profits and politics coordinating technology adoption in agriculture abstract this paper examines the political economy of government led coordination of economic activity in a simple two sector model in which individuals choice of agricultural technology affects industrialization we demonstrate the existence of multiple equilibria the economy is either characterized by the use of a traditional agricultural technology and a low level of industrialization or the use of a mechanized technology and a high level of industrialization relative to the traditional technology use of the mechanized technology increases output but leaves some population groups worse off we show that the distributional implications of choosing the mechanized technology restrict the possibility of pareto improving coordination by an elected policy maker even when we allow for income redistribution

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

public goods as characteristics of non market commodities in benefit cost analysis it is useful to model public goods as the quality of privately consumed nonmarketed goods this strategy is often pursued in valuing environmental amenities the theoretical foundations of this model have not been fully developed in this paper comparative statics results are derived for quality changes of nonmarket goods the results reveal some common misconceptions about welfare measurement of quality changes conditions are presented for a quality induced change in the marshallian consumer surplus of the nonmarket good to approximate the true compensated welfare measure the conditions are equally necessary for obtaining exact welfare measures copyright 1993 by royal economic society

why political reservations many countries are amending their political systems to set aside positions to groups such as women and racial or religious minorities that are perceived as being disadvantaged using evidence from india this article assesses the case for these reservations jel h4 o15 several countries have introduced procedures either explicit quotas or forms of gerrymandering to ensure political representation of disadvantaged groups such as women or ethnic minorities in 2001 quotas for women in parliaments were in force in more than 30 countries in india seats are reserved for historically disadvantaged groups scheduled castes or sc and scheduled tribes or st in federal or state legislative assemblies and for both historically disadvantaged groups and women at all levels of the panchayat system the system of decentralized decision making on the basis of evidence accumulated about the indian experience this paper reviews the case for reservation

good types in authoritarian elections the selectoral connection in chinese local congresses a new electoral design for subnational congress elections in china allows me to investigate the informational utility of authoritarian elections authoritarian regimes are notoriously bad at solving the moral hazard problem in the voter s agency relationship with politicians borrowing from the literature on political selection i theorize that authoritarian elections can nonetheless solve the adverse selection problem chinese voters can use their electoral power to select good types with personal qualities that signal they will reliably represent local interests i analyze original data from a survey of 4 071 chinese local congressmen and women including voter nominees and communist party nominees i find that voters do in fact overcome coordination difficulties to nominate and elect good types in contacting politicians about local problems after the elections however voters hedge their bets by contacting regime insiders too at these very local levels congressional representation by means of

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

money interest rates and exchange rates with endogenously segmented markets we analyze the effects of money injections on interest rates and exchange rates when agents must pay a baumol tobin style fixed cost to exchange bonds and money asset markets are endogenously segmented because this fixed cost leads agents to trade bonds and money infrequently when the government injects money through an open market operation only those agents that are currently trading absorb these injections through their impact on these agents consumption these money injections affect real interest rates and real exchange rates the model generates the observed negative relation between expected inflation and real interest rates as well as persistent liquidity effects in interest rates and volatile and persistent exchange rates

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

market power in a gis based hedonic price model of local farmland markets buyers of farmland are usually interested in parcels for sale that are close to their own farms with a limited number of parcels for sale this may lead to market power in local farmland markets the objective of this paper is to investigate whether market power affects farmland prices hedonic price models are adapted to allow for local market power of either sellers or buyers a distinction is made between rural and urban farmland markets the results provide evidence of market power effects in rural farmland markets however for farmland in urban areas market prices are dominated by speculation effects

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

breaking the caste barrier intergenerational mobility in india we contrast the intergenerational mobility rates of the historically disadvantaged scheduled castes and tribes sc st in india with the rest of the workforce in terms of their education attainment occupation choices and wages using survey data from successive rounds of the national sample survey between 1983 and 2005 we find that intergenerational education and income mobility rates of sc sts have converged to non sc st levels during this period moreover sc sts have matched non sc sts in occupation mobility rates we conclude that the last 20 years of structural changes in india have coincided with a breaking down of caste based barriers to socioeconomic mobility

the distribution of money balances and the nonneutrality of money recent monetary models with explicit microfoundations are made tractable by assuming that agents have access to centralized markets after one round of decentralized trade given quasi linear preferences this makes the distribution of money degenerate which keeps the models simple but precludes the discussion of distributional effects of monetary policy we generalize these models by assuming two rounds of trade before agents can readjust their money holdings to study a range of new distributional effects analytically we show that unexpected symmetric lump sum money injections may increase short run output and welfare whereas asymmetric injections may increase long run output and welfare

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

does political reservation for minorities affect child labor evidence from india summary this paper examines the impact of state level political reservation for two minority groups scheduled castes and scheduled tribes on the incidence of child labor in india we estimate the effect of political reservation on the incidence of child labor by exploiting the state variation in the share of seats reserved for the two minority groups in state legislative assemblies mandated by the constitution of india using data from state and household level surveys on fifteen major indian states we find that at the household level schedule tribe reservation decreases the incidence of child labor while scheduled caste reservation increases the total number of children working we examine these impacts on the general as well as the disadvantaged group population independently and across the gender of children we also explore potential explanations for the differential impact of sc and st political reservation including geographic isolation caste fragmentation support for the congress party and decentralization of power our results survive a variety of robustness checks

evaluation of the profitability of quality labels in rural tourism accommodation a hedonic approach using propensity score matching abstractin recent years quality labels for the spanish tourism sector have been developed as part of a competitive strategy focused on the differentiation of the product given this development it is interesting to analyse the profitability of quality labels for the accommodation owners and managers in particular this article calculates the profitability of a rural tourism quality label through the use of the hedonic price approach the market valuation of the quality label for rural self catering cottages is obtained this valuation is subsequently compared with the expenses incurred by establishments in achieving the quality label in order to address the usual methodological problems associated with the endogeneity prior to application of the hedonic approach the propensity score matching is used the results indicate that possessing a quality label has a positive impact on the profitability of rural tourism

beach nourishment as a dynamic capital accumulation problem abstract beach nourishment is a common coastal management strategy used to combat erosion along sandy coastlines it involves building out a beach with sand dredged from another location this paper develops a positive model of beach nourishment and generates testable hypotheses about how the frequency of nourishment responds to property values project costs erosion rates and discounting by treating the decision to nourish as a dynamic capital accumulation problem the model produces new insights about coupled economic geomorphological systems in particular determining whether the frequency of nourishment increases in response to physical and economic forces depends on whether the decay rate of nourishment sand exceeds the discount rate

do politicians preferences correspond to those of the voters an investigation of political representation this paper investigates political representation by exploring the relationship between citizens preferences and the preferences of their elected representatives using swedish survey data the empirical analysis shows that voters and politicians have significantly different preferences for local welfare services implying that voters do not elect representatives with the same preferences as their own the results show that when comparing a politician of a certain age gender educational level and marital status with a voter with identical characteristics the politician still has preferences for a significantly higher level of spending on the locally provided services hence our results indicate that the representation of different socio economic groups does not necessarily lead to a larger degree of representation of these groups agendas moreover we find the observed difference to be largest for the least salient expenditure item we do however not find any evidence for differences in preferences between the two groups being associated with a decline in trust for politicians among voters

the politics of public good provision evidence from indian local governments this paper uses village and household survey data from south india to examine how political geography and politician identity impacts on public good provision we provide evidence that the nature of this relationship varies by type of public good for high spillover public goods residential proximity to elected representative matters in contrast for low spillover public goods sharing the politician s group identity is what matters jel d78 h40

indivisible labor lotteries and equilibrium abstract this paper considers an economy where labor is indivisible and agents are identical although the discontinuity in labor supply at the individual level disappears as a result of aggregation it is shown that indivisible labor has strong consequences for the aggregate bahavior of the economy it is also shown that optimal allocations involve lotteries over employment and consumption

hedonic amenity valuation and functional form specification this paper uses gis data to develop variables representing the physical extent and visibility of surrounding land use cover features in a hedonic model of a rural suburban residential housing market three equations are estimated to determine if views

on the choice of funtional form for hedonic price functions this study examines how errors in measuring marginal attribute pric es vary with the form of the hedonic price function in simulations consumers with known utility functions bid for houses with given attributes various forms of the hedonic function are estimated using equilibrium housing prices errors in estimating marginal attribute prices are calculated by comparing each consumer s equilibrium marginal bid vector with the gradient of the hedonic function when all attributes are observed linear and quadratic box cox forms produce lowest mean percentage errors however when some attributes are unobserved or are replaced by proxies linear and linear box cox functions perform best copyright 1988 by mit press

the political economy of the maoist conflict in india an empirical analysis we study the maoist naxalite conflict in india by constructing a comprehensive district level database combining conflict data from four different terrorism databases to socioeconomic and geography data from myriad sources using data on 360 districts for three time periods we find that land inequality and lower incomes are important factors behind the conflict exploiting the micro structure of the data we show that growth of incomes of scheduled tribes significantly decreases the intensity of the conflict finally we show that historical property rights institutions from colonial times that go back centuries affect present day conflict outcomes

the political economy of public goods some evidence from india we are interested in how public goods get allocated by a centralized state we use data on public goods and social structure from parliamentary constituencies in rural india to understand the allocation of these goods over the 1970s and 1980s national policies and political agendas during this period emphasized universal access to basic amenities and financed a rapid expansion in rural infrastructure we find evidence of considerable equalization in many of these facilities reflecting perhaps the importance of these commitments among the historically disadvantaged social groups those that mobilized themselves politically gained relative to the others measures of social heterogeneity that have been emphasized in the recent empirical literature on public goods are relevant but not overwhelming in their importance

does access to formal agricultural credit depend on caste summary this paper analyzes whether caste impedes access to formal agricultural credit in india credit is provided mainly through cooperative and commercial banks using national data we find that cooperative banks discriminate against lower caste borrowers and find weak evidence that commercial banks instead bias lending in their favor in accordance with affirmative action policies we compare the organizational structures of the two types of bank and explain discrimination by cooperative banks in terms of interest group capture at the district level by showing that discrimination takes place in those districts where higher castes dominate

institutional corruption and election fraud evidence from a field experiment in afghanistan w e investigate the relationship between political networks weak institutions and election fraud during the 2010 parliamentary election in afghanistan combining i data on political connections between candidates and election officials ii a nationwide controlled evaluation of a novel monitoring technology and iii direct measurements of aggregation fraud we find considerable evidence of aggregation fraud in favor of connected candidates and that the announcement of a new monitoring technology reduced theft of election materials by about 60 percent and vote counts for connected candidates by about 25 percent the results have implications for electoral competition and are potentially actionable for policymakers jel c93 d02 d72 k42 o17

can mandated political representation increase policy influence for disadvantaged minorities theory and evidence from india accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities this paper exploits the institutional features of political reservation as practiced in indian states to examine the role of mandated political representation in providing disadvantaged groups influence over policy making ifind that political reservation has increased transfers to groups which benefit from the mandate this finding also suggests that complete policy commitment may be absent in democracies as is found in this case jel d72 d78 hl 1 h50

village elections public goods investments and pork barrel politics chinese style a key issue in political economy concerns the accountability that governance structures impose on public officials and how elections and representative democracy influence the allocation of public resources in this paper we utilise a unique set of survey data set from nearly 2450 randomly selected villages describing china s recent progress in village governance reforms and its relationship to the provision of public goods in rural china between 1998 and 2004 two sets of questions are investigated using an empirical framework based on a theoretical model in which local governments must decide to allocate fiscal resources between public goods investments and other expenditures the empirical analysis both in the descriptive and econometric analyses suggests that when the village leader is elected directly ceteris paribus the provision of public goods rises compared to when the leader is not elected directly by villagers thus in this way it is possible to conclude that democratisation at least at the village level in rural china appears to increase the quantity of public goods investment second we seek to understand the mechanism that is driving the results also based on the survey data we find that when village leaders who had been directly elected were able to implement more public projects during their terms of office they as the incumbent were more likely to be re elected in this way we argue that the link between elections and investment may be a rural china version of pork barrel politics

who becomes a politician can a democracy attract competent leaders while attaining broad representation economicmodels suggest that free riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative

independent candidates and political representation in india we estimate the causal effect of independent candidates on voter turnout and election outcomes in india to do this we exploit exogenous changes in the entry deposit candidates pay for their participation in the political process changes that disproportionately excluded candidates with no affiliation to established political parties a one standard deviation increase in the number of independent candidates increases voter turnout by more than 6 percentage points as some voters choose to vote rather than stay home the vote share of independent candidates increases by more than 10 percentage points as some existing voters switch who they vote for thus independents allow winning candidates to win with less vote share decrease the probability of electing a candidate from the governing coalition by about 31 percentage points and ultimately increase the probability of electing an ethnic party candidate altogether the results imply that the price of participation by independents is constituency representation in government

on money as a medium of exchange we analyze economies in which individuals specialize in consumption and production and meet randomly over time in a way that implies that trade must be bilateral and quid pro quo nash equilibria in trading strategies are characterized certain goods emerge endogenously as media of exchange or commodity money depending both on their intrinsic properties and on extrinsic beliefs there are also equilibria with genuine fiat currency circulating as the general medium of exchange we find that equilibria are not generally pareto optimal and that introducing fiat currency into a commodity money economy may unambiguously improve welfare velocity acceptability and liquidity are discussed

endogenous buyer seller choice and divisible money in search equilibrium abstract in the lagos wright model r lagos r wright a unified framework for monetary theory and policy analysis j polit economy 113 2005 463 484 the quasi linear preferences assumption is not necessary to generate simple distributions of money holdings if individuals choose endogenously to go to the search market as buyers or as sellers the non convex buyer seller choice provides an incentive for gambling in lotteries and as a result the value function has a linear interval as long as this interval is the relevant one for evaluating their future utilities individuals behave as if their preferences were quasi linear in the stationary equilibrium individuals remain inside this linear interval if the money supply does not decline

don t touch my road evidence from india on affirmative action and everyday discrimination summary this article investigates whether affirmative action in the form of electoral quotas affects group based discrimination the redistributive effect of quotas is subject to debate and their ultimate target is discrimination to identify the effect of electoral quotas i take advantage of their rotation across space and over time in india to proxy discrimination i use a measure of caste based exclusion from a public infrastructure namely streets in 2006 44 5 household members of the marginalized castes labeled scheduled castes sc still suffered from caste based exclusions i document that ongoing sc quotas reduce the likelihood of caste based exclusion for members of the scs by about one fifth the results also imply that the effect is not persistent it disappears with the end of the sc quota from a policy maker s perspective these results are mixed since electoral quotas do affect everyday discrimination even if the effect does not last these results are consistent with a temporary change in the behavior of members of the dominant castes after a one shot electoral quota these results are inconsistent with either a change in the stereotypes held by members of the dominant castes or a change in the aspirations of members of the lower castes

reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan conducted between 2005 and 2009 in sierra leone the study observed the impact of pre analysis plan pap on local institutions by imposing participation requirements for marginalized groups including women and test for learning by doing effects in sierra leone on the individual and village level requiring women and young adults to take on leadership positions participate in project meetings and sign off on project finances does not have any persistent effect on their participation in local decision making or attitudes regarding leadership ability the project successfully established village organizations and tools to manage the project the distributions of the project s benefits were equitable and leakage was minimal there was a significant positive impact on the stock and quality of local public infrastructure however there are no detectible changes in the ability to raise funds for local public goods decision making process or social norms and attitudes funding for the study derived from the gobifo project the institutional reform and capacity building project ircbp the world bank development impact evaluation dime the horace w goldsmith foundation the international growth center 3ie and the national bureau of economic research nber african successes project

do elected leaders in a limited democracy have real power evidence from rural china abstract do elected leaders in an authoritarian regime have any real power does grassroots democracy in a one party state entail parochial problems making use of primary survey data covering two election cycles in a mountainous area of china where an administrative village consists of several natural villages nvs we find that elected village heads favor their home nvs in resource allocations especially when these nvs have a large population in contrast the home nvs of appointed communist party secretaries do not receive disproportionately more resources on average this pattern of resource allocation is compatible with the interest of village heads and suggests that as elected leaders village heads have some true power in resource distribution

does political competition lessen ethnic discrimination evidence from sri lanka abstract the impact of political competition on ethnic discrimination remains largely unexplored to address this gap this paper explores the relationship between the level of political competition and the probability of receiving government transfers among ethnic minorities in sri lanka in the run up to the national elections of 2000 the paper shows that making politicians dependent on the votes of members of ethnic groups other their own can encourage moderation in discriminatory practices towards ethnic minorities specifically we find that political competition positively influenced the distribution of government food stamps among sri lankan tamils who otherwise are less likely to receive food stamps relative to the sinhalese majority the negative impact of political competition on discrimination is higher when minorities form part of swing constituencies than when they form part of the base support for political parties lessons learnt here suggest that having built in incentives in the design of the electoral process for intergroup bargaining and cooperation in countries with ethnically heterogeneous societies can be an effective restraint on ethnic discrimination this is consistent with other research that considers political institutions to be a key lever for making ethnically divided societies more inclusive

the spillover effects of affirmative action on competitiveness and unethical behavior we conduct an artefactual field experiment to examine various spillover effects of affirmative action policies in the context of castes in india we test a if individuals who enter tournaments in the presence of affirmative action policies remain competitive after the policy has been removed and b whether having been exposed to the policy generates unethical behavior and spite against subjects from the category who has benefited from the policy we find that these policies substantially increase the confidence and the competitiveness of the backward caste members however we find no spillover effect on confidence and competitiveness once affirmative action is withdrawn any gain in competitiveness due to the policy is then entirely wiped out furthermore the strong existing bias of the dominant category against the backward category is not significantly aggravated by affirmative action except when individuals learn that they have lost the previous competition

economic reform voting and local political intervention evidence from india abstract this paper uses the indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how voters hurt by economic reforms respond regions more hurt by the tariff reform increased their support for both the party that initiated their suffering and parties with similar preferences in favor of poverty centric policies this response is surprisingly sophisticated where voters did not simply punish incumbents for negative income shocks and correctly discounted initial anti reform stances by opposition parties that later turned out to be false furthermore the strength of this voting response varied with both geography and local political incentives suggesting that the economic effects of reforms might vary substantially in large and decentralized democracies

does the size of the legislature affect the size of government evidence from two natural experiments this paper makes use of regression discontinuity designs to estimate the effect of the number of legislators on the size of government the results indicate a negative effect i e the larger the size of the legislature the smaller is the size of government this runs counter to conventional wisdom one potential explanation is that more legislators can better control a budget maximizing bureaucracy i present evidence that is consistent with the proposed mechanism

a model of political competition with citizen candidates the authors develop a model of electoral competition in which citizens choose whether or not to run as candidates a winner implements her favorite policy the equilibrium number of candidates depends negatively on the cost of running and positively on the benefits of winning for some parameter values all equilibria under plurality rule have exactly two candidates whose positions are distinct two candidate elections are more likely under plurality rule than under a runoff system the candidates positions are less differentiated under a runoff system there exist equilibria under both systems in which some candidates have no chance of winning

choosing electoral rules theory and evidence from us cities this paper studies the choice of electoral rules in particular the question of minority representation majorities tend to disenfranchise minorities through strategic manipulation of electoral rules with the aim of explaining changes in electoral rules adopted by us cities particularly in the south we show why majorities tend to adopt winner take all city wide rules at large elections in response to an increase in the size of the minority when the minority they are facing is relatively small in this case for the majority it is more effective to leverage on its sheer size instead of risking to concede representation to voters from minority elected districts however as the minority becomes larger closer to a fifty fifty split the possibility of losing the whole city induces the majority to prefer minority votes to be confined in minority packed districts single member district rules serve this purpose we show empirical results consistent with these implications of the model

can gender quotas break down negative stereotypes evidence from changes in electoral rules abstract in this paper we analyze the effect of gender quotas on women s involvement in political activity by using a rich data set providing information on all italian local administrators who were elected from 1985 to 2007 gender quotas were introduced by law in italy in 1993 and were in force until 1995 because of the short period covered by the reform some municipalities never voted under the gender quota regime this allows us to identify a treatment and a control group and to estimate the effects of gender quotas by using a difference in differences estimation strategy our estimates show that women s representation in politics after the reform increased significantly more in municipalities that were affected by the reform than in municipalities that were not affected this result also holds true if we exclude from our analysis elections which took place during the period in which the reform was in force moreover the higher women s representation in gender quota municipalities is not related to the advantages that women who were elected during the reform have obtained from incumbency and does not seem to be driven by differences in temporal trends between southern and northern regions these findings suggest that affirmative actions can be of use in breaking down stereotypes against women

does tourism drive house prices in the oecd economies evidence from augmented mean group estimator abstract this paper provides cross country macro economic level evidence on the impact of tourism on house prices based on a panel of 20 oecd countries during the period 1995 to 2014 in its analysis the study also accounts for institutional quality banking credit per capita income and income inequality we employ augmented mean group amg estimator for the empirical investigation the findings derived from amg are robust and reliable as it accounts for cross sectional dependence and allows for heterogeneous slope coefficients across panel members the results show that tourism and its interaction with income inequality have a significant positive impact on house prices in the oecd economies the findings also suggest that the growth in banking credit and per capita income further increases house prices while institutional quality has the opposite impact these findings offer new policy insights and practical knowledge

estimating the residual demand curve facing a single firm this paper presents an econometric technique for estimating the single firm residual demand curve that does not require the estimation of demand cross elasticities the technique is particularly suited for the estimation of firm market power in product differentiated industries where cross elasticities are notoriously difficult to measure one estimated parameter is directly related to a firm s markup of price over marginal cost when product differentiation is extensive when an industry consists of a dominant firm and a price taking fringe when a consistent conjectures equilibrium is the correct oligopoly solution concept when firms are stackelberg leaders relative to their environment or when firms are perfect competitors the estimates can indicate power over price in other circumstances an instrumental variables technique is employed using firm individuated factor prices to identify firm specific residual demand yet even when instruments are unavailable the technique produces elasticity estimates biased in the conservative direction of disproving market power this methodology is applied to estimate the market power of three firms in an industry characterized by product differentiation brewing over our 1962 82 sample period pabst and coors had similar national market shares and each had high shares in several states yet pabst was virtually a price taker while coors possessed substantial market power anheuser busch had market power in the early part of the sample but little after 1975 when miller brewing changed the competitive nature of the industry

avoiding the inflation tax i study the effects of inflation on the purchasing behavior of buyers in the lagos wright monetary economy the standard framework fails to capture the long standing intuition that when inflation increases agents try to spend their money holdings speedily i propose a simple realistic extension in which buyers can rebalance their money holdings only sporadically i e not every period i show that in such a case higher inflation can induce buyers to spend their money faster by frontloading their consumption and searching more intensively for transactions these trade distortions have traditionally been associated with the economic costs of inflation

local favoritism in at large proportional representation systems abstract pork barrel spending is typically attributed to the strategic behavior of political elites hoping to be electorally rewarded by voters residing in their districts such behavior is expected to depend on the incentives imposed by the electoral system we estimate the causal effect of local representation in a closed list proportional representation system where individual candidates have no clear electoral incentive to favor their hometown using data from norwegian regional governments we still find a hometown bias we document that municipalities with a representative on the regional council from the same party as the regional governor tend to obtain more funding for local investments citizens also tend to vote more often for parties whose gubernatorial candidate is from their own hometown consistent with expectations of particularistic benefits a possible explanation is that regional council members are often recruited from local politics and remain loyal to their roots we find no evidence that regional council experience affects politicians future career prospects at the local level

a unified framework for monetary theory and policy analysis search theoretic models of monetary exchange are based on explicit descriptions of the frictions that make money essential however tractable versions of these models typically make strong assumptions that render them ill suited for monetary policy analysis we propose a new framework based on explicit micro foundations within which macro policy can be studied the framework is analytically tractable and easily quantifiable we calibrate the model to standard observations and use it to measure the cost of inflation we find that going from 10 percent to 0 percent inflation is worth between 3 and 5 percent of consumption much higher than previous estimates

public policy reform and informal institutions the political articulation of the demand for work in rural india summary the emphasis on rights that individual citizens can claim from the state represents a significant institutional development for poverty alleviation policies in india important legislation was passed in 2005 to guarantee rural households 100 days of work paid at a statutory wage rate this right to work legislation has enabled the implementation of the world s largest public works program the mahatma gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme or nregs this study explores variation in policy outcomes under nregs within a rural district of north india uttar pradesh it finds that this variation is the product of the interaction between formal and informal institutions as such the demand for work benefits does not emerge spontaneously from self selecting rural citizens but is articulated by local elected officials who are pressurised to accommodate demands for rents from the bureaucracy specifically local elected officials are compelled to proceed to a selective activation of the demand for benefits to ensure the generation of a surplus which will form the basis of bureaucratic rent payments the study relies on qualitative data specifically interviews with past beneficiaries of the scheme bureaucrats tasked with policy implementation and elected village leaders the gram pradhans in the indian state of uttar pradesh to document the conditions under which a surplus is extracted and rent payments made the study shows that caste and political leadership structures at the local level affect the generation of surpluses and the payment of rents by gram pradhans to the bureaucracy while the right to work legislation represents progress for poverty alleviation policies such as nregs that emphasize rights and the expression of a demand for benefits need to consider more carefully the conditions under which this demand emerges as well as the ways in which discretionary authority can thwart the goals of public policy

environmental amenities as a source of market power site specific environmental amenities can provide a source of product differentiating market power using estimates from hedonic price equations and residual demand models our analysis recovers firm specific estimates of price markups as measures of market power and uses these markups to estimate the implied marginal value for access to coastal beaches the application involves rental price and occupancy data for several thousand beach properties along a portion of the north carolina coastline during the 1987 to 1992 rental seasons

how do senators vote disentangling the role of voter preferences party affiliation and senate ideology this paper develops a methodology for consistently estimating the relative weights in senator utility functions despite the fact that senator ideologies are unobserved the empirical results suggest that voter preferences are assigned only one quarter of the weight in senator utility functions the national party line also has some influence but the senator s own ideology is the primary determinant of roll call voting patterns these results cast doubt on the empirical relevance of the median voter theorem estimation of the model requires only roll call voting data making it widely applicable copyright 1996 by american economic association

are elections in autocracies a curse for incumbents evidence from chinese villages are elections in autocracies a curse for incumbents using panel data from village elections in china the ols regression shows that introducing competitive elections has a relatively small effect on the removal of autocratic incumbents however the effect becomes much larger when the endogenous timing is instrumented with the passage of provincial election laws and village specific election cycles additional evidence also suggests that removing incumbents through competitive elections enhances local governance i interpret these results as suggesting that political selection matters in electoral autocracies

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

the changing of the boards the impact on firm valuation of mandated female board representation in 2003 a new law required that 40 of norwegian firms directors be women at the time only 9 of directors were women we use the prequota cross sectional variation in female board representation to instrument for exogenous changes to corporate boards following the quota we find that the constraint imposed by the quota caused a significant drop in the stock price at the announcement of the law and a large decline in tobin s q over the following years consistent with the idea that firms choose boards to maximize value the quota led to younger and less experienced boards increases in leverage and acquisitions and deterioration in operating performance copyright 2012 oxford university press

the opportunity cost of coastal land use controls an empirical analysis for more than a decade demographers have been documenting the migration of the u s population from interior to coastal states a belief that this trend will persist has led to concern about increased housing and commercial development in coastal areas added development brings water pollution and reduces the natural cover of the coastline many states have responded to this trend with land use controls that limit new residential and commercial development on land adjacent to coastal water controls such as these have essentially three economic efficiency effects first on the positive side is the preservation of coastal open space and reduction of water pollutants benefits enjoyed by residents and visitors second and on the negative side is decreased residential and commercial proximity to the coast fewer households and businesses can locate near the

electoral rules and minority representation in u s cities of minority representation majorities tend to disenfranchise minorities through strategic manipulation of electoral rules with the aim of explaining changes in electoral rules adopted by u s cities particularly in the south we show why majorities tend to adopt winner take all city wide rules at large elections in response to an increase in the size of the minority when the minority they are facing is relatively small in this case for the majority it is more effective to leverage on its sheer size instead of risking conceding representation to voters from minority elected districts however as the minority becomes larger closer to a fifty fifty split the possibility of losing the whole city induces the majority to prefer minority votes to be confined in minority packed districts single member district rules serve this purpose we show empirical results consistent with these implications of the model in a novel data set covering u s cities and towns from 1930 to 2000

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

mandated political representation and redistribution mandated political representation for minorities involves earmarking certain electoral districts where only minority group candidates are permitted to contest such quotas have been implemented in india for certain social groups and for women although gender quotas in the legislature are popular in several other countries this paper builds a political economy model to analyze the effect of such affirmative action on redistribution in equilibrium our model predicts that in situations where the minority group is economically disadvantaged and where voters favor candidates from their own group such a quota actually reduces transfers to poorer groups moreover redistribution in reserved districts leads to a rise in within minority group inequality

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

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

property tax shifting under imperfect competition the hedonic price models are commonly used to empirically assess the degree to which property taxes are shifted from property owners to property renters the findings of these studies vary sporadically in terms of the degree of tax shifting the competitiveness of housing markets may significantly influence the degree of tax shifting in this article we allow a nonzero price cost markup in the hedonic price equation and examine the impact of market power on property tax shifting in our case study we examine the property specific characteristics occupancy record and local property tax associated with hundreds of managed rental properties in central new hampshire the results show that depending on the degree of market power exercised by a property management firm the anti competitive structure of the market may significantly contribute to property tax shifting from property owners to property renters