The political economy of housing prices: Hedonic pricing with regression discontinuity

This paper uses hedonic pricing to empirically estimate the value of publicly provided local goods and services in the constituencies of the ruling party relative to those of the opposition parties. To improve control for omitted variables that change smoothly over space, we use a regression discontinuity design to restrict the sample to houses that are near the electoral boundaries. Using resale market prices of public flats in Singapore, in some cases we find a moderate but highly statistically significant difference in housing prices across the electoral boundaries that separate the constituencies of the ruling party and the opposition parties.     

Alternation of parties in power and economic volatility: testing the rational partisan hypothesis and policy learning hypothesis

Right and left parties have distinct macroeconomic preferences that could create different levels of volatility during their executive tenures. But rational partisan theory argues that, because actors in the economy anticipate ruling party behavior, partisan differences only matter when election outcomes are uncertain. We argue that policy risk from ruling parties extends beyond elections, leading to important variation in growth volatility that occurs during a ruling party’s tenure. Building on theories of policy risk and learning, we argue that after elections, economic actors still face uncertainty about the policies of new ruling parties. With time in power, new ruling parties build policy track records, reducing policy risk and, thus, volatility. We estimate a learning curve model of ruling party duration’s effect on the variation in quarterly GDP growth rates. Using data from 44 democracies between 1981 and 2009, we find that learning processes extend beyond the conclusion of uncertain elections.     

Time horizons matter: the hazard rate of coalition governments and the size of government

This study examines how coalition governments affect the size of government, measured by total central government expenditure as a share of GDP. Existing studies suggest that the presence of multiple political parties within ruling coalitions generate common pool resource problems or bargaining inefficiencies which, in turn, leads to more government spending when coalition governments are in office. We demonstrate that coalition governments have shorter time horizons than single party governments and use that finding to motivate a simple formal model. The model shows that coalition governments have greater incentives to increase government spending because of a lower discount factor in office. Results from empirical models estimated on a global sample of 111 democracies between 1975 and 2007 provide strong statistical support for the aforementioned theoretical prediction. The empirical results remain robust when we control for alternative explanations, employ different estimation techniques, and use different measures of government spending.     

Importance of status quo when lobbying a coalition government

Lobbying a coalition government is different from lobbying a single-party government, since in the case of a coalition government, the interest group can intervene in the intragovernmental decision process. In the case where the interest group prefers the status quo to the surplus maximizing policy, the interest group influences the policy without any contribution due to its credible threat to block unfavorable proposals. Furthermore, we show that when, say, a leftist coalition government may be replaced by a rightist coalition government, the final policy reflects a rightist interest group’s preferences more heavily due to the interest group’s forward-looking considerations.     

通向社会主义的波兰道路的启示——以政党执政规律为视角

从政党执政规律的视角,考察战后初期波兰工人党"国内派"提出并付诸于实践的波兰道路,可以获得一些有益的启示。这就是执政党应坚持走适合本民族特点的发展道路,执政党要实行符合具体国情的政党体制,执政党确立的所有制结构要适应生产力的发展水平,执政党要始终代表最广大人民的根本利益。     

战后初期波兰工人党与社会党基本主张的相近性及其启示

战后初期,波兰工人党与波兰社会党关于波兰未来发展道路的基本主张有着许多的相近之处。当时,两党都同意波兰将沿着社会主义的方向前进,政治上主张多党联合执政,经济上主张多元混合经济,都希望以两个工人政党的合作为基础,通过和平的民主方式,走一条符合波兰特点的社会主义道路。比较和总结波兰两个工人政党基本主张的相近性,对于共产党探索执政规律来说,能够获得一些可以借鉴的有益启示。     

From plurality rule to proportional representation

I consider the decision of a parliament that might change the electoral system from the plurality rule to proportional representation for forthcoming elections. Parties are office-motivated. They care about winning and about the share of seats obtained. I examine two different scenarios of how parties in government share the spoils of office: equally or proportionally to their share of seats. If the government is formed by a single party and parties expect that each party will obtain the same share of votes in the next election, the electoral rule will never be changed. Therefore, for a change to occur, the government should be formed by a coalition. I find that a change is more likely to occur when there is a larger number of parties and also when the spoils of office are shared equally among the members in the governing coalition. These results are extended to analyze the decision to change from a less proportional rule to a more proportional one.     

An assessment of the effect of partisan ideology on shale gas production and the implications for environmental regulations

The production of shale gas depends not only on shale resources and capital investment but also on having a flexible and stable policy environment. This paper examines whether and how partisan ideology affects the extraction of shale gas. We use panel fixed effects as well as the system–generalized method of moments approach with quarterly panel data from 15 US states over the period 2007−2016. We consider not only the political ideology of the state governor but also the state legislature’s influence on the governor, control over the governorship and the legislature by the same party, the reelection of an incumbent government, and turnover in the political party in power. The results indicate that because the right-leaning party is more likely to support shale gas development, when a member of that party heads the state government, shale gas production performance is higher than when the left-leaning party is in power. Therefore, the production of shale gas rises with a turnover in political control from left to right, reelection of a right-leaning incumbent, and more right-leaning power in the state legislature. We believe our results shed light on the role of partisan ideology in shale gas production, which has implications for environmental regulations.     

依法执政是依法治国的政治保证

依法治国是我党建设社会主义法治国家的基本方略。依法执政是在此前提下对执政党提出的必然要求,是实现依法治国的关键,二者具有内在统一性。依法执政是新时期党执政的基本方式,实现依法执政的路径包含培养法治意识、完善法律制度、强化监督机制三方面。     

浅谈学习型党组织的学习

建设学习型党组织,是建设马克思主义学习型政党的基础工程,是新形势下加强党的建设、保持和发展党的先进性、提高党的执政能力的重大举措,也是深化理论武装工作、提高全党思想政治水平的重要契机。     

Appeasement and compromise under a referendum threat

Standard legislative bargaining models assume that an agreed-upon allocation is final, whereas in practice there exist mechanisms for challenging passed legislation when there is lack of sufficient consensus. Such mechanisms include popular vote requirements following insufficient majorities in the legislature. This paper analyzes a one-period legislative bargaining game whose outcome can be challenged through a referendum. I study the effects of this institution on the bills passed in the legislature and analyze the incentives it provides for reaching legislative deals. The proposer party’s trade-off between a larger winning prize and a more threatening opponent in the referendum summarizes the bargaining problem. The results indicate that measures of post-bargaining power do not necessarily translate into higher equilibrium payoffs and that the equilibrium bill may include no concessions from the majority to the minority party. Moreover, caps on campaign spending may incentivize a costly referendum over unanimity in the legislature. These results carry policy implications for regulating various forms of post-bargaining power, such as campaign finance laws for referenda.     

Stable sets in matching problems with coalitional sovereignty and path dominance

We study von Neumann Morgenstern stable sets for one-to-one matching problems under the assumption of coalitional sovereignty (C), meaning that a deviating coalition of players does not have the power to arrange the matches of agents outside the coalition. We study both the case of pairwise and coalitional deviations. We argue further that dominance has to be replaced by path dominance (P) along the lines of van Deemen (1991) and Page and Wooders (2009). This results in the pairwise CP vNM set in the case of pairwise deviations and the CP vNM set in the case of coalitional deviations. We obtain a unique prediction for both types of stable sets: the set of matchings that belong to the core.     

王雪红:把“大趴”开到欧洲去

巴塞罗那之城见证了王雪红直闯欧洲的艰辛,现正准备慷慨以报,只为真正的庆功宴晚十点,有"伊比利亚半岛明珠"之称的巴塞罗那似乎刚刚苏醒,在璀璨的各色霓虹灯光里焕发出迷人的活力。不消说,这个西班牙第二大都市气候宜人,风光旖旎。古迹遍布街巷,充满文化     

A property rights approach to legislative delegation

This paper applies the property rights theory to study both positive and normative aspects of legislative delegation in a setup where interest groups directly influence lawmaking by initiating regulatory bargaining. A self-interested legislature choosing between the direct exercise of its legislative authority and delegation to an administrative agency must therefore trade off the value of bureaucratic competence against bureaucratic drift and, importantly, loss of control over bargaining. Our analysis, first, clarifies when the legislature’s choice between delegation and no delegation is socially efficient or socially inefficient; second, highlights the role of political bargaining and shows that precluding interest group influence through bargaining may actually increase the scope for socially inefficient outcomes; and, third, illustrates the model’s predictions in light of selected stylized facts and the practice of scant empirical work on legislative delegation.     

THE ORANGE BOOK – TURNING RIGHT OR CHANGING GEARS?

The Liberal Democrats becoming kingmakers in 2010 did not depend solely on the numbers adding up on May 5th. Did The Orange Book pull the party to the right, making coalition with the Tories a meeting of minds? Or was it better viewed as an element in an overall strategic shift towards greater professionalism, making a deal with either of the major parties more likely?     

Strategic purchasing and supplier partnerships—The role of a third party organization

This study explored how a credible third party facilitated the development of supplier partnerships. By identifying qualified potential suppliers, serving as a surrogate for legitimacy for supplier firms and providing a market place for the potential partners to meet, the third party organization provided key compensating mechanisms to reduce the power and social distance and overall transaction costs associated with collaborating to effect supplier relationships between the parties. The study contributes to the supply and purchasing literature by integrating the role of third parties into research on buyer–supplier relationships that have so far been viewed predominantly as dyads and by demonstrating how third parties may actually influence relationships between buyers and suppliers. Our findings also provide firms with some guidelines on building successful buyer–supplier partnerships.     

THE ORANGE BOOK,THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM

Despite the Liberal Democrat's party heritage and despite the efforts of those who wrote The Orange Book, the party still has difficulty embracing economic liberalism. The state is often seen as benign or even virtuous and there is huge caution when it comes to taxation, public service reform and deregulation which results from other priorities being put before economic growth. Indeed, even some of The Orange Book authors have produced mixed results when they have had opportunities in the coalition government.     

General Election: How would the parties' plans impact the outlook?

• Our modelling suggests that, based upon the three main parties’ economic and fiscal plans, the outcome of the General Election would have a modest, but not immaterial, impact on the UK's economic and fiscal outlook. The Liberal Democrat plans would deliver the strongest GDP growth, followed by Labour, but both would also involve higher debt servicing costs and a higher level of government debt than the plans of the Conservatives.
• In our view these premiums on debt and borrowing costs are so small that it is very difficult to argue that the UK should pursue a more austere fiscal policy and reject the opportunity of stronger growth. But with the latest opinion polls suggesting that it is likely that the next government will be either a minority administration, or a coalition consisting of three or more parties, it is most likely that we will ultimately see some combination of the main parties' plans enacted.
• The experience of 2010 suggests that such political uncertainty could mean that we see several bouts of market nervousness between now and May 7th, particularly in equity markets. However, such turbulence is likely to be short‐lived, providing that the resulting government is perceived to be strong and durable. Even a multi‐party coalition may not be such a bad thing, particularly if it watered down the more contentious policies of the main parties. The worst‐case scenario would be a weak minority government which is both unable to pass any meaningful legislation and unable to seek a fresh mandate. Such a scenario could seriously undermine confidence amongst investors and firms.

     

Special Interest Protectionism and the Antebellum Woolen Textile Industry

A bstract .   Academic and nonacademic work focusing on special interest lobbying tends to ignore America's early history in favor of the 20^th century, leaving the origins of the organized commercial lobby vague. Using the antebellum woolen textile industry as a case study, this article finds that this industry was one of the first to demonstrate the potential benefits of interstate, interindustry coalitions for rent-seeking activities. Using pressure tactics frequently observed today, but innovative for the time, the industry was not only successful in obtaining relatively high legislated tariffs by 1828, it also altered the traditional congressional avenues for obtaining information from aggrieved parties. This article clearly demonstrates that organized and public lobbying by commercial interests has a longer history than is typically recognized.     

POLAND'S NEW ECONOMIC STRATEGY 1994–97

D. Mario Nuti reviews the policies of the left-wing coalition that came to power in Poland in September 1993. There has been no change in target model, transition speed or fiscal stance. Changes in policy trade-offs and instruments - though important - are within the bounds of party alternation in any democracy. Economic recovery is strong in spite of adverse political developments.