media exposure and internal migration evidence from indonesia abstract this paper investigates the impact of television on internal migration in indonesia we exploit the differential introduction of private television throughout the country and the variation in signal reception due to topography to estimate the causal effect of media exposure our estimates reveal important long and short run effects an increase of one standard deviation in the number of private tv channels received in the area of residence as an adolescent reduces future inter provincial migration by 1 7 2 7 percentage points and all migration inter and intra provincial by 3 9 6 8 percentage points short run effects are similar in magnitude we also show that respondents less exposed to private television are more likely to consider themselves among the poorest groups in society as we discuss in a stylized model of migration choice under imperfect information these findings are consistent with indonesian citizens over estimating the net gains from internal migration when access to television is limited

estimating the environment kuznets curve hypothesis evidence from latin america and the caribbean countries this study explores the effect of economic growth gdp renewable energy consumption re and financial development fd on co2 emission co2 in latin america and caribbean countries to achieve this goal a panel co2 model was built over the period 1980 2010 the kao cointegration test results revealed that the variables are cointegrated the fully modified ols fmols results indicated an inverted u shape relationship between co2 and gdp thus confirming the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis furthermore fmols results also revealed that fd can improve environmental quality by its negative long run effect on co2 however re has no long run effect on co2 indicating that the re does not contribute to co2 reduction the vecm granger causality results revealed feedback causality between gdp re fd and co2 in both short and long run additionally granger causality results also revealed that re gdp and fd can be a good solution to reduce environmental damage since they have a causal effect on co2 this study shows the investigated countries should increase their banking loans on green energy energy efficiency and energy saving projects to reduce environmental damage in addition the above recommendation can increase the contribution of renewable energy in reducing environmental damage

independent auditors bias and political agency abstract this paper analyzes political agency with endogenous information collection and revelation by third party auditors while increasing incentives for auditors to provide information straightforwardly improves political control a small amount of pro incumbent bias can also be useful for maintaining high levels of control when the equilibrium level of control is high most investigations uncover positive information about the incumbent since positive information increases reelection rates mildly pro incumbent auditors are willing to work harder than unbiased auditors in these equilibria for moderate levels of control pro incumbent auditors are again useful due to their extra effort even though they may suppress some negative information in equilibrium only when market incentives are low so equilibrium control is weak are unbiased or anti incumbent biased auditors better for voters than mildly pro incumbent auditors

price stability and central bank independence discipline credibility and democratic institutions despite mixed empirical evidence in the past two decades central bank independence cbi has been on the rise under the assumption that it ensures price stability using an encompassing theoretical approach and new yearly data for de jure cbi seventy eight countries 1973 2008 we reexamine this relationship distinguishing the role of printing less money discipline from the public s beliefs about the central bank s likely actions credibility democracies differ from dictatorships in the likelihood of political interference and changes to the law because of the presence of political opposition and the freedom to expose government actions cbi in democracies should be directly reflected in lower money supply growth besides being more disciplinarian it also ensures a more robust money demand by reducing inflation expectations and therefore inflation empirical results are robust and support a discipline effect conditioned by political institutions as well as a credibility effect

radio s impact on public spending if informed voters receive favorable policies then the invention of a new mass medium may affect government policies since it affects who is informed and who is not these ideas are developed in a voting model the model forms the basis for an empirical investigation of a major new deal relief program implemented in the middle of the expansion period of radio the main empirical finding is that u s counties with many radio listeners received more relief funds more funds were allocated to poor counties with high unemployment but controlling for these and other variables the effects of radio are large and highly significant

environmental kuznets curve in an open economy a bounds testing and causality analysis for tunisia the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis posits that in the early stages of economic growth environmental degradation and pollution increase however as a nation reaches a certain level of incom

the political economy of government responsiveness theory and evidence from india the determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in political economy here we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems having a more informed an politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governments to be responsive this suggests that there is a role both for democratic institutions and the mass media in ensuring that the preferences of citizens are reflected in policy the ideas behind the model are tested on panel data from india we show that public food distribution and calamity relief expenditure are greater controlling for shocks where governments face greater electoral accountability and where newspaper circulation is highest

government control of the media abstract we present a formal model of government control of the media to illuminate variation in media freedom across countries and over time media bias is greater and state ownership of the media more likely when the government has a particular interest in mobilizing citizens to take actions that further some political objective but are not necessarily in citizens individual best interest however the distinction between state and private media is smaller large advertising markets reduce media bias in both state and private media but increase the incentive for the government to nationalize private media media bias in state and private media markets diverge as governments become more democratic whereas media bias in democracies and autocracies converge as positive externalities from mobilization increase

church state separation and redistribution we analyze how religion affects voting and redistribution our model directs attention away from the particular faith belief or risk attitudes of religious individuals and emphasizes instead how organized religion opens the door to standard group based distributive politics we argue that organized religion makes it possible for the rich and the religious poor to form electoral coalitions in favor of low taxes and limited redistribution such electoral coalitions form out of simple material self interest and they occur at the expense of the secular poor however the material reward to the religious poor from supporting such electoral coalitions depends on the institutional context as state support for religion increases poor religious voters have greater incentives to vote with poor secular voters in favor of parties that support high taxes the analysis therefore highlights the possibilities of understanding how religion affects politics without asserting that religious individuals differ systematically from secular ones in their values or preferences

panel estimation for co2 emissions energy consumption economic growth trade openness and urbanization of newly industrialized countries abstract this paper empirically examines the dynamic causal relationships between carbon dioxide emissions energy consumption economic growth trade openness and urbanization for the panel of newly industrialized countries nic using the time series data for the period 1971 2007 using four different panel unit root tests it is found that all panel variables are integrated of order 1 from the johansen fisher panel cointegration test it is found that there is a cointegration vector among the variables the granger causality test results support that there is no evidence of long run causal relationship but there is unidirectional short run causal relationship from economic growth and trade openness to carbon dioxide emissions from economic growth to energy consumption from trade openness to economic growth from urbanization to economic growth and from trade openness to urbanization it is found that the long run elasticity of carbon dioxide emissions with respect to energy consumption 1 2189 is higher than short run elasticity of 0 5984 this indicates that over time higher energy consumption in the newly industrialized countries gives rise to more carbon dioxide emissions as a result our environment will be polluted more but in respect of economic growth trade openness and urbanization the environmental quality is found to be normal good in the long run

what drives carbon dioxide emissions in the long run evidence from selected south asian countries abstract this study empirically investigates the relationship between co 2 emission and four of its potentially contributing factors i e energy consumption income trade openness and population using time series data from 1971 to 2013 on five selected economies of south asia after confirming that all the series are stationary using unit root test process the study incorporates three different and advance panel cointegration tests i e pedroni kao and johansen fisher panel cointegration all the panel cointegration tests confirm that all the variables cointegrated the long run association between the variables is checked using fmols grouped and individual cross section country in the panel the fmols grouped results show that energy consumption trade openness and population increases environmental degradation in the panel countries with exception of income which has negative impact and sounds the existence of environmental kuznet curve between income and emission the innovative accounting approach using variance decomposition test and impulse response function is applied to examine the causality amongst the underlined vectors the results show that there is bidirectional causality between energy consumption and trade openness and uni directional causality running from energy consumption trade openness and population to co 2 emission the results enumerate that the energy consumption and population density will increase in long run and foresee further environmental degradation in the region

television and voter turnout i use variation across markets in the timing of television s introduction to identify its impact on voter turnout the estimated effect is significantly negative accounting for between a quarter and a half of the total decline in turnout since the 1950s i argue that substitution away from other media with more political coverage provides a plausible mechanism linking television to voting as evidence for this i show that the entry of television in a market coincided with sharp drops in consumption of newspapers and radio and in political knowledge as measured by election surveys i also show that both the information and turnout effects were largest in off year congressional elections which receive extensive coverage in newspapers but little or no coverage on television

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

economic growth and co2 emissions in malaysia a cointegration analysis of the environmental kuznets curve this paper attempts to establish a long run as well as causal relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for malaysia using data for the years from 1980 to 2009 the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis was tested utilizing the auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology the empirical results suggest the existence of a long run relationship between per capita co2 emissions and real per capita gross domestic product gdp when the co2 emissions level is the dependent variable we found an inverted u shape relationship between co2 emissions and gdp in both short and long run thus supporting the ekc hypothesis the granger causality test based on the vector error correction model vecm presents an absence of causality between co2 emissions and economic growth in the short run while demonstrating uni directional causality from economic growth to co2 emissions in the long run

media freedom and gender equality a cross national instrumental variable quantile analysis we investigate the impact of media freedom on gender equality in education for a sample of 63 countries taken over the period 1995 2004 our analysis is motivated by the idea that the impact of media freedom on gender equality may differ over the conditional distribution of the response variable using instrumental variable quantile regression to control for endogeneity in per capita income we find that greater freedom of the media improves gender equality only in the 0 25 and 0 50 quantiles of the conditional distribution countries with the greatest disparities in gender outcomes experience no significant impact of media freedom

the market for news we investigate the market for news under two assumptions that readers hold beliefs which they like to see confirmed and that newspapers can slant stories toward these beliefs we show that on the topics where readers share common beliefs one should not expect accuracy even from competitive media competition results in lower prices but common slanting toward reader biases on topics where reader beliefs diverge such as politically divisive issues however newspapers segment the market and slant toward extreme positions yet in the aggregate a reader with access to all news sources could get an unbiased perspective generally speaking reader heterogeneity is more important for accuracy in media than competition per se

the bull of wall street experimental analysis of testosterone and asset trading growing evidence shows that biological factors affect individual financial decisions that could be reflected in financial markets testosterone a chemical messenger especially influential in male

media freedom political knowledge and participation this paper examines the relationship between media freedom from government control and citizens political knowledge political participation and voter turnout to explore these connections i first examine media freedom and citizens political knowledge in thirteen central and eastern european countries with data from freedom house s freedom of the press report and the european commission s candidate countries eurobarometer survey next i consider media freedom and citizens political participation in 60 countries using data from the world values survey finally i investigate media freedom and voter turnout in these same 60 or so countries with data from the international institute for democracy and electoral assistance i find that where government owns a larger share of media outlets and infrastructure regulates the media industry more and does more to control the content of news citizens are more politically ignorant and apathetic where the media is less regulated and there is greater private ownership in the media industry citizens are more politically knowledgeable and active these results are robust to sample specification and alternative measures of media freedom

co2 emissions energy consumption economic and population growth in malaysia abstract this study investigates the dynamic impacts of gdp growth energy consumption and population growth on co2 emissions using econometric approaches for malaysia empirical results from ardl bounds testing approach show that over the period of 1970 1980 per capita co2 emissions decreased with increasing per capita gdp economic growth however from 1980 to 2009 per capita co2 emissions increased sharply with a further increase of per capita gdp this is also supported by the dynamic ordinary least squared dols and the sasabuchi lind mehlum u slm u test tests consequently the hypothesis of the ekc is not valid in malaysia during the study period the results also demonstrate that both per capita energy consumption and per capita gdp has a long term positive impacts with per capita carbon emissions but population growth rate has no significant impacts on per capita co2 emission however the study suggests that in the long run economic growth may have an adverse effect on the co2 emissions in malaysia thus significant transformation of low carbon technologies such as renewable energy and energy efficiency could contribute to reduce the emissions and sustain the long run economic growth

the worldwide governance indicators six one or none abstract aggregate indexes of the quality of governance covering large samples of countries have become popular in comparative political analysis few studies examine the validity or reliability of these indexes to partially fill this gap this study uses factor confirmatory factor and path analysis to test both measurement and causal models of the six worldwide governance indicators they purportedly measure distinct concepts of control of corruption rule of law government effectiveness rule quality political stability and voice and accountability rather than distinguishing among aspects of the quality of governance we find that they appear to be measuring the same broad concept

mises hayek and corruption using the arguments of ludwig von mises and friedrich august von hayek i argue that private ownership solves the economic problem of corruption since private ownership discourages entrepreneurs from rent seeking and privately owned media provide objective and unbiased information to citizens any legal reform establishing and enforcement of private ownership also solves the corruption problem

a free press is bad news for corruption abstract this paper tests the proposition that a free press may be a powerful control on corruption we find evidence of a significant relationship between more press freedom and less corruption in a large cross section of countries this result is robust to specification and sample and the relationship is not sensitive to the choice of a particular measure of corruption or of press freedom furthermore we present evidence which suggests that the direction of causation runs from higher press freedom to lower corruption

who owns the media the authors examine patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world they find that almost universally the largest media firms are controlled by the government or by private families government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media government ownership is generally associated with less press freedom fewer political and economic rights inferior governance and most conspicuously inferior social outcomes in education and health the adverse effects of government ownership on political and economic freedom are stronger for newspapers than for television the adverse effects of government ownership of the media do not appear to be restricted solely to instances of government monopoly the authors present a range of evidence on the adverse consequences of state ownership of the media state ownership of the media is often argued to be justified on behalf of the social needs of the disadvantaged but if their findings are correct increasing private ownership of the media through privatization or by encouraging the entry of privately owned media can advance a variety of political and economic goals especially those of meeting the social needs of the poor

the case for international emission trade in the absence of cooperative climate policy we evaluate the efficacy of international trade in carbon emission permits when countries are guided strictly by their national self interest to do so we construct a calibrated general equilibrium model that jointly describes the world economy and the strategic incentives that guide the design of national abatement policies countries decisions about their participation in a trading system and about their initial permit endowment are made noncooperatively so a priori it is not clear that permit trade will induce participation in international abatement agreements or that participation will result in significant environmental gains despite this we find that emission trade agreements can be effective that smaller groupings pairing developing and developed world partners often perform better than agreements with larger rosters and that general equilibrium responses play an important role in shaping these outcomes