terrorism and the fate of dictators the authors study the influence of domestic political dissent and violence on incumbent dictators and their regimes they argue that elite with an interest in preserving the regime hold dictators accountable when there is a significant increase in terrorism to pinpoint the accountability of dictators to elite who are strongly invested in the current regime the authors make a novel theoretical distinction between reshuffling coups that change the leader but leave the regime intact and regime change coups that completely change the set of elites atop the regime using a new data set that distinguishes between these two coup types the authors provide robust evidence that terrorism is a consistent predictor of reshuffling coups whereas forms of dissent that require broader public participation and support such as protests and insurgencies are associated with regime change coup attempts this article is the first to show that incumbent dictators are held accountable for terrorist campaigns that occur on their watch

the elite variable in democratic transitions and breakdowns stable democratic regimes depend heavily on the consensual unity of national elites so long as elites remain disunified political regimes are unstable a condition which makes democratic transitions and democratic breakdowns merely temporary oscillations in the forms unstable regimes take disunity appears to be the generic condition of national elites and disunity strongly tends to persist regardless of socioeconomic development and other changes in mass populations the consensually unified elites that are necessary to stable democracies are created in only a few ways two of the most important of which involve distinctive elite transformations after elaborating this argument we examine the relationship between elites and regimes in western nation states since they began to consolidate after 1500 we show that our approach makes good sense of the western political record that it does much to clarify prospects for stable democracies in developing societies today and that it makes the increasingly elite centered analysis of democratic transitions and breakdowns more systematic

demand for rural tourism the effects of quality and information the development of rural tourism is regarded as a promising diversification strategy especially for lagging and mountainous areas of the european union research concerning the demand and or supply of rural tourism services has been limited within the agricultural economics domain despite the significance attached to rural tourism by various rural development policy measures and initiatives the article examines the expenditure behavior of rural tourists within a framework of demand for composite heterogeneous goods the proposed framework captures the quality of the tourism experience as the commodity s unit value a quantifiable economic variable examines its effects on expenditures and allows for the estimation of elasticity in prices regarding expenditure and quantity empirical analysis is facilitated by a survey recording the expenditure behavior of 465 tourists in two rural and lagging areas of greece the quality of the tourism experience is significantly and positively affected by the income the source from which information about the trip is retrieved internet newspapers as well as general press and special travel press and by the amount of information sought by the consumer prior to the trip in turn the quality of the tourism experience is the major endogenous factor that positively influences expenditures for rural tourism further research is needed before evidence provided in this work can be used to draw policy conclusions and recommendations

the era of electoral authoritarianism in recent years scholarly attention has shifted from the study of democratization to the phenomenon of electoral authoritarianism in these regimes regular elections are held for national legislatures and chief executives yet they fail to live up to democratic standards of freedom and fairness a range of new research has investigated these regimes and especially the capacity of elections to either dislodge or reinvigorate authoritarian incumbents this article reviews some of the current work on electoral authoritarianism and attempts to find ways to achieve synthesis and better theoretical development it notes the need for greater conceptual consensus attention to context and better evaluation of what electoral competiveness means under authoritarian conditions it argues that the next stage for research should be smaller and contextual comparison that can allow for greater attention to concepts while allowing for strong midrange theory

organic labelling private label and u s household demand for fluid milk abstractthe u s fluid milk market has been experiencing two trends in the recent decade the fast growth of private label milk and organic milk using the data from nielsen homescan panel we estimate a censored demand system to study the demand relations among types of milk differentiated by brand types and organic status we find that sociodemographic factors still play important roles in household choice of milk types and fluid milk as a whole is an inferior good moreover as income increases households are more likely to shift from buying conventional milk to organic milk and from private label conventional milk to branded conventional milk as indicated by the asymmetric cross price elasticities corresponding implications for milk producers and marketers are discussed

geographic diffusion and the transformation of the postcommunist world since the collapse of communism the states of postcommunist europe and asia have defined for themselves and have had defined for them two primary tasks the construction of viable market economies and the establishment of working institutions of representative democracy the variation in political and economic outcomes in the postcommunist space makes it without question the most diverse region in the world what explains the variation all of the big winners of postcommunism share the trait of being geographically close to the former border of the noncommunist world even controlling for cultural differences historical legacies and paths of extrication the spatial effect remains consistent and strong across the universe of postcommunist cases this suggests the spatially dependent nature of the diffusion of norms resources and institutions that are necessary to the construction of political democracies and market economies in the postcommunist era the authors develop and adduce evidence for the spatial dependence hypothesis test it against rival hypotheses and illustrate the relationships at work through three theoretically important case studies

another look at the role of the industrial structure of markets for international diversification strategies abstract this paper re examines the extent to which gains from international diversification are due to differences in industrial structure across countries recent papers by roll 1992 journal of finance 47 3 42 and heston and rouwenhorst 1994 journal of financial economics 36 3 27 investigate this issue and find conflicting evidence using a new database the dow jones world stock index with coverage in 25 countries and over 66 industry classifications we decompose comprehensively both country and industrial sources of variation we confirm that little of the variation in country index returns can be explained by their industrial composition we also uncover differences in the proportion of variation in industry index returns that is captured by country and industry factors and discuss the implications for global diversification strategies

prices and quality effects in cross sectional demand analysis a conceptual clarification of the sources and meaning of cross sectional price variability is used to motivate a theoretical and econometric framework for the estimation of cross sectional demand functions quality effects are distinguished from supply related price variability to identify cross sectional demand for disaggregated food commodities an empirical application using data from the 1977 78 nationwide food consumption survey indicates that parameter differences resulting from a failure to adjust cross sectional prices for quality effects are likely to be small for relatively homogenous disaggregated food commodities in demand analysis with cross sectional household budget data it is usually assumed that prices are constant allen and bowley prais and houthakker george and king given this assumption engel functions are estimated where expenditure or quantity is regressed on income or total expenditures family size and other demographic characteristics the assumption that cross sectional price effects are absent or are captured adequately by spatial and temporal dummy variables has not been evaluated empirically whether cross sectional price effects can be treated in this manner has implications for the specification of cross sectional demand functions as well as the estimation of engel functions there is a considerable literature on estimating price elasticities with cross sectional data most of the applications utilize timeseries cross sectional data annual or quarterly household consumption surveys and

regime cycles democracy autocracy and revolution in post soviet eurasia research on regime change has often wound up chasing events in the post soviet world because it has frequently assumed that regime change if not simple instability implies a trajectory toward a regime type endpoint like democracy or autocracy a supplemental approach recognizes that regime change can be cyclic not just progressive regressive or random in fact regime cycles are much of what we see in the postcommunist world where some states have oscillated from autocracy toward greater democracy then back toward more autocracy and with recent colored revolutions toward greater democracy again an institutional logic of elite collective action focusing on the effects of patronalpresidentialism is shown to be useful in understanding such cyclic dynamics explaining why revolutions occurred between 2003 and 2005 in ukraine georgia and kyrgyzstan but not in countries like russia azerbaijan and uzbekistan

the impact of changes in household vacation expenditures on the travel and hospitality industries two large tourism industries travel and hospitality are strongly affected by changes in household demand for vacations in recent years rising income and declining prices per unit of quality have led to changes in patterns of household vacation consumption to understand the impact of these changes on the travel and hospitality industries we develop a theoretical model distinguishing between travel and on site expenditures and apply it to israeli data we find that under certain circumstances the changes in income and prices are responsible for a shift toward multiple short vacations this trend can be a boon to the travel industry but a disadvantage for the hospitality industry both industries are expected to face a rise in the demand for high quality products

a microeconometric model analysis of us consumer demand for alcoholic beverages this paper discusses the specification and estimation of a two stage budgeting consumer demand for alcoholic beverages using 1987 88 usda individual and household food consumption survey data the upper level first stage budgeting decision is modelled via a gamma tobit model the lower level second stage budgeting allocates alcohol expenditure via a synthetic demand system for beer spirits and wine the synthetic system is constructed via a normalized linear combination of the level rotterdam cbs and an aids equivalent model data on individual three day alcohol consumption from the individual food intake survey are used for analysis while price and household characteristics information are obtained from the house hold food intake survey the results show that some individual and household characteristic variables as well as economic variables have significant impacts on consumer demand for alcoholic beverages

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

a latent variable model of consumer taste determination and taste change for complex carbohydrates despite evidence that aggregate consumption of complex carbohydrates has risen over the last decade food consumption surveys suggest that fewer households are consuming less bread pasta rice potatoes and corn this paper estimates systems of complex carbohydrae demand using cross sectional data from 1977 78 and 1987 88 in order to explain this paradox changes in demand that are not explained by changes in prices or income are explained by variations in taste because tastes cannot be directly observed the paper uses a multiple indicator and multiple cause mimic model to construct a suitable proxy variable in the mimic approach the indicators are residuals from a household demand function that includes prices and incomes as explanatory variables while household and demograhic proxies are cause variables the objectives in applying the mimic model are to determine the effect of consumer tastes on complex carbohydrate demand and comparing cross sectional survey data from two different periods

variation in retail costs for fresh vegetables and salty snacks across communities in the united states abstract households living in different communities pay different amounts of money for food food costs depend on whether a household lives in an urban community or in a locality with a high incidence of poverty among other factors this study focuses on spatial variation across the united states in the retail costs for fresh vegetables and salty snacks findings reveal that the major economic and demographic characteristics of a household s community affect its costs for these two types of foods differently however households are likely to pay more money for salty snacks in communities where fresh vegetables also cost more

quality variation and quantity aggregation in consumer demand for food viewing the problem of quality variation in consumer demand for food as a problem of valid aggregation over goods leads to new insights the simple sum of physical quantities used as the measure of demand in the quality literature is found to be a theoretically arbitrary and potentially misleading measure of demand when goods are heterogenous alternative measures of demand derived from restrictions on quality variation consumer preferences or relative prices are investigated a hypothetical example illustrates the use of a hicksian composite commodity assumption the empirical as well as conceptual merits of the various measures are discussed the usual assumption made about prices in a cross section analysis of household food expenditures is that all households are facing the same prices estimation of price elasticities of demand is commonly left to time series researchers who get price information from intertemporal indices recently however there has been renewed interest in the otential of cross section analysis for estimation of price elasticities of demand for food especially when surveys collect data on both household expenditures for food items and on the physical quantities purchased

does institutional ownership matter for international stock return comovement funding portuguese foundation for science and technology fct uid ges 00407 2013 ptdc iim fin 2977 2014 and european research council

international diversification strategies revisited from the risk perspective following roll roll r 1992 industrial structure and comparative behaviour of international stock market indices journal of finance 47 3 42 and heston and rouwenhorst heston s l rouwenhorst g k 1994 does industrial structure explain the benefits of international diversification journal of financial economics 36 3 27 researchers have decomposed stock returns into country and industry components evidence suggests that industry components have become more important in recent years but the reasons for this are unclear existing research concentrated mainly on stock returns in industrial countries in this paper we consider instead the decomposition of stock risks within emerging equity markets we provide a rationale for this procedure and its relationship to return decompositions the results provide new firm specific evidence on the debate over country and industry components their stability over time and the implications for portfolio diversification

does industrial structure explain the benefits of international diversification abstract we examine the influence of industrial structure on the cross sectional volatility and correlation structure of country index returns for 12 european countries between 1978 and 1992 we find that industrial structure explains very little of the cross sectional difference in country return volatility and that the low correlation between country indices is almost completely due to country specific sources of return variation diversification across countries within an industry is a much more effective tool for risk reduction than industry diversification within a country

modeling physical quantities of food and nutrients consumed from aggregate data with an application to finland anticipating the impact of changes in economic incentives on dietary quality and nutritional health requires knowledge of how physical quantities of food consumed respond to price and income variations a problem arises however because physical quantities are 1 not consistent aggregates in demand models and 2 not measured at final retail level in national statistics the article develops a solution by establishing explicitly the theoretical link between composite demand and physical quantities from which a novel empirical approach to the estimation of nutrient elasticities is derived it is applied to finnish aggregate data from the national accounts and food balance sheets over the 1975 2006 period and the results are used to assess the potential effectiveness of several incentive based nutritional policy instruments jel classifications i10 q11 q18

the european union the euro and equity market integration abstract we use industry valuation differentials across european countries to study the impact of membership in the european union as well as the eurozone on both economic and financial integration in integrated markets discount rates and expected growth opportunities should be similar within one industry irrespective of the country implying narrowing valuation differentials as countries become more integrated our analysis of the 1990 2007 period shows that membership in the eu significantly lowered discount rate and expected earnings growth differentials across countries in contrast the adoption of the euro was not associated with increased integration our results do not change when the sample is extended to include the recent crisis period

the demand for food quality in rural china many studies of food demand do not use actual prices but unit values obtained by dividing expenditures by the quantity consumed this can bias empirical analyses because unit values are not exogenous market prices they reflect household food quality choices within each food category this article develops a framework for assessing the resulting bias in income and price elasticities of demand and applies the framework to data for rural china empirical results indicate that households in rural china tend to consume higher quality food as income increases with a greater sensitivity to income for basic foods than for luxury foods copyright 2009 oxford university press

an inverse demand analysis with introduction of quality effects an application to spanish consumption of fruit and vegetables this article analyzes consumer preference for fruit and vegetables when by using time series with socioeconomic characteristics of households there can be seemingly unobserved quality effects which are increased by aggregation the changes in spanish demand for fresh and processed fruit and vegetables over the period 1987 2000 are discussed following previous tests and analyses quantities are taken as predetermined and prices as matching the offer conditions thus quality effects based on the nutritional and or health value of the product are estimated from the error terms associated with the functions of the unit values quality variables are introduced as taste shifters in the inverse demand system laitinen theil model the results show the positive effects of quality differences on the normalized price for the group of products through own quality flexibilities and the negative effects between fresh and processed products through cross quality flexibilities

an econometric analysis of demand for food quantity and quality in urban china this article offers an analytical framework for studying consumer demand for food quality based on a theory consistent demand model namely the exact affine stone index specification importantly it accounts for unobserved consumer and regional heterogeneity and allows for arbitrary engel curves the empirical value of our framework is illustrated in an econometric analysis of demand for food quality in china evaluating possible structural changes in consumer food expenditures in china is of paramount importance given the ever increasing global role of china and the implications of the structural food preference changes for the global food system the major findings emerging from this study indicate that income is an important determinant of demand for food quality and quantity with the relatively more affluent provinces having a higher affinity for food quality

coupon redemption and its effect on household cheese purchases by endogenizing unit value and coupon redemption we estimate u s household cheese purchase quality choice and coupon redemption equations simultaneously zero purchases and missing values on coupons and unit values are taken into account in the model to correct for selectivity bias correlations among the three equations are found to be significant empirical findings show that high quality choice significantly decreases cheese purchases while cheese coupon usage significantly increases purchases we find that higher income households select higher quality cheese while larger households choose lower quality cheese for coupon redemption we find that african american and hispanic households redeem less while asian households have no significant difference compared to caucasian households

the rise of sector effects in major equity markets historically country effects have been dominant in explaining variations in global stock returns even in the developed markets and investors have segmented their allocations accordingly we set out to investigate whether this situation still prevails we found a significant shift in the relative importance of national and economic influences in the stock returns of the world s largest equity markets in these markets the impact of industrial sector effects is now roughly equal to that of country effects in addition to supporting the notion of increasing global capital market integration these findings suggest that country based approaches to global investment management may be losing their effectiveness

regime and leader instability under two forms of military rule the finding that military regimes are more fragile than other authoritarian regimes represents one of the few stylized facts in comparative politics however the existing literature contains subst

international asset allocations and capital flows the benchmark effect this paper studies channels through which well known benchmark indexes impact asset allocations and capital flows across countries the study uses unique monthly micro level data of benchmark compositions and mutual fund investments during 1996 2012 benchmarks have important effects on equity and bond mutual fund portfolios across funds with different degrees of activism benchmarks explain on average around 70 percent of country allocations and have significant impact even on active funds benchmark effects are important after controlling for industry macroeconomic and country specific time varying effects reverse causality does not drive the results exogenous pre announced changes in benchmarks result in movements in asset allocations mostly when these changes are implemented not when announced by impacting country allocations benchmarks affect capital flows across countries through direct and indirect channels including contagion they explain apparently counterintuitive movements in capital flows generating outflows from countries when upgraded and with large market capitalization and better relative performance

food stamps and the market demand for food this article compares estimates of disaggregated market food demand responses to the supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits based on exact nonlinear aggregation to responses based on linear aggregation by accounting for income inequality nonlinear aggregation implies that only the households that receive benefits contribute to market demand responses in contrast linear aggregation presumes all households receive benefits and thus contribute to the market demand response the consequence is that nonlinear market estimates are smaller than the linear estimates by roughly the fraction of households that receive benefits

quantity and quality effects of advertising a demand system approach quantity and quality effects of advertising are investigated in this article a censored demand system is estimated for fish beef pork and other meats using norwegian household data in the demand model generic fish advertising and meat advertising is introduced as demand shifters and at the same time unit values are treated as endogenous the unit values capture the quality of the commodities empirical findings show that advertising can have both quantity and quality effects on household demand

when in peril retrench testing the portfolio channel of contagion abstract the impact of past gains and losses on international investors risk aversion is an important factor in the propagation of financial shocks across countries we first present a stylized model illustrating how changes in investors risk aversion affect portfolio decisions and stock prices we then examine empirically the behavior of international mutual funds when funds returns are below average they reduce their exposure to countries in which they were overweight and vice versa an index of financial interdependence that reflects the extent to which countries share overexposed funds helps explain the pattern of stock market comovement across countries and the pattern of contagion during crises

national versus global influences on equity returns simple factor models of worldwide equity returns are used to explore the level and trend in international capital market integration global influences and national influences are of roughly equal importance in explaining the common movements in equity returns significant evidence indicates a trend toward increasing integration within the european union but not worldwide

is there curvature in the slutsky matrix d o the poor substitute among commodities more flexibly than the rich when relative prices change even when compensated for the income effects of the price changes is it necessary to add a third dimension to the slutsky substitution matrix to identify household income in short do the terms of the slutsky elasticity matrix curve smoothly from poor households to rich households in such a way that equation 1 is meaningful

the fourth wave of democracy and dictatorship noncooperative transitions in the postcommunist world the transition from communism in europe and the former soviet union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy since the crumbling of the berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the soviet union in 1991 most of the twenty eight new states have abandoned communism but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies the remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated transitional regimes this article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule in endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien regime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule in countries with asymmetrical balances of power the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful in countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage democracy emerged conversely in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage dictatorship emerged in between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal rather than producing stalemate compromise and parted transitions to democracy however such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers the regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated unstable partial democracies

the generalized composite commodity theorem and food demand estimation this article reports tests of aggregation over consumer food products and estimates of aggregate food demand elasticities evidence that food demand variables follow unit root processes leads us to build on and simplify existing tests of the generalized composite commodity theorem we compute food demand elasticities using a method of cointegration that is shown to apply to a convenient but nonlinear functional form estimates are based on consumer reported expenditure data rather than commercial disappearance data appropriately specified models of consumer demand are central to market analysis it has been established that a valid equilibrium for markets characterized by diverse firms or diverse consumer products depends on downward sloping composite demand curves heiner braulke wohlgenant or on valid indirect utility functions chavas and cox given the large number of consumer food products food demand and price analysis must be implemented at some level of product aggregation improper aggregation can lead to biased estimates of welfare loss associated with public policies biased estimates of consumer and derived demand elasticities and misleading tests of market power testing for consistent aggregation over food products and estimating aggregate consumer food demand elasticities are the subjects of this article by far the most common justification for aggregation has been separable preferences one reason for its popularity has been the lack of a viable alternative tests of the composite commodity theorem hicks leontief lewbel are always rejected because it restricts relative prices within a group to remain fixed over time on the other hand aggregation based on weak separability is often rejected diewert and wales eales and unnevehr

perspectives on positive political economy this volume serves as an introduction to the field of positive political economy and the economic and political processes with which it is concerned this new research tradition is distinct from both normative and historical approaches to political economy grounded in the rational actor methodology of microeconomics positive political economy is the study of rational decisions in a context of political and economic institutions more analytical than traditional approaches it is concerned with the derivation of principles and propositions against which real world experience may be compared its focus is on empirical regularities and its goal is theoretical explanation the field has focused on three main areas of research models of collective action constraints on competitive market processes and the analysis of transaction costs developments in all of these areas are covered in the book the first part of the volume surveys the field while the second part displays positive political economy at work examining a variety of subjects the final part contains essays by leading political economists on the theoretical foundations of the field

institutions and individuals at the turn of the year this article evaluates the tax loss selling hypothesis against the window dressing hypothesis as explanations for turn of the year anomalies we examine differences between securities dominated by individual investors versus those dominated by institutional investors and find that the effect is more pervasive in the former controlling for capitalization we find that in early january late december stocks with greater individual investor interest outperform underperform stocks with greater institutional investor interest these results hold for both stocks that previously appreciated in value and stocks that previously depreciated in value the results are most consistent with the tax loss selling hypothesis as an explanation for the turn of the year effect

elite opportunity in transitional economies command economies gave communist era elites administrative control and material privilege but severely restricted money income and private wealth markets and privatization have injected new value into public assets and create unprecedented opportunities for elite insiders these opportunities depend on the extent of regime change and barriers to asset appropriation regime change varies from the survival of the entire party hierarchy to its rapid collapse and defeat in competitive elections barriers to asset appropriation vary with the extent pace and form of privatization and the concentration and liquidity of assets different combinations of such circumstances jointly affect the extent to which prior elites obtain ownership or control of privatized assets use political office to extract larger incomes move into salaried elite occupations or fall out of the elite altogether regime change and barriers to asset appropriation affect change at the national level but outcomes vary across economic sectors because of characteristics of organizations elite positions and assets this elementary theory serves to integrate varied findings from recent research on central europe china and russia and yields predictions for other regions

global communications and national power life on the pareto frontier regime analysis has focused on issues of market failure the resolution of which depends upon knowledge and institution building global communications regimes however have been concerned either with issues of pure coordination or with coordination problems with distributional consequences outcomes have been decided by the underlying distribution of national power in those areas where power was asymmetrically distributed and there was no agreement on basic principles and norms radio broadcasting and remote sensing no regime was formed in those areas where distributional issues could not be unilaterally resolved allocation of the radio spectrum and telecommunications regimes were created although both principles and rules changed with alterations in national power capabilities

adult equivalence scales and food expenditures an application to mexican beef and pork purchases in the analysis of food expenditures the use of a simple count of household members as an estimate of household size implicitly assumes each household member has the same marginal impact in this analysis of mexican food expenditures endogenously determined adult equivalence scales are estimated in such a way that these marginal impacts are allowed to vary by household member age and gender the results of a series of hypothesis tests indicate a rejection of the implied null hypothesis of equal marginal expenditure impacts associated with the use of the traditional count based household size variable this study also rejects the null hypothesis of the equality of adult equivalent scales across the commodities included in this analysis

the quantity and variety of households meat purchases a censored demand system approach this study investigates the demand for 10 disaggregated meat products by u s households a censored demand system which imposes budget constraints in both observed and latent shares is estimated along with a detailed explanation of the estimation procedure additional details about the methodology not provided in previous studies should help researchers to empirically apply the model an innovation of the study is to introduce the censored demand system model for studying the variety of a household s food purchases most households buy between seven and eight different products and hardly change the variety of their purchases with changes in meat expenditure