tax policy uncertainty and corporate investment abstract the anticipatory effects of a corporate tax reform of the tax cut cum base broadening variety are analyzed in a dynamic stochastic adjustment model of firm behavior focusing on the case where the firm is uncertain both about the timing and the contents of the expected reform the value of the firm is solved prior to and after the reform the existence of investment spurts prior to the implementation of the tax reform is established rigorous results are derived under constant returns and the effects of diminishing returns are explained the expectation of a future tax cut causes the firm to accelerate optimal investment while the expectation of a reduction in the tax base the rate of fiscal depreciation has the opposite effect for a firm which updates information timing uncertainty interacts with the expectation effect moreover increased timing uncertainty may accelerate or decelerate investment as an optimal response to an expected tax cut futhermore for reasonable assumptions it is shown that a rate cut cum base broadening tax reform of the type implemented in several oecd countries in the 1980s and 1990s cannot be revenue neutral

compulsory voting turnout and government spending evidence from austria abstract we study a unique quasi experiment in austria where compulsory voting laws are changed across austria s nine states at different times analyzing state and national elections from 1949 to 2010 we show that compulsory voting laws with weakly enforced fines increase turnout by roughly 10 percentage points however we find no evidence that this change in turnout affected government spending patterns in levels or composition or electoral outcomes individual level data on turnout and political preferences suggest that these results occur because the impacts of compulsory voting on turnout are larger among those who are non partisan who have low interest in politics and who are uninformed

the role of subsidies in promoting italian joint ventures in least developed and transition economies this paper analyses the impact of subsidies to promote italian joint ventures jvs with firms in ldc and transition economies the empirical analysis is carried out on a unique dataset of 172 jvs interviewed during 1998 by means of a closed answer qualitative quantitative questionnaire the main finding of the study is that although there is a significant deadweight component in incentive policy subsidised firms are significantly more likely to grow moreover jvs comprising new firms which need to grow to survive also achieve a higher than average employment performance and so too do labour intensive jvs motivated by the search for lower labour costs and jvs in east european countries

war and rivalry among great powers we combine analysis of rivalry with consideration of a possible selection bias we discover that what makes great powers more likely to be rivals is statistically related to their propensity to experience war a censored probit allows simultaneous estimation of the influence of six covariates on the probability great powers experience rivalry and war while controlling for statistical linkage between the two dependent variables consequently we recast some past research for example contiguity and parity actually reduce the probability of war between great power rivals once we control for their influence on the probability great powers are rivals in the first place our results compliment other research highlighting various problems of selection bias in world politics and suggest a new direction for future research on rivalry e draw together two literatures about processes in international politics a growing literature concerned with various selectionrelated inferential threats recommends we pay as much attention to how cases get into our datasets as we do to what occurs in those cases a large literature on rivalry analyzes pairs of states repeatedly experiencing conflict both literatures highlight the importance of process in international conflict by process we mean linked instances sequentially and cumulatively resulting in outcomes although many conflict processes likely exist we investigate linkages across a process of the occurrence of rivalry and the onset of war we believe the existence of rivalry and the onset of war are linked expressions of one underlying process and argue that treating them in this way may teach us much the literature on selection effects within international politics helps us produce more valid estimates of what makes rivals escalate their relations to war while interstate rivalry provides a powerful example of where methodological concerns about selection can inform the development of theory in international politics

the polluter pays principle and potential conflicts in society abstract the conventional implementation of polluter pays principle ppp in many countries is based on the use of an environmental tax which is determined proportionally to the amount of emissions of the polluting substances in this paper we show that this practice is not adequate because of its real negative impact if the pollutant accumulates to a stock in the environment using a specific mathematical model we find that in many cases there is a danger of an unavoidable conflict between the interests of society as a whole and the interests of private business generated by these procedures of ppp implementation this paper also presents a mathematical formula which expresses the time period when the conflict arises we call it the time boundary of investment expediency some results of a numerical simulation for the calculation of this quantity for different investment initiatives are also presented in this article on the basis of the model analysis we suggest a corrected amount of environmental tax which covers the negative effect on social welfare we find that it should be dependent on the lifetime of the production project not only on the amount of emitted pollution the study gives some practical tools for strengthening governance in the environmental sector and for the evaluation of investment initiatives from a quality of growth point of view

structure behavior and voter turnout in the united states electoral participation in the united states is examined to provide a clearer account of the effect of the registration requirement on individual voting behavior pooling nes data from 1980 1984 and 1988 i first model with traditional and selection bias techniques the full electorate to distinguish among three groups nonregistrants registered nonvoters and voters analyses limited to recent movers then reported to understand more fully the forces associated with the actual decision calculi of registering and voting the influences of many factors commonly accepted as important determinants of voting are disentangled and their effect at each stage is ascertained factors yielding inconsistent effects in previ research or believed to be unimportant such as race gender attitudes toward the candidates and trust government are shown to deserve closer scrutiny by electoral scholars

how to maximize domestic benefits from foreign investments the effect of irreversibility and uncertainty when a foreign monopolist facing uncertain future demand can either export to a host country or serve the market by undertaking an irreversible foreign direct investment the host government maximizes net domestic benefits by nearly fully subsidizing the investment cost in combination with taxing away benefits that exceed the gains from exporting without the subsidy maximization of domestic benefits leads to underinvestment from a world welfare point of view

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

voter response to congressional campaigns new techniques for analyzing aggregate electoral behavior scholarship on congressional elections typically analyzes either the sum or the division of the major party vote at the district level our main innovation is to model the votes received by each candidate as a separate dependent variable utilizing statistical methods developed to analyze multiparty elections because we are dealing with a substantive area in which endogeneity problems are rampant we synthesize an instrumental variables approach with a compositional data model this approach allows one to study the mobilizing and persuasive effects of congressional campaigns at the aggregate level

the effects of environmental regulation and technical progress on co2 kuznets curve an evidence from china based on environmental kuznets curve theory a panel data model which takes environmental regulation and technical progress as its moderating factors was developed to analyse the institutional and technical factors that affect the path of low carbon economic development the results indicated that there was a co2 emission kuznets curve seen in china environmental regulation had a significant moderating effect on the curve and the inflection of co2 emissions could come substantially earlier under stricter environmental regulation meanwhile the impact of technical progress on the low carbon economic development path had a longer hysteresis effect but restrained co2 emission during its increasing stage and accelerated its downward trend during the decreasing stage which was conducive to emission reduction strict environmental regulation could force the high carbon emitting industries to transfer from the eastern regions to the central or the western regions of china which would make the co2 kuznets curve higher in its increasing stage and lower in its decreasing stage than that under looser regulation furthermore energy efficiency energy structure and industrial structure exerted a significant direct impact on co2 emissions we should consider the above factors as essential in the quest for low carbon economic development

closeness expenditures and turnout in the 1982 u s house elections students of elections have repeatedly found that the closeness of an election is modestly correlated with turnout this may be due to a direct response of instrumentally motivated voters but recent theoretical work casts doubt on the adequacy of this explanation another possibility is that elite actors respond to closeness with greater effort at mobilization we explore the latter possibility by using fec and state data on campaign expenditures in house senate and gubernatorial races our results indicate that closeness has an effect at both the mass and elite levels we also provide quantitative estimates of the effect of senate and gubernatorial expenditure on house turnout

voter turnout in us presidential elections does carville s law explain the time series we estimate a time series model of voter turnout for 34 us presidential elections 1880 2012 employing a variety of econometric techniques our major results are as follows 1 a negative and significant structural shift in voter turnout occurs in 1972 and is too large to be explained by the lowering of the voting age 2 the 1972 shift is the only statistically significant structural shift to occur since the first decade of the twentieth century 3 short term macroeconomic conditions significantly impact turnout with unemployment having a positive effect 4 turnout in recent presidential elections has not deviated significantly from the post 1972 norm 5 turnout is positively related to the expected closeness of the election outcome but contrary to some theoretical predictions closeness exhibits no trend over time

foreign direct investment with unemployment and endogenous taxes and tariffs it is well known that high tariffs can induce foreign direct investment or tariff jumping this paper analyzes tariff jumping in the context of a host government which can set specific tariffs and taxes subject to the credibility constraint that the chosen levels be optimal once capital is irreversibly in place the foreign multinational is assumed to choose its location and level of investment strategically taking into account the induced tax and tariff levels in the presence of unemployment the optimal tariff exceeds the optimal tax for any given level of capital investment leading to foreign direct investment

bidding for firms recently toyota sought a plant location in the united states the 800 million plant will employ 3000 workers and numerous states offered toyota generous investment incentives hoping this would induce toyota to select their state the commonwealth of kentucky won this competition but the price was high the present value of the payments exceeds 125 million the payment of investment incentives for the toyota plant is not unique in 1976 pennsylvania paid 75 million to attract a volkswagen plan nissan honda and mazda received generous investment incentives when locating plants in the united states and this bidding is not limited to states to attract the headquarters of the presbyterian church usa with its 1300 jobs and 38 million annual payroll civic leaders in louisville kentucky offered the church a warehouse and 6 2 million for renovation of the structure bidding the church away from kansas city missouri in this paper we contend that this competition may result from the average cost pricing of publicly provided goods and services 2 when the marginal cost of providing a firm and its workers with public services is less than the tax revenue they generate a government may offer the firm subsidies that reduce the distortions the average cost pricing of the public service creates thus this competition for industry is not a zero sum game where the subsidies are only transfers from the government to the firm rather these subsidies may facilitate the efficient location of industry

global observation of ekc hypothesis for co2 sox and nox emission a policy understanding for climate change mitigation in bangladesh abstract environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is critical to understanding the developmental path of a nation in relation to its environment how the effects of economic development processes dictate environmental changes can be found through the study of ekc to understand the ekc phenomena for climate change this study was undertaken by reviewing the available literature as co2 sox and nox are the significant greenhouse gases ghg responsible for global warming thus leading to climate change the study focused on those ghgs for ekc consideration with an understanding of the different ekc trajectories an attempt was made to determine the implications for the economic development of bangladesh in regards to the ekc it was shown that ekc for co2 was following a monotonous straight line in most cases sox were shown to follow the full trajectory of the ekc in most situations and nox was shown the hope only for the developed countries getting the low income turning point the type of economic policy that bangladesh should follow in regards to the discussed pollutants and sources is also revealed from these discussions contributions to policy stimulation in bangladesh are likely to be made

misconceptions and political outcomes a large literature shows that strategic interactions among actors with conflicting objectives can cause the political process to produce outcomes that lower welfare this paper investigates an alternative explanation of such outcomes if individuals errors in assessing the likely effects of proposed policies are correlated democratic decisionmaking can produce welfare reducing outcomes even in the absence of conflicting objectives under plausible assumptions choosing candidates from among the best informed individuals does not remedy the problems created by such errors but subsidising information and exposing representatives to information after their election do concentration of power has ambiguous effects

competition for foreign direct investments abstract this paper models international competition for foreign direct investment as a common agency problem using the theory of menu auctions developed by bernheim and whinston in the model national governments act as principals and a multinational corporation as the single agent governments are assumed to maximize the net wage income generated by the corporation s investment it is shown that in the equilibrium of this game a high wage country may be able to attract investment even though all countries use subsidies furthermore it is shown that a country may choose to pay the highest subsidies even if it attracts less investment than in the unsubsidized regime our framework can also be used to study interregional subsidy competition within a country

taxes and stimuli of investment under uncertainty this article considers the effect on an irreversible investment of a subsidy to investment in combination with a taxation of future profits it is shown that such a combination raising a zero expected revenue decreases the trigger value of investment the tax rate for which the stimulus works at zero expected cost decreases as heterogeneity in the group of investors increases the importance of the result is exemplified by the graduate tax

ghg emissions gdp growth and the kyoto protocol a revisit of environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract the kyoto protocol attempts through political negotiations to guide participating industrialized countries greenhouse gas ghg emissions from a positive growing trend to reach a peak point or turning point and then be reduced to a negative growth that means the relationship between decreasing ghg emissions and economic growth may be described by an inverted u curve or called a bell shaped curve which is consistent with the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis this research observed that the economic development and ghg emissions in economies in transition eits exhibit a hockey stick curve trend or called quasi l shape curve that also generates a lot of hot air which is significant to the implementation of the kyoto protocol in addition through the analysis of single country time series data and gdp data this research demonstrated that statistical data for most of the annex ii countries do not possess evidence that supports the ekc hypothesis for ghg emissions the results from this study also indicated that the 38 industrialized countries are unable to meet their targets under the kyoto protocol within the specified time period which are probably caused by the econometric method s inability to predict accurately the extents and development of innovative technologies and clean development mechanism cdm projects if the international community truly wants to reduce the ghg emissions the effectiveness of the existing international framework for emissions reduction needs to be reconsidered seriously and the global cooperation mechanism also needs to be greatly enhanced

geography international trade and political mobilization in u s industries posed industries geographic concentration strongly increases a the formation of common trade policy preferences among workers b employees contributions to political campaigns and c voter turnout this activism traces not to the behavior of political elites but rather to the increased possibility for collective action that spatial proximity affords individuals in trade exposed industries es eography is everywhere in vogue from studies of silicon valley effects and industrial agglomeration audretsch 1998 dyer 1994 to the pricing practices of monopolies from corporate alliances to regional economic development porter 1998 the spatial proximity of firms is shedding new light on some of the most enduring puzzles in business and economics yet despite this interest in industrial clusters few studies have asked and fewer still have empirically assessed how spatial proximity conditions an industry s political behavior this link is particularly important for sectors exposed to international trade given the longstanding debate over how geographic concentration affects an industry s ability to secure import relief recent studies busch and reinhardt 1999 mcgiliivray 1997 find that spatially proximate industries are indeed more successful in gaining protection although the mechanisms by which they exert greater political influence remain little understood we seek to explain how geographic concentration facilitates political mobilization on the part of trade exposed industries geographic concentration bolsters an industry s capacity for collective action in particular as a wide variety of literatures insists spatial proximity facilitates greater face to face communication aids in the diffusion of specialized political knowledge provides the basis for denser social networks and enables more effective monitoring and sanctioning of those who might free ride on the political contributions of others in short individuals in geographically concentrated groups are more likely to recognize and act upon their collective interests yet spatial proximity alone is not sufficient to motivate political mobilization underlying common interests must exist as well looking at manufacturing industries we hypothesize

the globalization of liberalization policy diffusion in the international political economy one of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world these policies have affected the lives of millions of people yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially we hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion we think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting we develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account the capital account and the exchange rate regime our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient the evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country s sociocultural peers we interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments search for appropriate models for economic policy

residential mobility and voter turnout we examine the characteristics of a largely ignored low turnout group people who have recently moved we find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain their lower turnout instead the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls since nearly one third of the nation moves every two years moving has a large impact on national turnout rates we offer a proposal to reduce the effect of residential mobility on turnout and estimate that turnout would increase by nine percentage points if the impact of moving could be removed the partisan consequences of such a change would be marginal

war and local collective action in sierra leone abstract we study the brutal 1991 2002 sierra leone civil war using nationally representative household data on conflict experiences postwar economic outcomes local politics and collective action individuals whose households directly experienced more intense war violence are robustly more likely to attend community meetings more likely to join local political and community groups and more likely to vote tests using prewar controls and alternative samples suggest that selection into victimization is unlikely to be driving the results more speculatively the findings could help partially explain the rapid postwar political and economic recoveries observed in sierra leone and after several other recent african civil wars

the paradox of voting intelligently classical economic models predict far less voting than happens in practice expressive voting may partly explain the divergence but some who are generally uninterested in politics and thus unlikely to take elections as an important form of personal expression nevertheless vote one possible explanation is that these voters overestimate the instrumental outcome changing consequences of voting such systematic misperception may be more likely among those with less cognitive capacity analysis of responses to the american national election studies confirms this hypothesis while intelligence and interest both increase the likelihood of voting the combination enhances the likelihood of turnout still further

registration costs and voter turnout abstract we exploit a natural experiment in massachusetts in 2012 to estimate the causal effect of lowering voter information and registration costs on voter registration turnout and voting behavior in presidential elections both a within massachusetts specification and a cross state specification utilizing vermont maine and new hampshire data show a statistically significant effect on voter registration and turnout that is of a material magnitude however conditional on registration we find no material difference in turnout finally we find a large treatment effect on democrat voteshare our results highlight the importance of voter registration and information costs for electoral participation especially for citizens from lower socioeconomic backgrounds

beyond ses a resource model of political participation this paper develops a resource model of political participation the resources considered are time money and civic skills those communications and organizational capacities that are essential to political activity these skills are not only acquired early in life but developed in the nonpolitical institutional settings of adult life the workplace organizations and churches and synagogues these resources are distributed differentially among groups defined by socioeconomic status a two stage least squares analysis shows these resources have powerful effects on overall political activity thus explaining why socioeconomic status has traditionally been so powerful in predicting participation we disaggregate overall activity into three kinds of acts those that involve giving time those that entail donating money and voting each requires a different configuration of resources resulting in different patterns of stratification across various political acts

does voting history matter analysing persistence in turnout individuals who vote in one election are also more likely to vote in the next modelling the causal relationship between consecutive voting decisions however is intrinsically difficult as this positive association can exist due to unobserved heterogeneity i e some fixed but unobserved characteristics makes voters consistently turn out to vote or habit formation i e past turnout decisions influence subsequent turnout decisions this paper overcomes this problem using longitudinal data from the british national child development study ncds to examine voting behaviour across three elections utilising techniques developed in the econometrics literature we find that failing to control for unobserved heterogeneity overestimates the extent of habit formation by almost 100 estimating a dynamic model of voter turnout allowing for unobserved heterogeneity implies that voting in one election increases the probability of voting in the next by about 13 this figure is far less than previous studies have identified

why is investment subsidized in most economies investment is subsidized while capital is taxed this is difficult to explain in a traditional perfect foresight representative agent setting in which a single government sets all current and future taxes on capital the authors consider a sequential game setting in which tax policy in a period is determined by the government in power in that period in equilibrium investment is subsidized while capital is taxed copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the environmental kuznets curve when the environment exhibits hysteresis abstract the relevance and implications of the environmental kuznets hypothesis are examined in the presence of stock effects and non linearities associated with pollution generation stock effects lead to hysteresis and irreversibilities in environmental quality that are overlooked when emphasis is placed on the flow effects of pollutants only it is demonstrated here that an optimal growth plan in the presence of stock effects shifts the focus away from prescribing economic growth as a panacea for environmental ills implications for currently industrializing economies are discussed

redd and forest transition tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract international attention is focused on finding ways to reduce emissions from deforestation because of the emerging concerns over climate change however the causes of deforestation are rooted in current economic and development paradigms the causes of deforestation also vary across different geographical regions and have implications for the forest transition attempts to reach an international agreement on curbing deforestation have achieved little success despite over 30 years of un negotiations new initiatives from redd reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation could provide financial incentives to curb deforestation hence alternative development paths for forest cover changes and forest transition are analyzed for the redd policy within the framework of an environmental kuznets curve ekc for deforestation the ekc models are estimated for geographical regions of latin america africa and asia the results based on the panel data analysis of 43 countries covering the period 1970 1994 provides evidence that an inverted u shaped ekc fits for latin america and africa while a u shaped ekc applies to asia the results also indicate that strengthening agricultural and forestry sector policies are important for curbing deforestation the ekc models estimates could provide guidance for decisions on financing the redd policy as specific to each region

simple explanations of turnout decline several recent studies have claimed to explain the post 1960 decline in u s presidential and congressional election turnout in terms of just a few variables abramson and aldrich 1982 attribute the great bulk of the decline to aggregate declines in partisanship and political efficacy shaffer 1981 attributes still more of the decline to aggregate decreases in these same two variables plus age and following the campaign in the newspapers and kleppner 1982 attributes virtually all of the decline to aggregate decreases in the first three of these variables we show how these studies measure explanation too generously and how the very short handedness of their models makes them seem more successful than they are these few variables we conclude leave most of the decline unexplained

are government employees more likely to vote an analysis of turnout in the 1996 u s national election in this paper we develop and test a model of voter turnoutthat permits us to differentiate turnout rates for governmentemployees and other citizens controlling for the effects of awide range of other variables relating to turnout using 1996anes data we find that there is a significant difference inturnout rates for bureaucrats and nonbureaucrats both insimple bivariate analyses and in a full multivariate model the magnitude and significance of the coefficient forgovernment employment even in the face of controls suggeststhere is something about government employment per sethat has an effect on turnout

is environmental degradation an inevitable consequence of economic growth tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract economywide reforms often contribute simultaneously to economic social and environmental gains however unintended adverse side effects occur in many cases when such growth inducing reforms are undertaken while neglecting other policy market or institutional imperfections the remedy does not generally require reversal of the original economywide reforms but rather the ex ante implementation of additional complementary measures that remove such imperfections the ekc approach seeks to relate the state of the environment to the stage of development developing countries could learn from the experiences of industrialized nations and restructure growth and development to tunnel through any potential ekc thereby avoiding going through the same stages of growth that involve relatively high and even irreversible levels of environmental harm an environmentally adjusted measure of national income could significantly change the shape of the development environment relationship recommendations for decision making include actively seeking win win policies that simultaneously yield both economic and environmental gains pre empting environmental harm through ex ante remedial measures and fine tuning reform policies to avoid severe environmental damage the adoption of more sustainable policies will facilitate the attainment of higher levels of development at a lower environmental cost