Institutional Change in Nepal: Liberalization,Maoist Movement,Rise of Political Consciousness and Constitutional Change

ABSTRACT

Contradicting the rest of the world’s promptness to discredit communism as an alternative and Francis Fukuyama’s (1992 Fukuyama, F. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man . New York: The Free Press, A Division of Macmilan Inc. [Google Scholar]) teleological account of ‘the end of history,’ Nepal witnessed a Maoist revolution between 1996 and 2006. Such a ‘deviation’ from what Fukuyama and others have viewed as the path of development raises questions about the linear progression of history and its implicit dualism of market vs. government. As several Original Institutional Economists have discussed, analytical dichotomies lead to a simplistic understanding of transformation that disregards the multilayered nature of society and, thus, concludes that history unfolds linearly to arrive at a predetermined and homogeneous end. This paper analyzes the social transformation of Nepal that preceded the Maoist revolution, through the lens of Feminist Institutionalism, utilizing a multidisciplinary approach to understand the complexity of the impacts of liberalism-protectionism political changes on Nepali institutions.     

Expressive voting and two-dimensional political competition: an application to law and order policy by New Labour in the UK

There has been much debate regarding the electoral strategy adopted by New Labour in the lead-up to and then during their time in government. This paper addresses the issue from the perspective of left/right and liberal/authoritarian considerations by examining data on individual attitudes from the British Social Attitudes survey between 1986 and 2009. The analysis indicates that New Labour’s move towards the right on economic and public policy was the main driver towards attracting new centrist voters and could thus be labelled ‘broadly’ populist. The move towards a tougher stance on law and order was more ‘narrowly’ populist in that it was used more to minimise the reduction in support from Labour’s traditional base on the left than to attract new votes. The evidence presented provides support for an expressive theory of voting in that law and order policy was arguably used to counter alienation amongst traditional, left-wing Labour supporters.     

Much ado about nothing? The controversy over the validity of the Coase theorem

The controversy over the theoretical validity of the ‘Coase theorem’ is closely linked to the controversy over the correct statement of it, since the principal need is to determine what valid generalizations can be made on the basis of Coase’s 1960 Coase, R. H. 1960. “The Problem of Social Cost.” Journal of Law and Economics 3:1–44.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] examples. The present article does not aim to review the content of the controversy as such, but rather to question the reasons behind it: why so much noise about a proposition that is patently unrealistic (because of its assumption of zero transaction costs)? I argue that the prominence of the controversy, namely of the question of the validity (and statement) of the ‘Coase theorem’, can be analytically explained by the roles this ‘theorem’ plays in microeconomics: it is critical (of the standard theory of market failures), heuristic (drawing out the consequences of the efficiency assumption), and normative (conveying an optimistic view of the efficiency of exchange). I stress that these roles depend on the nature of the exchange defined in the formulation of the ‘theorem’. And I conclude that they rest upon the cooperative bargaining version, and therefore on an optimistic belief in the ability of people to find efficient agreements.     

What's Left for ‘Social Europe’? Brexit and Transnational Labour Market Regulation in the UK-1 and the EU-27

The paper examines UK government positions on the regulation of transnational labour in the context of Brexit. Through an analysis of EU regulations on posted workers – the practice whereby a company based in one EU member state sends workers to carry out a service in another EU member state – the paper argues that the UK has consistently advocated further liberalisation of transnational labour markets in EU level decision-making, a position consistent with promoting increasingly ‘flexible’ labour markets at home. Brexit marks a turning point. Demands from British workers for stronger protection against liberalising pressure help explain the UK's recent shift towards relaxing its opposition to ‘market-correcting’ EU initiatives like the revised posted worker directive. Brexit provides a window of opportunity for the revitalisation of ‘Social Europe’ in the EU-27, without a longstanding veto player at the bargaining table, but one more likely focused more on upholding national labour protections than initiating new supranational policies.     

Size-corrected inference in fiscal policy reaction functions: a three country assessment

As a reflection of both strong persistence of debt-to-GDP ratios and correlation of respective innovations with governments’ primary surpluses, standard t-tests in policy reaction functions show actual significance levels that are up to five times larger than their nominal reference. Adopting size-controlled inference by means of Monte Carlo-based and asymptotic Bonferroni critical values, we diagnose fiscal policies in the US and the UK to be sustainable in samples covering more than 100 years. Conditioning on post-WWII subsamples and 5% nominal significance, conventional t-tests signal fiscal sustainability for these countries. In contrast, size-corrected inference hints at a lack of fiscal sustainability and, thus is recommended for the ‘real-time’ monitoring of public debt. The fiscal policy of Portugal is found to lack sustainability irrespective of the considered sample period.     

‘Better off,as judged by themselves’: a reply to Cass Sunstein

This paper is a reply to Sunstein’s comment on my paper ‘Do people really want to be nudged towards healthy lifestyles?’ The central claim of that paper was that, in their book Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein switch between two different interpretations of the ‘better off, as judged by themselves’ criterion, and that consistent use of one or other interpretation would have blunted the persuasive power of the book. In this reply, I defend that claim against Sunstein’s counter-arguments.     

Fiscal policy asymmetries and the sustainability of US government debt revisited

This paper empirically investigates US fiscal policy sustainability and cyclicality in an empirical structure that allows fiscal policy responses to exhibit asymmetric behavior. We investigate this over two quarterly intervals, both of which begin in 1955:1. The short sample ends in 1995:2 and is most similar to the one used by Bohn (Q J Econ 113:949–963, 1998), whereas the full sample ends in 2013:3. Our estimation results show that the full sample period is sufficiently different from the short sample period, that the asymmetric (nonlinear) empirical models used in this paper are important and that the sustainability of US government debt topic needed to be revisited. Indeed, the short sample provides evidence of fiscal policy sustainability in line with Bohn’s (1998) findings. However, when considering the full sample, US fiscal policy is found sustainable during good economic times only according to the best fitting nonlinear model, but unsustainable for all specifications studied during times of distress. With regard to cyclicality, both samples show policy is asymmetric. Moreover, both samples show countercyclical policy during times of distress and the full sample results show some evidence that policy may be procyclical during good economic times.     

Exploring the relationship between university and innovation: evidence from the Italian food industry

This study provides empirical evidence on the role of universities’ technological transfer (TT) activities in the Italian manufacturing sector, with particular attention to the food industry. Using the UniCredit-Capitalia database (2008 UniCredit-Capitalia. 2008. Decima Indagine Sulle Imprese Manifatturiere Italiane. Rapporto Corporate. [Google Scholar]) for firms and data from the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) to obtain the university TT indicator, we estimate a probit model to assess the effect of universities’ TT activities on a firm’s likelihood to innovate. The role of proximity in knowledge spillovers from TT activities is also investigated. Results show that university TT activities seem to stimulate food industry firms innovation and the impact appears significantly higher than for the manufacturing sector. Moreover, the effect of TT activities on innovation appears to be geographically bounded. As regards policy implications, this study provides two insights which may help promote innovation in the food sector. First, the factors that influence innovative capability in the food sector are different from those in other sectors, suggesting the need for sector specific instruments for promoting innovation. Second, science is important in the food industry and this raises questions about the policy of mainly considering high-tech industries when promoting a closer relationship between firms and universities.     

Federal homelessness policy: A robust political economy approach

In the wake of the financial crisis, the United States government introduced a new large-scale initiative to address homelessness. The policy mandate is marked by both an unprecedented increase in federal funding and a dramatic reallocation of resources toward Housing First, a service model emphasizing immediate housing subsidization. Although this service paradigm has received support from a sizeable literature, our knowledge of its success to date has been limited. This paper sheds light on the unobservable or unmeasured costs of this new centralized approach to ending homelessness. I argue that federal homelessness policy under the Housing First approach 1) generates resource misallocation, 2) exacerbates the Samaritan’s dilemma, and 3) invites rent seeking.     

An inquiry into the Ramsey-Hotelling connection

Ramsey’s 1928 Ramsey, F. P. 1928. “A Mathematical Theory of Saving.” Economic Journal 38 (152): 543–559. doi:10.2307/2224098[Crossref] , [Google Scholar] paper on saving and Hotelling’s 1931 article on exhaustible resources are considered to be two seminal contributions in economic dynamics. They have been associated because of their temporal proximity, use of the calculus of variations, and because of Hotelling’s citation of Ramsey. This connection however needs to be precisely investigated and characterized. On the basis of archival material, this paper shows that, on the interpersonal and theoretical ground, the connection is quite thin, but that significant parallels are found in Ramsey’s and Hotelling’s expectations with mathematical economics for the progress of science and for informing public decision.