groups the main results are as follows first the average technical efficiency for large firms is higher than that of smes without considering the size effect and lower when considering the endogenous choice on firm size this study cannot therefore conclude that there is a negative size technical efficiency relationship it however sheds light on the importance of size effect on the size technical efficiency nexus second the estimates on the determinants of technical efficiency show that being a subcontractor has a statistically significant positive influence on smes technical efficiency but the effect decreases with firm size

did women s suffrage change the size and scope of government this paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote using cross sectional time series data for 1870 1940 we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by u s house and senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise contrary to many recent suggestions the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s and it helps explain why american government started growing when it did

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

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

women empowerment and economic development women empowerment and economic development are closely related in one direction development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women in the other direction empowering women may benefit development does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion this paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment development nexus and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self sustaining and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

do husbands and wives pool their resources evidence from the united kingdom child benefit common preference models of family behavior imply income pooling a restriction on family demand functions such that only the sum of husband s income and wife s income affects the allocation of goods and time testing the pooling hypothesis is difficult because most family income sources are not exogenous to the allocations being analyzed in this paper we present an alternative test based on a natural experiment a policy change in the united kingdom that transferred a substantial child allowance to wives in the late 1970s using family expenditure survey data we find strong evidence that a shift toward greater expenditures on women s clothing and children s clothing relative to men s clothing coincided with this income redistribution

large cash transfers to the elderly in south africa we examine the social pension in south africa where large cash sums about twice the median per capita income of african households are paid to people qualified by age but irrespective of previous contributions we present the history of the scheme and use a 1993 nationally representative survey to investigate the redistributive consequences of the transfers documenting who receive the pensions their levels of living and those of their families we also look at behavioural effects particularly the effects of the cash receipts on the allocation of income to food schooling transfers and savings in south africa a large social pension about twice the median per capita income of african households is paid in cash to people qualified by age irrespective of previous contributions we present the history of the scheme and explain how such large transfers could come about in an economy in which the recipients were not only politically weak but without any political representation whatsoever we then use a 1993 nationally representative survey to investigate the redistributive consequences of the transfers documenting who receive the pensions their levels of living and those of their families we also look at behavioural effects particularly the effects of the cash receipts on the allocation of income to food schooling transfers and savings the pressing policy issue for south africans is whether it makes sense to target seven billion rand nearly 2 billion of social expenditure through the current pension schemes our analysis contributes to the discussion by documenting the redistributive and behavioural effects of the transfers we find that at least as far as immediate incidence is concerned and without allowance for behavioural effects the social pension is an effective tool of redistribution and that the households it reaches are predominantly poor because so many of the elderly among south africa s african population live with children the social pension is also effective in putting money into house

do women shy away from competition do men compete too much we examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme although there are no gender differences in performance men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance while 73 percent of the men select the tournament only 35 percent of the women make this choice this gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only playa negligible role instead the tournament entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition the result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it

occupational social value and returns to long hours this paper examines the phenomenon of uncompensated long hours in jobs with pro social characteristics and presents evidence that long hour wage premiums and occupational social value are substitutes in compensating salaried workers who supply hours exceeding the standard working week i show that the social value of an occupation in particular the degree to which jobs involve helping or providing service to others is inversely related to long hour pay allowing for heterogeneity in the degree to which workers value their job s helping orientation lets me explore how gender differences in employees attitudes toward pro social behaviour can explain some of the observed occupational sorting trends and gender differences in long hour compensation women tend to be more strongly drawn to helping occupations and at the same time receive lower long hour premiums in these jobs relative to men i offer a theoretical framework to rationalize the empirical trends

property rights and competing for the affections of demos the impact of the 1867 reform act on stock prices the 1867 reform act in britain extended the electoral franchise to the skilled but propertyless urban working classes using stock market data and exploiting the fact that foreign and domestic equities traded simultaneously on the london market this paper finds that investors in british firms reacted negatively to the passage of this act we suggest that this finding is consistent with investors foreseeing future alterations of property rights arising from the pressure that the large newly enfranchised group would bring to bear on government policy we also suggest that our findings appear to be more consistent with the tory political competition explanation for the act rather than the whig threat of revolution explanation

technologies products and organization in the innovating firm what adam smith tells us and joseph schumpeter doesn t adam smith s insights into the increasingly specialized nature of knowledge production are crucially important in understanding the contemporary problems of managing innovating firms products and firms are based on an increasing range of fields of specialized technological understanding competition is not based on technological diversity but on diversity and experimentation in products etc firms rarely fail because of an inability to master a new field of technology but because they do not succeed in matching the firm s systems of coordination and control to the nature of the available technological opportunities copyright 1998 by oxford university press

the technological competencies of the world s largest firms complex and path dependent but not much variety firm specific technological competencies help explain why firms are different how they change over time and whether or not they are capable of remaining competitive data on more than 400 of the world s largest firms show that their technological competencies have the following characteristics 1 1 they are typically multi field and becoming more so over time with competencies ranging beyond their product range in technical fields outside their distinctive core 2 2 they are highly stable and differentiated with both the technology profile and the directions of localised search strongly influenced by firms principal products 3 3 the rate of search is influenced by both the firm s principal products and the conditions in its home country however considerable unexplained variance suggests scope for managerial choice these findings confirm the importance of complexity and path dependency in the accumulation of firm specific technological competencies and show that managers are heavily constrained in the directions of their technological search they also show the limits of the notion of competition through variety given that the same specific field of technological competence is often essential to the development of a range of possible product configurations technological imperatives still exist

precautionary saving insurance and the origins of workers compensation in this article we test whether the introduction of social insurance has led to a reduction in private insurance purchases and precautionary saving by examining the introduction of workers compensation our empirical analysis is based on the financial decisions of over 7 000 households surveyed for the 1917 19 bureau of labor statistics cost of living study we find that the presence of workers compensation at least partially crowded out private accident insurance and led to a substantial reduction in precautionary saving the introduction of workers compensation caused private saving to fall by approximately 25 percent with other factors held constant

alimony rights and intrahousehold allocation of resources evidence from brazil can family policy affect well being of individuals without altering the resources available to their families this article examines the extension of alimony rights and obligations to cohabiting couples in brazil for women in intact relationships alimony rights upon dissolution should improve outside options strengthening their negotiating positions and increasing their influence over intrahousehold allocation of resources robust econometric evidence indicates that more decision power in the hands of women impacts hours worked by female adults and investments in the education of children this suggests that family policy and models of family decision making should take intrahousehold heterogeneity of preferences into account

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

restructuring electricity policy and financial models the old regulated electric industry provided reliable service not necessarily in the most economic manner at a declining real price the semi competitive electric industry model now operating in the united states and the uk has shown that electric companies can operate more efficiently than before but it has not delivered significantly greater benefits to consumers than the old model financial modelers and policy makers should address those issues whose solution will provide the most bang for the buck in order to bring about greater benefits to consumers

spatial models of political competition under plurality rule a survey of some explanations of the number of candidates and the positions they take this paper surveys work that uses spatial models of political competition to explain the number of candidates and the positions that they take in plurality rule elections

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

gender gaps in policy making evidence from direct democracy in switzerland this paper uses a unique data set on individual voting decisions to shed new light on gender gaps in policy making our analysis focuses on switzerland the world leader in direct democracy where all citizens directly decide on a broad range of policies at the ballot box analysing all federal votes held between 1981 and 2003 we show that there are large gender gaps in the areas of health environmental protection defence spending and welfare policy the gender gaps typically persist even conditional on socio economic characteristics we also find that female policy makers have a substantial effect on the composition of public spending but a small effect on the overall size of government

schumpeterian patterns of innovation are technology specific this paper examines the patterns of innovative activities at the technological and country levels using patent data for 49 technological classes in six countries usa japan germany france united kingdom and italy it is shown that the patterns of innovative activities differ systematically across technological classes but are remarkably similar across countries for each technological class in particular two groups of technological classes are identified schumpeter mark i and schumpeter mark ii in these two groups innovative activities are structured and organized in different ways the first represents a widening pattern concentration of innovative activities is low innovators are of small economic size stability in the ranking of innovators is low and entry of new innovators is high the second represents a deepening pattern concentration of innovative activities is higher than in the first group innovators are of larger economic size stability in the ranking of innovators is greater and entry is lower the former group comprises mechanical technologies and traditional sectors while the latter includes chemicals and electronics this result suggests that technology related factors such as technological regimes defined in terms of conditions of opportunity appropriability cumulativeness and properties of the knowledge base play a major role in determining the specific pattern of innovative activities of a technological class across countries within these constraints country specific factors introduce differences across countries in the pattern of innovative activities for a specific technological class finally the relationships between the specific features of the patterns of innovative activities and international technological specialization are examined technological advantages appear in general to be linked to higher degrees of asymmetries among innovators higher stability of the ranking of innovators smaller economic size of the innovating firms and lower entry rates of new innovators these relationships however are different in the two groups of technological classes in schumpeter mark i widening technological classes international technological specialization is associated with relatively higher degrees of asymmetries among innovators and entry of new innovators as well as smaller firm size while in schumpeter ii deepening technological classes international technological specialization is linked to the existence of a stable but competitive core of persistent innovators

large firms in the production of the world s technology an important case of non globalisation us patenting by 686 of the world s largest manufacturing firms shows that their share of the world s production of technology is less than their share of r d activities and varies greatly amongst sectors in most cases the technological activities of these large firms are concentrated in their home country the characteristics of which influence the volume and trends in their technological activities much more strongly then the international component of these activities at the same time these large firms are major elements in the volume and the pattern of sectoral specializations in their home countries technological activities

time series growth in the female labor force in this paper we investigate the reasons for the growth in the female labor force in america during the twentieth century in our research we study the longer term trends since 1900 and conduct a more intensive examination of developments after the second world war on the basis of our work we conclude that rising real wages accounted for 60 of the total growth in the female labor force half of this wage effect in expanding labor supply was the fertility reducing consequence of a higher female wage

performance in competitive environments gender differences even though the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has been a priority in many countries large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions suggested explanations include discrimination and differences in preferences and human capital in this paper we present experimental evidence in support of an additional factor women may be less effective than men in competitive environments even if they are able to perform similarly in non competitive environments in a laboratory experiment we observe as we increase the competitiveness of the environment a significant increase in performance for men but not for women this results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments while there is no gap when participants are paid according to piece rate this effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than in single sex competitive environments this suggests that women may be able to perform in competitive environments per se

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

technological regimes and sources of entrepreneurship this paper concerns the technological determinants of entrepreneurial behaviour by applying a typology of technological regimes which describes the nature of the technological environment in which firms operate this paper examines the sources and obstacles to entrepreneurial entry related to the process of technical change two major points are suggested first innovation in technologies of high or increasing opportunities is not always associated with entrepreneurial behaviour but can enhance the competitive advantage of existing firms second opportunities for entrepreneurship are shaped by the nature of knowledge underlying different technologies these points are illustrated using u s patent statistics classified by technical field and sector of firm s principal product activity different combinations of sources of technological entry barriers and technological opportunity are identified in science based technologies chemical technologies core technologies in complex systems product engineering technologies and process engineering technologies this paper argues that such a characterisation of the dynamics of knowledge accumulation is important for interpreting the variety of dynamics of industrial competition

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

how women s rights affect fertility evidence from nigeria using data from the demographic and health surveys dhs this paper estimates the effect on fertility of a legal reform in nigeria in 1999 that lowered the value of women s testimony in court i find that the yearly probability of giving birth of women exposed to the reform did not change in general for women exposed to the enforced reform this probability increased by at least 0 04 using stated preferences on fertility i find that fertility increased among women who want fewer children than their husband does but decreased among women who want more children than their husband does i examine the hypothesis that the reform increased for women the value of being married and hence decreased their intra household bargaining power consequently shifting fertility decisions in the direction of husbands preferences jel j13 j18 k10

missing women and the price of tea in china the effect of sex specific earnings on sex imbalance economists have long argued that the sex imbalance in developing countries is caused by underlying economic conditions this paper uses exogenous increases in sex specific agricultural income caused by post mao reforms in china to estimate the effects of total income and sex specific income on sex differential survival of children increasing female income holding male income constant improves survival rates for girls whereas increasing male income holding female income constant worsens survival rates for girls increasing female income increases educational attainment of all children whereas increasing male income decreases educational attainment for girls and has no effect on boys educational attainment