do female gender role attitudes affect labour market participation in egypt abstractwe analyse the inter generational relationship of attitudes towards gender roles and their impact on individuals labour market participations in egypt we find a strong correlation between mothers and daughters perceptions of gender roles unlike the existing literature perceptions are not associated with the labour market status even if we control for endogeneity issues using an instrumental variable regression furthermore higher educated females are more likely to be unemployed in egypt these results imply that perceptions among females are not translated into their labour market behaviour and the supply side policies alone may not be sufficient for improving young women s employment opportunities

the electoral impact of economic conditions who is held responsible a variety of recent research has dealt with the impact of economic conditions on congressional elections the underlying assumption of this research has been that the effects of economic fluctuations are distributed evenly across members of the president s party by focusing on subgroups of congressional candidates we demonstrate that the importance of economic conditions varies widely specifically we show that the aggregate electoral margins of incumbents are far more responsive to economic conditions than are those for nonincumbents and that among in party incumbents the relationship is stronger among those with higher levels of tenure further we demonstrate that the previous lack of individual level confirmation of the aggregate relationship has been due to a failure to control for the contextual effects implied by our conditional aggregate analysis with controls for district incumbency we find a relationship between retrospective personal financial condition and vote choice that mirrors the aggregate relationship between retrospective performance of the national economy and congressional vote totals

keeping the public purse an experiment in windfalls taxes and the incentives to restrain government it is widely believed that natural resource wealth foreign aid and other types of windfall revenue increase corruption and undermine accountability a predominant claim in political science is that windfalls free politicians from the need to tax resulting in a more politically quiescent population yet there is surprisingly little evidence to substantiate not only whether taxation has this eect but also why i use novel experiments to provide the rst micro level causal test of claims that 1 taxes motivate citizens more than windfalls to hold politicians accountable and 2 citizens care more about wasted revenue when they pay taxes the experiments were embedded in a public awareness campaign conducted with 1 863 citizens in a resource rich district in indonesia the results measured through a survey and a postcard campaign show that taxes made participants more willing to monitor government and hold politicians accountable than windfalls primarily because of a stronger sense of ownership over public funds yet when better information on government spending is made available the windfall group proved just as intolerant of misspent revenue these ndings have important implications for understanding not only how taxation motivates political action but also how revenue shapes the ways in which citizens acquire and process information on government spending

unemployment and the democratic electoral advantage this article calls into question the conventional wisdom that incumbent parties are rewarded when unemployment is low and punished when it is high using county level data on unemployment and election returns for 175 midterm gubernatorial elections and 4 presidential elections from 1994 to 2010 the analysis finds that unemployment and the democratic vote for president and governor move together other things being equal higher unemployment increases the vote shares of democratic candidates the effect is greatest when republicans are the incumbent party but democrats benefit from unemployment even when they are in control the explanation for these findings is that unemployment is a partisan issue for voters not a valence issue and that the democratic party owns unemployment when unemployment is high or rising democratic candidates can successfully convince voters that they are the party best able to solve the problem

discussion of the influence of elections on the accounting choices of governmental entities kido petacchi and weber 2012 investigate whether the occurrence of a state gubernatorial election is important to understanding the accrual choices of preparers of the state s comprehensive annual financial report central to the authors argument is the idea that voters do not like budget deficits politicians in response have incentives to use accounting choices to mask deficits in the period before elections focusing on a specific accrual the changes in compensated absences liability the authors find evidence that the discretionary part of this accrual is smaller in the period before an election which is consistent with politicians attempting to improve the picture of the state s financial health in addition the authors show that accrual manipulation is positively associated with the vote share of incumbent governors in elections in my discussion i ask two questions 1 how strong are governors political incentives to manipulate accruals in the run up to elections 2 can the association between discretionary compensated absence accruals and elections be explained by forces other than politically motivated accounting manipulation i argue that the incentives to manipulate accruals might well be weak given strong disciplinary mechanisms that induce politicians to transparency what s more i document that elections might produce patterns in state employment as the compensated absences liability is linked to the payroll election induced changes in state employment might be reflected in this accrual evidence of an association between the compensated absences accrual and elections then does not necessarily imply that politicians manage accounting numbers to further illustrate this point i show empirically that gubernatorial elections have little explanatory power for state financial reporting choices that are unaffected by state employment jel classification h70 h72 m41

gender role attitudes and the labour market outcomes of women across oecd countries this paper uses data from the world value surveys 1990 1995 1999 to investigate the impact of gender role attitudes and work values on women s labour market outcomes across 25 oecd countries anti egalitarian views are found to display the strongest negative association with female employment rates and the gender pay gap these views are however softening among recent cohorts on the other hand perceptions of women s role as homemakers which are likely formed in youth and linked to religious ideology are more persistent over time they could be implicated in the recent slowdown of the gender convergence in pay finally the unavoidable clash between family values and egalitarian views that takes the form of an inner conflict for many women the so called mother s guilt is another obstacle in the path towards greater gender equality in the labour market copyright 2005 oxford university press

characterization of the von neumann morgenstern stable set in a non cooperative model of dynamic policy making with a persistent agenda setter abstract we generalize the dynamic bargaining game of diermeier and fong 2011 to arbitrary quota rules to provide a non cooperative characterization of the von neumann morgenstern stable set assuming that players are sufficiently patient and have strict preferences a pure strategy stationary equilibrium exists and in any such equilibrium a policy is a steady state if and only if it is in the stable set the result provides a non cooperative foundation of stable sets in settings with dynamic policy making and a persistent agenda setter

changes in the labor supply behavior of married women 1980 2000 using march current population survey data we investigate married women s labor supply from 1980 to 2000 we find a large rightward shift in their labor supply function for annual hours in the 1980s with little shift in the 1990s these shifts account for most of the slowdown in the growth of labor supply during this period a major development was the dramatic decrease in the responsiveness of married women s labor supply to their own and husbands wages their own wage elasticity fell by 50 56 while their cross wage elasticity fell by 38 47 in absolute value

state economies and state taxes do voters hold governors accountable theory states have sufficient autonomy in the policies they adopt that voters hold state officials partly responsible for the condition of the state economy as the best known state official elected by a statewide constituency governors in particular are held accountable for the economic performance of their states with respect to taxes the clear locus of responsibility in state actions and the high visibility of certain taxes suggest that governors will also be held responsible for increased rates hypotheses the performance of the state economy tax increases and voters personal financial situations all influence voting behavior in gubernatorial elections methods logit equations using 1986 abc washington post exit polls in 34 of 36 gubernatorial races combined with economic and tax data from the states results a poor state economy increases in taxes and lowered personal finances all contribute to votes against incumbent governors and their parties

an intergenerational model of wages hours and earnings we develop a model in which a set of unobserved parental and sibling factors drives wages and work preferences these factors lead to similarities within families in wages work hours and earnings we estimate the model using data on parents and siblings in the national longitudinal surveys we find that parental and sibling wage factors influence the wages of both sons and daughters we also find strong similarities in work hours that run along gender lines and are due primarily to linkages in preferences the effect of wages on earnings is direct rather than through a labor supply response

gubernatorial midterm slumps this article studies gubernatorial midterm slumps in u s state legislative elections we employ a regression discontinuity design which allows us to rule out the hypothesis that the midterm slump simply reflects a type of reversion to the mean generated by simple partisan swings or the withdrawal of gubernatorial coattails or anticipatory balancing our results show that the party of the governor experiences an average seat share loss of about 3 5 percentage points we also find evidence suggesting that a large share of the variation in gubernatorial midterm slumps can be accounted for by 1 crude partisan balancing and 2 referendums on state economic performance with approximately equal weight given to each

dynamic pivotal politics we analyze a dynamic extension of a parsimonious model of lawmaking in which preferences evolve over time and today s policy becomes tomorrow s status quo unlike in existing models of pivotal politics policy makers voting behavior depends on the institutional environment and on their expectations about future economic and political shocks relative to sincere voting the equilibrium behavior exhibits a strategic polarization effect which increases with the degree of consensus required by the institution the volatility of the policy environment and the expected ideological polarization of the future policy makers the equilibrium behavior also exhibits a strategic policy bias which works against any exogenous policy bias embedded in the voting rule our analysis implies that the existing literature underestimates the inertial effect of checks and balances and overestimates the impact of institutional biases such as fiscally conservative budget procedures

gender roles and human capital inverstment the relationship between traditional attitudes and female labour market performance this paper investigates the relationship between the labour market behaviour of females and their attitudes towards traditional gender roles an attitudes index is constructed by employing individuals responses to statements related to the role of women and examined to determine whether it is correlated with individual characteristics the paper examines whether these attitudes influence human capital attainment and whether they are weakly exogenous to educational attainment it also focuses on the impact of these traditio nal attitudes upon labour supply and the return to education the results are dramatic it is found that females attitudes towards working women are developed in their youth and result in substantial reductions in their human capital investment labour supply and rates of return to education furthermore it is found that these attitudes are determined outside the educational process

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

on dynamic compromise abstract most legislatures require the consent of only a simple majority to pass a proposal so why don t legislative outcomes favor only a bare majority we show that compromise can be achieved if legislators are neither too impatient nor too patient and initial allocations are not too unequal the compromise is only sustainable if starting from the unequal allocations there is a possibility of spiraling towards a complete absence of compromise we find that the range of discount factors for which the equilibrium exists increases as the number of legislators increases in this sense compromise is easier in larger legislatures

economic voting and multilevel governance a comparative individual level analysis an important component of incumbent support is the reward punishment calculus of economic voting previous work has shown that clarity of responsibility within the central state government conditions national economic effects on incumbent vote choice where clarity is high low economic effects are greater less this article advances the clarity of responsibility argument by considering the effect of multilevel governance on economic voting in institutional contexts of multilevel governance the process of correctly assigning responsibility for economic outcomes can be difficult this article tests the proposition that multilevel governance mutes effects of national economic conditions by undermining responsibility linkages to the national government individual level data from the comparative study of electoral systems module 1 are used to test this proposition results demonstrate that economic voting is weakest in countries where multilevel governance is most prominent findings are discussed in light of the contribution to the economic voting literature and the potential implications of multilevel governance

mothers and sons preference formation and female labor force dynamics this paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of man one brought up in a family in which the mother worked has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time we present cross sectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work we use variation in the importance of world war ii as a shock to women s labor force participation as proxied by variation in the male draft rate across u s states to provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism

the economic consequences of political donation limits the economic consequences of limits on political donations depend on the degree of political competition donors who are ideologically aligned with candidates decide how much to contribute to their own candidate they may benefit from rent seeking by their own candidate but dislike rent seeking by the opposition increased rent seeking by politicians thus generates campaign contributions for themselves but also mobilizes donations to the opposing candidate potentially to a greater extent this latter effect acts as a deterrent to rent seeking when contributions finance electoral campaigns and positively affect election chances when political competition is low incumbent donors outnumber opposition donors and limits reduce rent seeking when political competition is high donors are equalized and laissez faire reduces rent seeking consistent with these hypotheses data from the us states suggest that limits are associated with better policies and stronger growth performance at low levels of political competition whilst laissez faire is preferred when political competition is high

a control function approach to endogeneity in consumer choice models abstract endogeneity arises for numerous reasons in models of consumer choice it leads to inconsistency with standard estimation methods that maintain independence between the model s error and the included variables the authors describe a control function approach for handling endogeneity in choice models observed variables and economic theory are used to derive controls for the dependence between the endogenous variable and the demand error the theory points to the relationships that contain information on the unobserved demand factor such as the pricing equation and the advertising equation the authors approach is an alternative to berry levinsohn and pakes s 1995 product market controls for unobserved quality the authors apply both methods to examine households choices among television options including basic and premium cable packages in which unobserved attributes such as quality of programming are expected to be correlated with price without correcting for endogeneity aggregate d

endogeneity and individual consumer choice abstract in many markets there is likely to be correlation both across periods in terms of the choices of one consumer and across consumers in terms of their choices in each period the former is caused by consumer heterogeneity and the latter may be the result of demand common shocks across consumers furthermore if firms partially observe these common shocks their market decisions may end up being endogenous and correlated with the common shocks because researchers cannot typically fully observe consumer heterogeneity and the common shocks the estimation method must account for the endogeneity of firms decisions in this article the authors present a test for endogeneity under unobserved consumer heterogeneity and common shocks which is based on a quasi likelihood estimation method to estimate the model parameters consistently when endogenous firm behavior unobserved heterogeneity and common shocks are present the test examines the differences in general method of moments coefficient estima

legal efficiency and consistency abstract we analyze the efficiency and consistency of court decisions under common and civil law as a leading example we study the enforcement of property rights judges are of two types some are conservative and follow the precedent or the statute while others maximize social welfare when courts intervene ex post after the relevant economic choices have been made welfare maximizing courts face a commitment problem such an ex post bias has implications on the relative consistency and efficiency of each legal system surprisingly we find that court decisions are more consistent under common law than under civil law the welfare comparison between the two systems is instead ambiguous however in changing economic environments common law is more likely to dominate civil law because of its greater adaptability

tax innovation in the states capitalizing on political opportunity this paper assesses the factors that prompt states to adopt taxes during the twentieth century we test five explanations of state tax innovation derived from the literature economic development fiscal health election cycle party control and regional diffusion using event history analysis a pooled cross sectional time series technique while little support is found for the economic development and party control explanations our empirical results are highly consistent with a political opportunity explanation of state tax adoptions 1 the presence of a long time until the next election 2 the existence of a fiscal crisis and 3 the presence of neighboring states that have previously adopted a tax all create opportunities for politicians to shield themselves from the political costs of supporting a tax increase and are all shown by empirical analysis to increase the probability of a tax adoption this empirical evidence is consistent across different tax instruments and different periods of analysis throughout the twentieth century

political economy of redistribution it is often argued that additional constraints on redistribution such as granting veto power to more players in society better protects property from expropriation we use a model of multilateral bargaining to demonstrate that this intuition may be flawed increasing the number of veto players or raising the supermajority requirement for redistribution may reduce protection on the equilibrium path the reason is the existence of two distinct mechanisms of property protection one is formal constraints that allow individuals or groups to block any redistribution that is not in their favor the other occurs in equilibrium where players without such powers protect each other from redistribution players without formal veto power anticipate that the expropriation of other similar players will ultimately hurt them and thus combine their influence to prevent redistributions in a stable allocation the society exhibits a class structure with class members having equal wealth and strategically protecting each other from redistribution

the politics of tax increases in the states this paper updates a recent study of the factors prompting states to adopt new tax instruments by testing the explanation supported in the original work over a longer time period and broadening the pooled cross sectional time series analysis to include increases in the rates of existing tax instruments our results are consistent with the original study s support for a political opportunity explanation that suggests that politicians are most likely to adopt tax increases when the electoral risks of doing so are minimized

are politicians really paid like bureaucrats abstract we provide the first empirical analysis of gubernatorial pay using u s data for 1950 90 we document substantial variation in the wages of politicians both across states and over time gubernatorial wages respond to changes in state income per capita and taxes we estimate that governors receive a 1 percent pay cut for each 10 percent increase in per capita tax payments and a 4 5 percent increase in pay for each 10 percent increase in income per capita in their states there is evidence that the tax elasticity reflects a form of reward for performance the evidence for the income elasticity of pay is less conclusive but is suggestive of rent extraction motives finally we find that democratic institutions play an important role in shaping pay for example voter initiatives and the presence of political opposition significantly reduce the income elasticity of pay and increase tax elasticities of pay