expropriation and direct investment abstract the paper considers a model in which private foreign investors make direct long lived capital investments in a small developing country that is subject to stochastic shocks to production depending upon the preferences of the host country we find that expropriation can occur because of either desperation or opportunism we show that under reasonable assumptions increased investment makes expropriation less likely to occur and that the level of investment chosen by atomistic foreign investors may be non optimal

endogenous federal grants and crowd out of state government spending theory and evidence from the federal highway aid program contrary to simple theoretical predictions existing evidence suggests that federal grants do not crowd out state government spending a legislative bargaining model with endogenous grants documents a positive correlation between grant receipts and preferences for public goods this correlation has likely biased existing work against measuring crowd out to correct for such endogeneity the model motivates instruments based on the political power of state congressional delegations exploiting this exogenous variation in grants the instrumental variables estimator reports crowd out that is statistically and economically significant this endogeneity may explain the flypaper effect a nonequivalence between grant receipts and private income jel d70 h40 h77

interest rates and currency prices in a two country world abstract this paper is a theoretical study of the determination of prices interest rates and currency exchange rates set in an infinitely lived two country world which is subject both to stochastic endowment shocks and to monetary instability formulas are obtained for pricing all equity claims nominally denominated bonds and currencies and these formulas are related to earlier closely related results in the theories of money finance international trade

consumption saving and fiscal policy when this year s nobel laureate robert solow and ely lecturer alan blinder teamed their impressive talents several years ago to ask does fiscal policy matter the answer they gave was a resounding yes working in a then sophisticated neo keynesian is lm tradition blinder and solow presented a parsimonious macroeconomic model and some statistical and historical evidence suggesting that changes in the weighted standardized government surplus did indeed substantially affect real economic activity the profession was pretty much convinced that the permanent income hypothesis pih or life cycle hypothesis lch almost provided a sufficient framework for analyzing consumption and saving and hence the effects of fiscal policy curiously the large keynesian effect of a tax induced rise in current disposable income was reconciled with the very small effect predicted by the longerhorizon models with more of a whimper than a bang since then the profession has moved some distance from complete acceptance of the life cycle and permanent income hypotheses and perhaps even further from the traditional consumption function specification in vogue at that time indeed robert barro 1974 rekindled the notion that a tax fordebt swap would have no real effects an avalanche of analytical and empirical research has sharpened our understanding of the issues involved the econometric difficulties in estimating the relevant parameters and even the care necessary in defining what is meant when one asks whether fiscal policy has any real economic effects surprisingly despite numerous caveats new and improved data and estimation techniques and improved perspectives offered by analytical insights not yet prevalent when blinder and solow wrote their paper my conclusion is that their answer is essentially correct fiscal policy does matter both for short run stabilization purposes and for long run capital accumulation i believe the preponderance of the evidence strongly supports this view although the empirical research suggests that the impact of say tax cuts on consumption is perhaps only one third as large as the typical keynesian estimate of two decades ago but much larger than the neutrality predicted by ricardian equivalence or the very small effect predicted by the pih or lch

the capital gains and losses on u s government debt 1942 1987 the capital gains and losses on u s treasury securities are calculated and reported on a quarterly basis over the 1942 87 period these data are then used to calculate an adjusted measure of the federal budget deficit for the years 1975 87 whereas the rising trend in interest rates over the 1975 81 period substantially reduced the federal deficit this study shows that the reversal of that trend over the 1981 86 period contributed even more greatly to an increase in the deficit also calculated and reported are holding period rates of return on overall marketable treasury debt providing a contrast to existing interest rate series copyright 1989 by mit press

senate representation and coalition building in distributive politics p7 vhe senate s equal representation of states shapes coalition building in distributive politics the great variation in state population means that some states have far greater need for federal fttnds than others but all senators have equal voting weight as a result even though all senators votes are of equal value to the coalition builder they are not of equal prwice coalition builders can include benefits for small states at considerably less expense to program budgets than comparable benefits for more populous states building on formal models of coalition building two hypotheses are developed and tested first coalition builders will seek out less costly members to build supportive coalitions efficiently second the final outcomes of distributive policy will more closely reflect the preferences of small state senators than large state senators the hypotheses are tested by examining the 1991 and 1997 98 reauthorizations of federal surface transportation programs the findings support both hypotheses

commodity trade and international risk sharing how much do financial markets matter abstract this paper evaluates the social gains from international risk sharing in some simple general equilibrium models with output uncertainty a simulation model calibrated to selected moments of u s and japanese data estimates the incremental loss from a ban on international portfolio diversification to be on the order of 0 20 percent of output per year even the theoretical gains from asset trade may disappear under alternative sets of assumptions on preferences and technology the paper argues that the small magnitude of potential trade gains may help explain the apparently inconsistent findings of empirical studies on the degree of international capital mobility

impact of pension privatization on foreign direct investment summary we explore the causal effect of market oriented pension reform on net foreign direct investment fdi inflows in latin america and among the transitional economies of eastern europe and central asia both of which have experienced waves of pension privatization and fdi over the last two decades with our balanced panel of 42 countries over the 1991 2006 period we implement fixed effects models controlling for the decision to enact full or partial privatization of the public pension system and several other covariates whose choice is informed by the rich empirical literature on fdi our econometric results indicate that pension privatization triggers a significant increase in net fdi inflows and that the effect does not wane over time we estimate that full privatization increases fdi as a percentage of gdp by about 57 ceteris paribus

private capital flows capital controls and default risk abstract what has been the effect of the shift in emerging market capital flows toward private sector borrowers are emerging market capital flows more efficient if not can controls on capital flows improve welfare this paper shows that the answers depend on the form of default risk when private loans are enforceable but there is the risk that the government will default on behalf of all residents private lending is inefficient and capital controls are potentially pareto improving however when private agents may individually default capital flow subsidies are potentially pareto improving

communication in federal politics universalism policy uniformity and the optimal allocation of fiscal authority the paper presents a positive model of policy formation in federal legislatures when delegates engage in the strategic exchange of policy relevant information depending on the type of policy under consideration communication between delegates generally suffers from a bias that makes truthful communication difficult and sometimes impossible this generates inefficient federal policy choices that are often endogenously characterized by overspending universalism and uniformity building on these findings i develop a theory of fiscal de centralization which revisits the work of oates in a world of incomplete information and strategic communication empirical results from a cross section of us municipalities are consistent with the predicted pattern of spending

a theory of expropriation and deviations from perfect capital mobility there are many reasons why commodity trade fails to equate the rewards to factors of production in different countries consequently there is an incentive for factor movements between countries while movements of factors especially capital are important in the world economy they have not been sufficient to equate factor returns among countries the failure of capital flows to equate returns to capital is frequently attributed to political risks and left outside the sphere of economic analysis specifically investments abroad especially in ldc s are said to be more subject to the risk of expropriation or at least to unpredictable changes in the tax and exchange control regime adopted by the host country fears of foreign investors have often been realised williams i975 estimates that about 20 of the value of foreign investments carried into or made during i956 72 in ldc s was expropriated without compensation in this period in the past researchers in disciplines other than economics have been responsible for most of the analysis of expropriations we argue that an important set of economic considerations affect the nature of these impediments to capital mobility and this paper provides a theory of expropriation based on maximising behaviour by host countries and investors we use this theory to identify industry and national characteristics increasing the threat of expropriation and implying large deviations from equal returns on capital and to examine host country and home country policies minimising distortions from the threat of expropriation three broad conclusions follow from the analysis first the threat of expropriation can significantly distort the international allocation of capital even if the act of expropriation is relatively rare in the extreme acts of expropriation would never occur in a world of perfect foresight and rational decision making yet actions by investors to ensure that countries do not expropriate would be distorting second the ability of a country s government to expropriate foreign investments may actually reduce its welfare furthermore a host may be better off if home governments can retaliate against an expropriating country indeed an increase in the penalty imposed on an expropriating country may increase its welfare a government s power to expropriate after investments are made may alasdair smith and an associate editor made numerous valuable suggestions we would also like to thank g m grossman r w jones l a sjaastad n h stern and j e stiglitz for comments much of eaton s work on this paper was completed while he was a visitor at the graduate institute for international studies geneva an earlier version of this paper appeared under the same title as rpds

deficits and inflation an open economy model of the united states the deficit debate is a recurring theme in academic and political circles the controversy is over the effect of deficits on inflation and interest rates the existing body of empirical evidence does not resolve the controversy this paper focuses on the inflationary impact of deficits the model used is derived from a comprehensive is lm analysis which incorporates a foreign trade sector and a general price adoptive expectation adjustment mechanism we test the model using time series data for the united states from our results we conclude that nia deficits have no significant bearing on the rate of inflation

party government and the cohesive power of public plunder we argue that party government in the u s house of representatives rests on two pillars the pursuit of policy goals and the disbursement of particularistic benefits existing theories of party government argue that the majority party in the house is often successful in biasing policy outcomes in its favor in the process it creates policy losers among its own members who nevertheless support their party on procedural votes we posit that the majority party creates an incentive for even the policy losers to support a procedural coalition through judicious distribution of particularistic benefits that compensates policy losers at a rate commensurate with the policy losses that they suffer we evaluate our theory empirically using the concept of roll rates in conjunction with federal domestic outlays data for the period 1983 96 we find that within the majority party policy losers are favored in the distribution of pork barrel spending throughout this period

two sided expropriation and international equity contracts abstract the paper considers a model in which investors in two symmetrical countries can trade equity claims on their endowments the governments of the two countries expropriate the foreign owned securities if doing so raises domestic welfare in spite of the possibility of expropriation agents may still choose to hold completely pooled portfolios depending on preferences in the two countries increases in the level of domestic output can increase or decrease the probability of expropriation in the equilibria we consider agents hold too much foreign equity a reduction in foreign investment raises welfare by reducing the probability of expropriation

bureaucratic discretion or congressional control regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission this paper extends stigler and peltzman s approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature the model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications the paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior the first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion the second assumes that congress controls agency decisions the recent behavior of the federal trade commission provides the empirical setting substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over ftc decisions

the industrial organization of congress or why legislatures like firms are not organized as markets this paper provides a theory of legislative institutions that parallels the theory of the firm and the theory of contractual institutions like market institutions legislative institutions reflect two key components the goals or preferences of individuals here representatives seeking reelection and the relevant transactions costs we present three conclusions first we show how the legislative institutions enforce bargains among legislators second we explain why given the peculiar form of bargaining problems found in legislatures specific forms of nonmarket exchange prove superior to market exchange third our approach shows how the committee system limits the types of coalitions that may form on a particular issue

political preferences for the pork barrel a generalization this paper provides a rational explanation for the observation of oversized coalitions often approaching unanimous size in the realm of distributive policies distributive policies are those which concentrate benefits in specific geographic areas states congressional districts while spreading costs through general taxation the explanation offered here that legislators may rationally prefer universalism to hard ball coalition politics generalizes earlier work of weingast and fiorina in particular it extends their results to pork barrel politics i e projects that are economically inefficient and demonstrates how packages of economically inefficient projects can nevertheless be politically popular the main theoretical feature that induces preferences for universalism is uncertainty over the composition of winning coalitions and consequently the desire for the political insurance that universalism provides

distributive politics and the allocation of federal grants understanding the dynamics of policy distribution requires an appreciation of federal grant programs that have achieved a prominent place in nearly all areas of domestic policy the theoretical literature on distributive politics however focuses almost exclusively on a centralized top down view of policy distribution by examining the role of presidents legislators and bureaucrats scholars have ignored participants who have become key actors in the distribution of federal expenditures the recipient jurisdictions this analysis of the allocation patterns under six federal programs shows that local governments exert important influences on the distribution of federal grants and that the distributional patterns and their determinants vary over time the analysis also points out the importance of disaggregation by focusing on programs and recipient jurisdictions as opposed to total federal expenditures and regions states or congressional districts

political and economic influences on the bureaucratic allocation of federal funds the case of urban development action grants abstract the distributive theory of politics predicts that federal budget allocations will be responsive to the committee position of congressmen and their majority minority party status but such political allocations are less likely where bureaucrats rather than legislators make the allocative decisions in such cases we must take into account bureaucratic motivations as well niskanen s bureaucratic budget maximization theory emphasizes such bureaucratic maximands and the efficient production of output or activity by the budget constrained bureau in this paper the two theories are tested using data from the urban development action grant program a capital subsidy program operated by the department of housing and urban development a set of political and bureaucratic decision criteria is employed as independent variables in a series of logit and tobit models in order to predict the likelihood of projects being funded and the amounts they will receive the political criteria are not significant in any specifications but the bureaucratic criteria suggest an investment maximizing risk avoidance strategy on the part of hud bureaucrats thus the results support the niskanen theory but do not support the distributive theory

the effects of congressional appropriation committee membership on the distribution of federal research funding to universities i introduction in 1994 members of the republican party pledged to seek legislation to impose term limits on members of congress this pledge stemmed from the popular belief that senior members of congress tend to promote personal interests or are more influenced by lobbying efforts that may not be representative of their constituents today term limits continue to be discussed but have not been enacted instead many members have focused their energies toward minimizing the time spent on any particular committee of congress believing that tenure on a committee is a more serious concern than simple tenure in congress implicit in these concerns is the issue whether as incumbent politicians plan to retire they will behave differently and if so whether tenure on a congressional committee exacerbates this behavior this article explores the role of membership on the appropriations committee on the distribution of federal research funding to universities specifically it explores whether funding is diverted to these universities because politicians use their position on a committee to promote personal or constituent interests previous research on shirking compares the voting records of politicians on certain issues with demographic and economic characteristics of the politicians constituents this article explores the issue of shirking differently i explore how membership on congressional appropriations committees affects the distribution of federal research funding to universities i look at two types of relationships between the members and the universities first i consider the relationship between members and the universities that are located in the members districts states in the case of senators second i examine the relationship between members and their undergraduate alma mater i use district representa tion to proxy favoritism that reflects a politician s constituents given that in most instances an alma mater affiliation is not the same as district representation i use alma mater affiliation to proxy favoritism that reflects the politician s personal interests federal research funding accounts for more than 60 of research funding received by research universities previous research has shown a positive impact of federal funding on research outcomes see adams and griliches 1998 arora and gambardella 1997 connolly 1997 payne and siow 2002 and payne 2001 except for payne and siow 2002 however these articles do not consider that political diversion of funds may promote or detract from research productivity as with any other federal program this article concentrates on the impact of membership on the house and senate appropriations committees because they wield the greatest power in the allocation of funding 1 using a panel data set spanning 26 years i explore how changes in the composition of the appropriations committees affects the distribution of research funding after controlling for the heterogeneity that exists across different universities the results suggest that both district representation and alma mater affiliation matter thus there is evidence of shirking for personal interests and evidence of members representing their constituents with respect to the representation of one s constituents the strongest results suggest that public universities benefit from representation on both the senate and house committees private universities however only benefit from representation in the senate with respect to alma mater affiliations the results suggest again that public universities benefit from representation on both the senate and house committees private universities also benefit from representation on both the senate and house committees the results also suggest that the tenure of the member on the committee matters as does whether the member is a part of the majority party in power in the congressional chamber

the measurement and significance of the cyclically adjusted federal budget and debt this paper summarizes new measures of the cyclically adjusted federal budget and federal debt and explores the relationship of these measures of fiscal policy to macroeconomic variables during the last quarter century the first part of the paper discusses the construction of the new measures the second part presents regression evidence suggesting that the cyclically adjusted debt is related to nominal gnp interest rates and the private stock of fixed capital

the political determination of intergovernmental grants in australia intergovernmental grants have been conventionally explained on the basis of either equity efficiency and or institutional considerations this paper seeks to model australian intergovernmental grants by including both traditional public finance variables and public choice influences that is grants are used by federal government politicians to purchase political capital thereby enhancing their own chances of reelection the models employed in this paper are tested for six australian states for the period 1981 82 to 1991 92 using unsystematic grant transfers the results provide support for these public choice considerations and highlight the importance of incorporating institutional factors and controlling for misspecification in the error structure in estimates of this type

the president and the distribution of federal spending scholarship on distributive politics focuses almost exclusively on the internal operations of congress paying particular attention to committees and majority parties this article highlights the president who has extensive opportunities both ex ante and ex post to influence the distribution of federal outlays we analyze two databases that track the geographic spending of nearly every domestic program over a 24 year period the largest and most comprehensive panels of federal spending patterns ever assembled using district and county fixed effects estimation strategies we find no evidence of committee influence and mixed evidence that majority party members receive larger shares of federal outlays we find that districts and counties receive systematically more federal outlays when legislators in the president s party represent them

the political economy of benefits and costs a neoclassical approach to distributive politics this essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions the model emphasizes the economically arbitrary from a welfare point of view importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation we explore the implications of a legislator s objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale

the ricardian equivalence proposition evidence from foreign exchange markets abstract the major argument against running large government budget deficits is that they raise interest rates and crowd out real investment conclusive evidence of a relationship between large budget deficits and high interest rates has not been found two competing explanations are tested by examining the impact of government udget announcements on foreign exchange rates the ricardian equivalence proposition that deficits have no crowding out effects is compared to the conventional open economy hhypothesis that capital mobility transfers these effects to foreign exchange rates the results supports the open economy hypothesis over the ricardian equivalence proposition jel f41

legislative term limits and state spending supporters of legislative term limits often claim that they will lower state spending levels using fiscal data from 48 states from 1977 to 2001 this paper finds little support for this assertion instead this analysis finds that states with term limits have higher spending levels than states without term limits these results suggest that term limits give legislators greater incentives to deviate from socially optimal fiscal policy by altering the legislative environment in which such policy is formulated

electoral goals and center state transfers a theoretical model and empirical evidence from india we construct a model of redistributive politics where the central government is opportunistic and uses its discretion to make transfers to state governments on the basis of political considerations these considerations are the alignment between the incumbent parties at the central and state levels and whether a state is a swing state or not a testable prediction from the model is that a state that is both swing and aligned with the central government is especially likely to receive higher transfers we test this prediction using indian data for 14 states from 1974 75 to 1996 97 we find that a state which is both aligned and swing in the last state election is estimated to receive 16 higher transfers than a state which is unaligned and non swing

state owned mncs and host country expropriation risk the role of home state soft power and economic gunboat diplomacy expropriation risk has a binding effect on foreign direct investment fdi however state owned multinational corporations may counter the monopoly power of the host state by leveraging the political influence of their home government the magnitude of this counter force we argue may vary depending on the strength of political relations between the home and host state and the level of economic dependence of the host country on the home market we find supporting evidence of our hypotheses using chinese firm level fdi information between 2003 and 2010

monetary policy bond returns and debt dynamics abstract using the government s intertemporal budget constraint we quantify the contribution of returns paid on the u s government s debt portfolio to the evolution of the debt to gdp ratio we show that announcements of unconventional monetary policy measures by the federal reserve between 2008 iv and 2012 as a part of macroeconomic stabilization were associated with a sizable increase in returns and debt to gdp ratios and contributed to fiscal imbalances we use the federal reserve s portfolio composition as a proxy for unconventional monetary policy measures and show that it is significantly related to future bond returns and fiscal balances

giving the people what they want the distribution of earmarks in the u s house of representatives the common wisdom in journalistic accounts of earmarking is that congress distributes earmarks on a purely political basis without any consideration for the demand for federal spending academic accounts similarly argue that factors internal to congress are preeminent in determining where earmarks go even more than for other types of pork barrel spending using earmarks appearing in the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bills i search for both chamber based and demand side determinants of the distribution of earmarks i find that both types of factors are significantly related to the number of earmarks that a house member receives this result indicates that even while earmarking members of congress are at least minimally responsive to voter preferences and calls into question whether earmarks should be treated as an outlier within the universe of spending allocation mechanisms

congressional committees and the political economy of federal outlays the literature on the organization of the united states congress has been dominated by distributive and informational theory one important source of disagreement between these two theories is their characterization of whether individual legislators can engage in pork barrel activities here we provide evidence which indicates that the pork barrel is alive and well in the contemporary united states congress we focus on whether members of power and constituency committees can direct disproportionate federal expenditures to their districts finding strong and systematic evidence of pork barrel activities by committee members provides empirical support for distributive theories of legislative organization

the committee assignment process and the conditional nature of committee bias the view that congressional committees tend to be biased subsets of their parent chambers provides the foundations for a substantial body of theoretical literature on distributive politics and legislative structure more recent revisionist work suggests that committees composed of preference outliers are in fact rare we reject the categorical account of preference outliers a priori and elaborate conditions under which committees should be unrepresentative of their parent chambers we argue that the most widely available and frequently used data floor roll call votes are inappropriate to the task of assessing outlier predictions in any form finally we conduct a differentiated set of hypothesis tests within one policy jurisdiction to illustrate the characteristics of evidence and analysis necessary to evaluate alternative theoretical accounts of legislative organization the appearance of policy relevant biases in congressional work groups we conclude is not so much rare as it is conditional and we suggest several conditions on which future models of legislative organization should build

tax policy and economic growth lessons from the 1980s the past seven years of u s economic policy and performance constitute a truly remarkable if confusing experiment few would have guessed in 1980 that inflation would fall rapidly to 4 percent and hold pretty steady during a lengthy recovery that productivity growth would partially rebound the national debt more than double capital imports reach 150 billion in a single year or that employment would continue to expand at rates envied by other advanced economies perhaps fewer still would have predicted two major and two minor tax reforms would be passed in six years a flip flop in depreciation schedules and a top personal tax rate below 30 percent while it is always easier to draw inferences concerning economic growth its determinants and policies affecting the determinants with long historical hindsight this paper will attempt to provide information evaluation and conjecture to draw some tentative lessons about the effects of tax policies in the 1980s on long run economic growth the good news from the 1980s is the remarkable achievement of substantially lower marginal tax rates making the government a much smaller silent partner in many economic decisions for example the tax advantage of debt finance is reduced substantially with the much lower marginal tax rates the bad news is that the nation could not afford all of the good news the very large budget deficits add to the instability in the tax code in addition to whatever other problems they cause moreover in a country with the lowest saving and investment rates in the advanced world the consequence of which may be to decrease our long run growth potential and short run trade competitiveness the remaining anti saving and investment features of our tax law while probably less important in the long run than the u s

estimating the value of proposal power this paper investigates the role of proposal power in the allocation of transportation projects across u s congressional districts in 1991 and 1998 the evidence supports the key qualitative prediction of legislative bargaining models members with proposal power those sitting on the transportation authorization committee secure more project spending for their districts than do other representatives support for the quantitative restrictions on the value of proposal power is more mixed i then empirically address several alternative models of legislative behavior including partisan models informational roles for committees models with appropriations committees and theories of committees as preference outliers

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

sovereign debt as intertemporal barter author s kletzer kenneth m wright brian d abstract borrowing and lending between sovereign parties is modeled as intertemporal barter that smoothes the consumption of a risk averse party subject to endowment shocks the surplus anticipated in the relationship offers sufficient incentive for cooperation by all parties including any other competitive agents who are potential lenders to the sovereign the sole punishments consist of renegotiation proof changes in the path of future payments we show that intertemporal trade can be sustained in the absence of any exogenous enforcement of lending relationships whatsoever that is borrowing and lending are possible under anarchy and are supported by punishments that consist of cheating any cheater long term implicit relationships may be fulfilled as the continual renegotiation of simple incomplete short term loans the analysis suggests that the crucial role of the explicit loan contract is the identification of the relationship and the parties involved

estrutura politica como determinante dos gastos federais this paper analyses federal expending distribution between brazilian states the hypothesis is that there are variables other than social and geographic ones that explain federal expending decisions country s political structure is also important to determine these choices positive theories of budget allocation such as congressional partisan and electoral are used to ascertain the role performed by political arrangements on the allocation of federal budget a set of political and electoral variables was used to test the importance of these theories the test of the hypothesis utilized a panel data of 27 brazilian states from 1999 to 2003 and the dependent variables used were states voluntary federal transferences and federal investment on states the results confirm the hypothesis indicating that representatives party alignment and voter s behavior on past elections influence resources distribution among states

the political economy of the essential air service program we find that congressional influences affect the amount of airport subsidies that a congressional district receives through the essential air service eas program the eas program was passed with the goal of helping to continue commercial air service to rural communities following deregulation in the 1970s using data from 1998 2014 we find strong and consistent evidence that subsidies are higher in districts having congressional representation on the house transportation and ways and means committees our empirical results when combined with news reports of members claiming credit for securing eas funding are consistent with the eas serving private and public interests

budget deficits short term real interest rates and the specification of expected inflation an empirical investigation the purpose of this paper is to illustrate whether empirical estimates of the effects of budget deficits on short term real interest rates are sensitive to the choice of the expected inflation variable survey data on expected inflation and the rational expectations method described by mishkin 1981 are used to construct two measures of the short term real interest rate results for two previous studies on this deficit interest rate relationship are re estimated using these measures of expected inflation and the interest rate variables additional results reported in this paper further indicate that empirical estimates of the interest rate effects of budget deficits are sensitive to the choice of the expected inflation variable in addition to the choice of the inflation variable a number of other robustness tests are included we are able to conclude that 1 increases in budget deficits do not generally raise short term real interest rates and 2 short term real interest rates are not independent of