a political economy model of congressional careers our main goal is to quantify the returns to a career in the united states congress we specify a dynamic model of career decisions of a member of congress and estimate this model using a newly collected dataset given estimates of the structural model we assess reelection probabilities estimate the effect of congressional experience on private and public sector wages and quantify the value of congressional seat moreover we assess how an increase in the congressional wage or the imposition of term limits would affect the career decisions of politicians and the returns from a career in congress

strategic extremism why republicans and democrats divide on religious values party platforms differ sharply from one another especially on issues with religious content such as abortion or gay marriage given the high return to attracting the median voter why do vote maximizing politicians take extreme positions in this paper we find that strategic extremism depends on an intensive margin where politicians want to induce their core constituents to vote or make donations and the ability to target political messages toward those core constituents our model predicts that the political relevance of religious issues is highest when around one half of the voting population attends church regularly using data from across the world and within the united states we indeed find a nonmonotonic relationship between religious extremism and religious attendance

education and propaganda tradeoffs to public education provision in nondemocracies abstract nondemocratic regimes face a tradeoff when investing in public education education promotes human capital acquisition expanding the tax base yet it also enhances political sophistication and participation at a cost to nondemocratic regimes to relax this tradeoff a regime can disseminate propaganda through its education system i show that even bayesian citizens can be influenced by propaganda by deterring political opposition propaganda can induce nondemocracies to invest in education when they otherwise would not improving social welfare when propaganda is too strong however it can generate a backlash using cross country and survey data i find evidence consistent with the predictions

social changes in impressionable years and adult political attitudes evidence from jewish expulsions in nazi germany this study provides evidence that individuals who grew up during the 1930 s jewish expulsions are less likely to show interest and participate in politics the estimates imply that at the mean individuals in their impressionable ages at the time of the expulsions are about 13 less likely to be interested in politics and 26 less likely to participate in politics these results are not found for individuals who were older at the time of the expulsions nor for those growing up during world war wwii results are robust to fixed region and birth year characteristics various definitions of impressionable ages and composition bias induced by differential migration and mortality rates across regions and cohorts the estimates are also not driven by other regional differences in 1930 s political participation party support catholic share exposure and destruction during wwii urbanization and other regional characteristics we provide evidence that the adverse effects on political attitudes we find are explained by a model of political participation emphasizing the role of civic skills and socioeconomic status acquired at younger ages exposure to the expulsions when young is associated with lower adult volunteerism trust church attendance and socioeconomic status

coordinating regime switches the canonical model of strategic complementarities between individual actions which exhibits multiple equilibria under perfect information is extended with heterogeneous agents and imperfect information agents observe their own cost of action and the history of the levels of aggregate activity the distribution of individual characteristics evolves through a random process and individuals are rational bayesians under plausible conditions there is a unique equilibrium with phases of high and low activity and random switches applications may be found in macroeconomics and revolutions

political economy of income distribution dynamics abstract income distribution varies considerably across countries it tends to become more equal with development in some countries but just the opposite occurs in other countries this paper provides a theoretical investigation of the persistent differences in income distribution across countries over time motivated by the relationship between income distribution and public spending at different school levels for a broad range of countries over the past 30 years the analysis centers on the role of public education where specific investments interact with political involvement by different socio economic groups socio economic groups may form lobbies to influence education policy making the formation of lobbies is endogenous persistent inequality is caused by persistent lobbying efforts of the wealthy that lead to an allocation of public education spending more biased toward them

convergence in per capita carbon dioxide emissions among g7 countries a tar panel unit root approach the subject of this paper is the examination the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions of the g7 countries during the 1960 2005 period in a nonlinear panel analysis framework in this approach first the linearity of the series was tested and when the linearity was rejected the threshold autoregressive tar panel unit root test which splits the data into two regimes was employed to examine the stationarity properties of the series because the null of linearity was rejected in the first step we tested the stationarity of the series using the tar panel unit root test in the tar panel unit root test we found that the united kingdom was the transition country whose per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions determined the switch from one regime to the other the results showed that convergence existed in the first regime and divergence in the second when we tested whether absolute or conditional convergence existed we found that the per capita co2 emissions were conditionally converging in the first regime

oligarchy democracy inequality and growth abstract this paper analyses the dynamics of inequality democratization and economic development in a political economy model of growth where education is both the engine of growth and a determinant of political participation in a context with imperfect capital markets we investigate the incentives for an educated oligarchy to subsidize the poor s education and to initiate a democratic transition we characterize the equilibrium patterns of political institutions income distribution and growth as a function of the initial income and inequalities in particular we identify circumstances under which the elite promotes the endogenous emergence of a middle class for purely political economy reasons a simple linear infinite horizon framework is then presented in this setting we discuss the importance of historical dependence for long run social stratification and redistribution

are there civic returns to education abstract the hypothesized effects of educational attainment on adult civic engagement and attitudes provide some of the most important justifications for government intervention in the market for education in this study i present evidence on whether these externalities exist i assess and implement two strategies for identifying the effects of educational attainment one is based on the availability of junior and community colleges the other on changes in teen exposure to child labor laws the results suggest that educational attainment has large and statistically significant effects on subsequent voter participation and support for free speech i also find that additional schooling appears to increase the quality of civic knowledge as measured by the frequency of newspaper readership

information aggregation through costly political action information about various policy alternatives is dispersed among the individual members of a society prior to a vote over the alternatives some people take costly political action to signal their private information to voters by informing voting decisions political action has potential to decrease the likelihood that voters cast mistaken votes perhaps surprisingly preelection communication may be counterproductive the dispersed information is partially aggregated by the vote and political action may contribute noise to the voting process in some cases the voting mechanism is more likely to implement the full information voting outcome in the absence of preelection political action copyright 1994 by american economic association

this mine is mine how minerals fuel conflicts in africa we combine georeferenced data on mining extraction of 14 minerals with information on conflict events at spatial resolution of 0 5 degree x 0 5 degree for all of africa between 1997 and 2010 exploiting exogenous variations in world prices we find a positive impact of mining on conflict at the local level quantitatively our estimates suggest that the historical rise in mineral prices commodity super cycle might explain up to one fourth of the average level of violence across african countries over the period we then document how a fighting group s control of a mining area contributes to escalation from local to global violence finally we analyze the impact of corporate practices and transparency initiatives in the mining industry

reevaluating the modernization hypothesis we revisit and critically reevaluate the widely accepted modernization hypothesis which claims that per capita income causes the creation and the consolidation of democracy existing studies find support for this hypothesis because they fail to control for the presence of omitted variables controlling for these factors either by including country fixed effects in a linear model or by including parameterized random effects in a nonlinear double hazard model removes the correlation between income and the likelihood of transitions to and from democratic regimes in addition the estimated fixed effects from the linear model are related to historical factors that affect both the level of income per capita and the likelihood of democracy in a country this evidence is consistent with the idea that events during critical historical junctures can lead to divergent political economic development paths some leading to prosperity and democracy others to relative poverty and non democracy

do political protests matter evidence from the tea party movement can protests cause political change or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences this paper studies the effect of the tea party movement in the united states which rose to prominence through a series of rallies across the country on april 15 tax day 2009 to identify the causal effect of protests we use an instrumental variables approach that exploits variation in rainfall on the day of the coordinated rallies weather on tax day robustly predicts rally attendance and the subsequent local strength of the movement as measured by donations media coverage social networking activity and later events we show that larger rallies cause an increase in turnout in favor of the republicans in the 2010 congressional elections and increase the likelihood that incumbent democratic representatives retire incumbent policymaking is affected as well representatives respond to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in congress finally the estimates imply significant multiplier effects for every protester republican votes increase by seven to fourteen votes together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy and they suggest that it is unlikely that these effects arise solely through the standard channel of private information revelation

inequality in landownership the emergence of human capital promoting institutions and the great divergence this paper suggests that inequality in the distribution of landownership adversely affected the emergence of human capital promoting institutions e g public schooling and thus the pace and the nature of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy contributing to the emergence of the great divergence in income per capita across countries the prediction of the theory regarding the adverse effect of the concentration of landownership on education expenditure is established empirically based on evidence from the beginning of the 20th century in the u s

energy and climate policy in china s twelfth five year plan a paradigm shift the twelfth five year plan fyp endorsed by the people s national congress in march 2011 plays a crucial role in shaping china s development trajectory over the next decades and especially for the fulfillment of the 40 45 carbon intensity reduction target by 2020 the plan will condition both the medium and long term perspectives of economic restructuring rebalance between the inclusive economic growth and environmental objectives which are compounded by multiple constraints faced by china such as aging population natural resources depletion energy supply security and environmental deterioration this article investigates the major energy and climate targets and actions specified in the 12th fyp to gain insights into the nature and magnitude of challenges and difficulties with regard to the medium and long run economic and environmental policies it points out that china should articulate sectoral policies with the global climate mitigation targets to avoid long term carbon lock in based on an in depth analysis of the objectives in the plan it is argued that the implementation should include mainstreaming developments of appropriate instruments to support cost effective energy efficiency improvements and carbon intensity reduction in the next five years

unequal societies income distribution and the social contract this paper develops a theory of inequality and the social contract aiming to explain how countries with similar economic and political fundamentals can sustain such different systems of social insurance fiscal redistribution and education finance as those of the united states and western europe with imperfect credit and insurance markets some redistributive policies can improve ex ante welfare and this implies that their political support tends to decrease with inequality conversely with credit constraints lower redistribution translates into more persistent inequality hence the potential for multiple steady states with mutually reinforcing high inequality and low redistribution or vice versa

the slave trade and the origins of mistrust in africa in a recent study nunn 2008 examines the long term impacts of africa s slave trade he finds that the slave trade which occurred over a period of more than 400 years had a significant negative effect on long term economic development although the article arguably identifies a negative causal relationship between the slave trade and income today the analysis is unable to establish the exact causal mechanisms underlying this reduced form relationship in this article we examine one of the channels through which the slave trade may affect economic development today combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we ask whether the slave trade caused a culture of mistrust to develop within africa initially slaves were captured primarily through state organized raids and warfare but as the trade progressed the environment of ubiquitous insecurity caused individuals to turn on others including friends and family members and to kidnap trick and sell each other into slavery sigismund wilhelm koelle 1854 p e h hair 1965 charles piot 1996 we hypothesize that in this environment a culture of mistrust may have evolved which may persist to this day we show that current differences in trust levels within africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and indian ocean slave trades combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today evidence from a variety of identification strategies suggests that the relationship is causal examining causal mechanisms we show that most of the impact of the slave trade is through factors that are internal to the individual such as cultural norms beliefs and values jel j15 n57 z13

rational choice and turnout turning out to vote is the most common and important act of political participation in any democracy voting is also less well understood and explained empirically than other political acts engaged in regularly by citizens turnout however presents a special problem for rational choice theories of politics for it is taken to be the paradigmatic example of the problem of collective action in which although all may benefit from voting it is rarely in the individual s self interest to vote this paper begins by examining the problem of explaining turnout a basic form of rational choice models of turnout is developed basic in the sense that it is common to all such models this basic model is shown to be incomplete and the two most important models the calculus of voting and the minimax regret model are illustrated as alternative ways to complete this basic model along with mention of game theoretic models their strengths and weaknesses are then assessed the remainder of the paper argues that rational choice accounts of turnout are possible the first step is to argue that turnout is not an especially problematic version of the collective action problem because it is for many a low cost low expected benefit decision a strategic politicians account of turnout and campaigns is examined next a reinterpretation of the intrinsic benefits of voting is then considered and is used to examine the most important substantive problem in the turnout literature its decline these steps i argue make theories of ordinary political decisions at once both more political and more integrated into the politics of the larger system

convergence of per capita co2 emissions across the globe insights via wavelet analysis abstract this paper examines the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions for 162 countries across the globe covering all income groups high income oecd high income non oecd middle income and low income countries as categorized by the world bank the incidence of stochastic convergence is analysed by making use of recently developed wavelet based unit root tests the existing studies on this subject make use of conventional unit root tests using time series and or panel data a serious drawback of these tests is that they analyse the stochastic behaviour of any series in time domain only whereas the stochastic process may behave differently across different frequencies as well thus wavelet methods are an obvious solution as they consider frequency dimension as well in addition to time dimension when analyzing the stochastic behaviour of any data series and hence these methods encompass the conventional unit root testing methodologies by providing a clear and complete picture of the stochastic process our empirical findings based on latest available time series annual data from 1960 to 2010 lend support in favor of convergence among 38 countries including 18 high income oecd countries 2 high income non oecd countries 13 middle income countries and 5 low income countries while for the rest of 124 countries the co2 emission series is found to be non stationary suggesting the divergence in these countries these findings are in contrast with the most of the existing studies which may be due to the use of wavelet based unit root tests that are of course better alternatives some policy implications evolve from the empirical findings

information manipulation coordination and regime change this article presents a model of information manipulation and political regime change there is a regime that can be overthrown but only if enough citizens participate in an uprising citizens are imperfectly informed about the regime s ability to resist an uprising and the regime can engage in propaganda that taken at face value makes the regime seem stronger than it truly is this coordination game with endogenous information manipulation has a unique equilibrium and the article gives a complete analytic characterization of the equilibrium s comparative statics holding fixed the number of signals available to citizens if the per unit signal precision is sufficiently high then the regime is harder to overthrow in contrast if the number of signals increases so that both total signal precision and the regime s costs of manipulation rise together then the regime is easier to overthrow unless there are strong economies of scale in information control

trust coordination and the industrial organization of political activism we study political activism by several interest groups with private signals when their ideological distance to the policymaker is small a low trust regime prevails agents frequently lobby even when it is unwarranted taking advantage of the cone rmation provided by others activism conversely the policymaker responds only to generalized pressure when ideological distance is large a high trust regime prevails lobbying behavior is disciplined by the potential contradiction from abstainers and the policymaker s response threshold is correspondingly lower within some intermediate range both equilibria coexist we then study the optimal organization of ine uence activities contrasting welfare levels when interest groups act independently and when they coordinate jel d72 d78 d82

does education improve citizenship evidence from the united states and the united kingdom abstract many studies document an association between schooling and civic participation but none credibly investigate causal links we explore the effect of extra schooling induced through compulsory schooling laws on the likelihood of becoming politically involved in the united states and the united kingdom we find that educational attainment is related to several measures of political interest and involvement in both countries we find a strong and robust relationship between education and voting for the united states but not for the united kingdom our us results approach the uk findings when conditioning on registration possibly indicating that registration rules present a barrier to participation

das human kapital a theory of the demise of the class structure this paper suggests that the demise of the capitalists workers class structure was a socio economic transformation orchestrated by the capitalists in reaction to the increasing importance of human capital in sustaining their profit rates physical capital accumulation in the process of industrialization enhanced the importance of human capital in production and generated incentives for capitalists to support the provision of public education for the masses triggering the demise of the existing class structure the implications of the theory are consistent with the voting patterns on england s education reform of 1902

fragile states and development policy it is widely recognized that fragile states are key symptoms of under development in many parts of the world such states are incapable of delivering basic services to their citizens and political violence is commonplace as of yet mainstream development economics has not dealt in any systematic way with such concerns and the implications for development assistance this paper puts forward a framework for analyzing fragile states and applies it to a variety development policies in different types of states

does improved local supply of schooling enhance intergenerational mobility in education evidence from jordan the impact of the growth of the local supply of public schools in the post colonial period on intergenerational mobility in education is a first order question in the arab world this question is examined in jordan using a unique dataset that links individual data on own schooling and parents schooling for adults from a household survey with the supply of schools in the subdistrict of birth at the time the individual was of age to enroll from a school census the identification strategy exploits the variation in the supply of basic and secondary public schools across cohorts and subdistricts of birth in jordan controlling for year and subdistrict of birth fixed effects and interactions of governorate and year of birth fixed effects the findings show that the local availability of basic public schools does in fact increase intergenerational mobility in education for instance a one standard deviation increase in the supply of basic public schools per 1 000 people reduces the father son and mother son associations of schooling by 18 20 percent and the father daughter and mother daughter associations by 33 44 percent however an increase in the local supply of secondary public schools does not seem to have an effect on the intergenerational mobility in education

geographical spread of global emissions within country inequalities are large and increasing abstract in spite of the extensive literature on greenhouse gas emission inequalities at the world wide level most of the evidence so far has been based on country level data however the within country dimension matters for both the implementation and the policy formation of climate policies as a preliminary step towards a better understanding of within country inequalities this paper measures their extent for the two major greenhouse gases co2 and ch4 over the 1970 2008 period using theil index decompositions we show that within country inequalities account for the bulk of global inequality and tend to increase over the sample period in contrast with diminishing between country inequalities including differences across sectors reveals that between sector inequalities matter more than between country inequalities and between sector inequalities become the dominant source of global inequality at the end of the sample period in the co2 case finally estimated social tensions arising from the disconnection between emissions and future damages turn out to be increasing as soon as within country disparities are taken into account these orders of magnitude should be kept in mind while discussing the efficiency and fairness of alternative paths in combating global warming

on the distribution of education and democracy this paper empirically analyzes the influence of education on democracy by controlling for unobservable heterogeneity and by taking into account the persistency of some of the variables the most novel finding is that an increase in the education attained by the majority of the population is what matters for the implementation and sustainability of democracy rather than the average years of schooling we show this result is robust to issues pertaining omitted variables outliers sample selection or a narrow definition of the variables used to measure democracy

stochastic convergence in per capita co2 emissions an approach from nonlinear stationarity analysis abstract this paper studies stochastic convergence of per capita co 2 emissions in 28 oecd countries for the 1901 2009 period the analysis is carried out at two aggregation levels first for the whole set of countries joint analysis and then separately for developed and developing states group analysis a powerful time series methodology adapted to a nonlinear framework that allows for quadratic trends with possibly smooth transition between regimes is applied this approach provides more robust conclusions in convergence path analysis enabling a robust detection of the presence and if so the number of changes in the level and or slope of the trend of the series b inferences on stationarity of relative per capita co 2 emissions conditionally on the presence of breaks and smooth transitions between regimes and c estimation of change locations in the convergence paths finally as stochastic convergence is attained when both stationarity around a trend and convergence simultaneously hold the linear approach proposed by tomljanovich and vogelsang 2002 is extended in order to allow for more general quadratic models overall joint analysis finds some evidence of stochastic convergence in per capita co 2 emissions some dispersion in terms of convergence is detected by the group analysis particularly among developed countries this is in accordance with per capita gdp not being the sole determinant of convergence in emissions with factors like search for more efficient technologies fossil fuel substitution innovation and possibly industry outsourcing also having a crucial role

the long term effects of africa s slave trades can part of africa s current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades to explore this question i use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during africa s slave trades i find a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance to better understand if the relationship is causal i examine the historical evidence on selection into the slave trades and use instrumental variables together the evidence suggests that the slave trades have had an adverse effect on economic development

protests and trust in the state evidence from african countries this paper provides empirical evidence that after protests citizens substantially revise their views on the current leader but also their trust in the country s institutions the empirical strategy exploits variation in the timing of an individual level survey and the proximity to social protests in 13 african countries first we find that trust in political leaders strongly and abruptly decreases after protests second trust in the country monitoring institutions plunges as well both effects are much stronger when protests are repressed by the government as no signs of distrust are recorded even a couple of days before the social conflicts protests can be interpreted as sudden signals sent on a leaders actions from which citizens extract information on their country fundamentals

the east european revolution of 1989 is it surprising that we were surprised many aspects of the east european revolution are controversial but on one point everyone agrees it caught the world by surprise even local dissidents were stunned by the sudden turn of events we will never know how many east europeans did foresee the explosion of 1989 but at each step accounts painted a picture of nations united in amazement to my knowledge only one study addresses the issue systematically four months after the breaching of the berlin wall the allensbach institute asked a broad sample of east germans a year ago did you expect such a peaceful revolution only 5 percent answered yes though 18 percent responded yes but not that fast fully 76 percent admitted to being totally surprised these figures are all the more remarkable given the i knew it would happen fallacy the human tendency to exaggerate foreknowledge baruch fischhoff and ruth beyth 1975 yet in hindsight the revolution appears as inevitable in each of the six countries the leadership was despised economic promises remained unfulfilled and basic freedoms existed only on paper more importantly winds of change in the soviet union were making soviet intervention increasingly unlikely but if the revolution was indeed inevitable why was it not foreseen what kept us from noticing signs that now after the fact are so plainly visible i preference falsification and revolutionary bandwagons

state capacity conflict and development the absence of state capacities to raise revenue and to support markets is a key factor in explaining the persistence of weak states this paper reports on an ongoing project to investigate the incentive to invest in such capacities the paper sets out a simple analytical structure in which state capacities are modeled as forward looking investments by government the approach highlights some determinants of state building including the risk of external or internal conflict the degree of political instability and dependence on natural resources throughout we link these state capacity investments to patterns of development and growth

where has all the education gone cross national data show no association between increases in human capital attributable to the rising educational attainment of the labor force and the rate of growth of output per worker this implies that the association of educational capital growth with conventional measures of total factor production is large strongly statistically significant and negative these are on average results derived from imposing a constant coefficient however the development impact of education varied widely across countries and has fallen short of expectations for three possible reasons first the institutional governance environment could have been sufficiently perverse that the accumulation of educational capital lowered economic growth second marginal returns to education could have fallen rapidly as the supply of educated labor expanded while demand remained stagnant third educational quality could have been so low that years of schooling created no human capital the extent and mix of these three phenomena vary from country to country in explaining the actual economic impact of education or the lack thereof

workers warriors and criminals social conflict in general equilibrium we incorporate appropriation activities social conflict into canonical models of trade and study how economic shocks and policies affect the intensity of conflict we show that not all shocks that could make society richer reduce conflict positive shocks to labor intensive industries diminish conflict while positive shocks to capital intensive industries increase it the key requirement is that conflict activities be more labor intensive than the economy as this determines how shocks affect the returns and costs of conflict our theory is consistent with several observed patterns of conflict and implies that empirical work should take into account the relative factor intensities of the productive and conflict sectors in each country incorporating appropriation into a canonic general equilibrium model affects what policies may be deemed desirable in order to reduce conflict and generate pareto improvements policy must be distortionary while reforms that appear efficiency enhancing under the unrealistic assumption of perfect property rights may backfire this offers one explanation for why reforms based on traditional models without appropriation may be delayed and become unpopular when implemented and why societies may sympathize with seemingly inefficient redistribution

education and human capital externalities evidence from colonial benin colonial benin we investigate the effect of education on living standards occupation and political participation since both school locations and student cohorts were selected with very little information treatment and control groups are balanced on observables we can therefore estimate the effect of education by comparing the treated to the untreated living in the same village as well as those living in villages where no schools were set up we find a significant positive treatment effect of education for the first generation of students as well as their descendants they have higher living standards are less likely to be farmers and are more likely to be politically active we find large village level externalities descendants of the uneducated in villages with schools do better than those in control villages we also find extended family externalities nephews and nieces directly benefit from their uncle s education and show that this represents a family tax as educated uncles transfer resources to the extended family

war and local collective action in sierra leone abstract we study the brutal 1991 2002 sierra leone civil war using nationally representative household data on conflict experiences postwar economic outcomes local politics and collective action individuals whose households directly experienced more intense war violence are robustly more likely to attend community meetings more likely to join local political and community groups and more likely to vote tests using prewar controls and alternative samples suggest that selection into victimization is unlikely to be driving the results more speculatively the findings could help partially explain the rapid postwar political and economic recoveries observed in sierra leone and after several other recent african civil wars

convergence of carbon emissions at the household level in china a distribution dynamics approach abstract since household carbon emissions hces have become a new growing source and a significant contributor to global emissions the reduction of hces is crucial to formulate targeted and effective emission mitigation policies we need to fully understand the characteristics of the distribution and evolution of per capita hces and their urban rural and regional heterogeneity this paper explores the transitional dynamics of per capita hces in china by employing the distribution dynamics approach with panel data compiled at the household level we find that the overall per capita hces are unimodal distribution in the long run and the distribution dynamics of the per capita hces between the urban and rural areas or among the regional subgroups are quite different however the speed of convergence has accelerated over time moreover our findings indicate that the per capita hces in the urban areas will achieve convergence to an emission level much higher than that of the rural areas meantime the per capita hces in northeast china will converge to an emission level much higher than those of the other three regions these findings provide valuable insights for policymakers in implementing differentiated environmental policies for different regions and between urban and rural households in china

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

to segregate or to integrate education politics and democracy how is the quality of public education affected by the presence of private schools for the rich theory and evidence suggest that the link depends crucially on the political system we develop a theory that integrates private education and fertility decisions with voting on public schooling expenditures we find that the presence of a large private education sector benefits public schools in a broad based democracy where politicians are responsive to low income families but crowds out public education spending in a society that is politically dominated by the rich the main predictions of the theory are consistent with state level data and micro data from the u s as well as cross country evidence from the programme for international student assessment study

does natural resource abundance increase latin american income inequality abstract why is income inequality higher in latin america than in east asia is this phenomenon related to the region s natural resource abundance is it a contributor to latin america s slow and narrowly focused human capital accumulation if so can anything be done to reverse the latin american trends or should we think of the region s fate as unalterable to help answer these questions this paper draws upon standard trade theory and cross sectional empirical analysis to demonstrate that natural resource intensive sectors particularly permanent agriculture absorb capital that might otherwise flow to manufacturing this depresses workers incentive to accumulate skill and delays industrialization

from education to democracy the conventional wisdom views high levels of education as a prerequisite for democracy this paper shows that existing evidence for this view is based on crosssectional correlations which disappear once we look at within country variation in other words there is no evidence that countries that increase their education are more likely to become democratic

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

schooling political participation and the economy abstract we investigate how the link between individual schooling and political participation is affected by country characteristics using individual survey data we find that political participation is more responsive to schooling in land abundant countries and less responsive in human capital abundant countries even while controlling for country political institutions and cultural attitudes we find related evidence that political participation is less responsive to schooling in countries with a higher skill premium as well as within countries for individuals in skilled occupations the evidence motivates a theoretical explanation in which patterns of political participation are influenced by the opportunity cost of engaging in political rather than production activities

multiplicative structural decomposition analysis of aggregate embodied energy and emission intensities abstract aggregate intensity indicators such as the ratio of a country s energy and emissions to its gdp are often used by researchers and policymakers to study energy and environmental performance this paper analyzes the relationship between energy or emissions and value added or gdp from a different viewpoint namely from the demand rather than the production perspective using the input output i o framework the aggregate embodied intensity aei defined as the ratio of embodied energy or emissions to embodied value added can be defined at the aggregate final demand category and sectoral levels the total aggregate intensity can be presented as a weighted sum of the aeis at the final demand category or sectoral level changes of the aei at different levels can be decomposed to identify the driving forces using multiplicative sda a study using the latest 2007 and 2012 datasets of china indicates that a its aggregate intensity of co 2 emissions was mainly determined by the aei in investment and b the emission intensity effect generally contributed the most to the aei ratio changes at different levels the proposed framework can be applied to other aggregate intensity indicators and extended to multi country region analysis

information cascades and revolutionary regime transitions we combine acemoglu and robinson s model of the economic origins of democracy with lohmann s model of political mass protest this allows us to analyse the economic causes of political regime change based on the microfoundations of revolution we are able to derive conditions under which democracy arises peacefully when it occurs only after a revolution and when oligarchy persists we model these possibilities in a world of asymmetric information where information cascades are possible and where these cascades may involve errors in the sense that they make everyone worse off

why did the west extend the franchise democracy inequality and growth in historical perspective during the nineteenth century most western societies extended voting rights a decision that led to unprecedented redistributive programs we argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by the political elite to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution political transition rather than redistribution under existing political institutions occurs because current transfers do not ensure future transfers while the extension of the franchise changes future political equilibria and acts as a commitment to redistribution our theory also offers a novel explanation for the kuznets curve in many western economies during this period with the fall in inequality following redistribution due to democratization i introduction the nineteenth century was a period of fundamental political reform and unprecedented changes in taxation and redistribution britain for example was transformed from an oligarchy run by an elite to a democracy the franchise was extended in 1832 and then again in 1867 and 1884 transferring voting rights to portions of the society with no previous political representation the decades after the political reforms witnessed radical social reforms increased taxation and the extension of education to the masses moreover as noted by kuznets inequality which was previously increasing started to decline during this period the gini coefficient for income inequality in england and wales had risen from 0 400 in 1823 to 0 627 in 1871 but fell to 0 443 in 1901 two key factors in the reduction in inequality were the increase in the proportion of skilled workers williamson 1985 and the redistribution of income toward the poorer segments of the society for example taxes rose from 8 12 percent of national product in 1867 to 18 8 percent by 1927 and the progressivity of the tax system increased substantially see lindert 1989

income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions the case of chinese urban households abstract this paper draws on chinese survey data to investigate variations in carbon dioxide emissions across households with different income levels rich households generate more emissions per capita than poor households via both their direct energy consumption and their higher expenditure on goods and services that use energy as an intermediate input an econometric analysis confirms a positive relationship between emissions and income and establishes a slightly increasing marginal propensity to emit mpe over the relevant income range the redistribution of income from rich to poor households is therefore shown to reduce aggregate household emissions suggesting that the twin pursuits of reducing inequality and emissions can be achieved in tandem

rational choice theory and the paradox of not voting at least since downs s 1957 seminal work an economic theory of democracy rational choice theorists have appreciated the paradox of not voting in a large election the probability that an individual vote might change the election outcome is vanishingly small if each person only votes for the purpose of influencing the election outcome then even a small cost to vote like a minor schedule conflict or mildly bad weather should dissuade anyone from voting yet it seems that many people will put up with long lines daunting registration requirements and even the threat of physical violence or arrest in order to vote given the central place of voting within political economy the lack of an adequate rational choice model of large elections with costly voting presents an obvious problem for the most part theorists have bypassed the turnout problem either by eliminating voters as strategic actors or by assuming that the decision to vote is independent of other strategic choices the problem with the first approach is that the empirical literature on voting behavior provides considerable evidence of apparently strategic behavior in primary elections there is evidence that voters condition their vote choice on the viability of candidates abramson aldrich paolino and rohde 1992 in a seminal and comprehensive study cox 1997 shows that voting patterns and election outcomes are broadly consistent with patterns of behavior predicted by strategic voting models for example under plurality rule in which the candidate with the most votes wins the election

political economy in a changing world we provide a general framework for the analysis of institutional dynamics in an environment in which payoffs and political powers change stochastically assuming that economic and political institutions as well as individual types can be ordered and preferences and the distribution of political power satisfy natural single crossing increasing differences conditions we prove existence of a pure strategy markov voting equilibrium provide conditions for its uniqueness and present a number of comparative static results we then use this framework to study the dynamics of political rights and repression in the presence of threats from extremist groups and the dynamics of collective experimentation

electoral competition under the threat of political unrest this paper examines how voting and the outcomesof majority rule elections are affected by factors beyond the control of the winning party we present a model that helps to predict how threats against the electoral process ineuence 1 platform choice by political parties 2 which party wins the election and 3 the policy outcomes enally implemented in a democracy where the majority winner sets policy dissatiseed groups including groups outside the electoral process may still be able to interfere with that policy a losing party may organize a coup voters may riot unions may go on strike investors may take their capital abroad terrorists and foreign powers may threaten disruption and loss of life foreign powers may withdraw aid or even impose a trade embargo we analyze the effect of these nonelectoral factors on electoral outcomes we consider a majority rule electoral competition between two political parties with ideal policies lying to either side of the median voter s ideal policy we allow for only a one dimensional policy space but the disruption possibility leads to a twodimensional outcome space as evident in the examples given above the actors threaten

income and democracy existing studies establish a strong cross country correlation between income and democracy but do not control for factors that simultaneously affect both variables we show that controlling for such factors by including country fixed effects removes the statistical association between income per capita and vari ous measures of democracy we present instrumental variables estimates that also show no causal effect of income on democracy the cross country corre lation between income and democracy reflects a positive correlation between changes in income and democracy over the past 500 years this pattern is con sistent with the idea that societies embarked on divergent political economic development paths at certain critical junctures jel d7 e 1

when the squeakiest wheel gets the most oil exploiting one s nuisance power abstract in this paper a lobby group or union may influence public policy because it is able via a costly signal such as a boycott or a strike to negatively impact the image of decision makers the competence of a government is measured by its ability to do a lot with only a little money voters receive through observing the level of public output only a noisy signal of government s quality so that the lobby groups which are better informed may transmit to them more precise information about it we show that when unions are unbiased i e have no hostility against or sympathy for the incumbent government strikes may occur only when the government is bad consequently a strike in this case acts as a clear though costly signal to the public of an incompetent government when some or all unions or lobby groups are biased against the incumbent government we show that the possibility of strikes may distort the budget allocation away from the efficient one bad governments have a tendency to favor their political enemies while good governments favor their political enemies only when they are not overly biased

global convergence in per capita co2 emissions national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013 new huadu business school research fund

a nonparametric analysis of income convergence across the us states abstract in this paper i apply the nonparametric methods proposed by quah to data on us state relative income levels in contrast to quah s results using cross country data i find no evidence of polarization in the cross state income distribution the long run density implied by the estimates is strongly unimodal this finding is consistent with the results of previous analyses of convergence in state income levels using other methods