Does government ideology matter in monetary policy? A panel data analysis for OECD countries

This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced monetary policy in OECD countries. We use quarterly data in the 1980.1–2005.4 period and exclude EMU countries. Our Taylor-rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time-variant index of central bank independence with government ideology. The results show that leftist governments have somewhat lower short-term nominal interest rates than rightwing governments when central bank independence is low. In contrast, short-term nominal interest rates are higher under leftist governments when central bank independence is high. The effect is more pronounced when exchange rates are flexible. Our findings are compatible with the view that leftist governments, in an attempt to deflect blame of their traditional constituencies, have pushed market-oriented policies by delegating monetary policy to conservative central bankers.     

The Prescribing Physician’s Influence on Consumer Choice Between Medically Equivalent Pharmaceuticals

This paper reports on a study of the prescribing physician??s influence on consumers?? choice between medically equivalent pharmaceuticals. The study was performed using a dataset of 666,000 observations in which consumers were asked whether they were prepared to pay the price difference in order to obtain the prescribed pharmaceutical instead of the cheapest available substitute. The main results support the hypothesis that prescribing physicians have an impact on consumers?? choice between medically equivalent pharmaceutical products.     

Deregulation and the determinants of network access: evidence from the German interurban bus industry

We investigate the characteristics of cities gaining access to the German interurban bus network in the first two years following the deregulation of the industry in January 2013. Applying both parametric and semi-parametric survival models, we find strong evidence that the probability of a city to be added to a provider’s network increases not only with the mere size of its population but also with further demographic characteristics such as average income or the share of young and old inhabitants. Additionally, while an increasing importance of tourism has a further positive effect, a rising automobile density is imposing a significantly negative impact on the probability of a city to gain access to the network.     

Private Regulation and Trade Union Rights: Why Codes of Conduct Have Limited Impact on Trade Union Rights

Codes of conduct are the main tools to privately regulate worker rights in global value chains. Scholars have shown that while codes may improve outcome standards (such as occupational health and safety), they have had limited impact on process rights (such as freedom of association and collective bargaining). Scholars have, though, only provided vague or general explanations for this empirical finding. We address this shortcoming by providing a holistic and detailed explanation, and argue that codes, in their current form, have limited impact on trade union rights due to (i) buyers paying lip service to trade union rights, (ii) workers being treated as passive objects of regulation in codes of conduct, (iii) auditing being unable to detect and remediate violations of trade union rights, (iv) codes emphasizing parallel means of organizing, (v) suppliers having limited incentives for compliance, and (vi) codes being unable to open up space for union organizing when leveraged in grassroots struggles. Our arguments suggest that there is no quick fix for codes’ limited impact on trade union rights, and that codes, in their current form, have limited potential to improve trade union rights. We conclude by discussing ways in which codes of conduct, and private regulation of worker rights more generally, could be transformed to more effectively address trade union rights.     

Squeezing the Last Drop Out of Your Suppliers: An Empirical Study of Market‐Based Purchasing Policies for Generic Pharmaceuticals

We study the effect of the degree of exclusivity for the lowest bidder on the average price of generic pharmaceuticals in the short and long terms. Our results indicate that a 1‐percentage‐point gain in market share of the lowest bidder reduces average costs by 0.2% in the short term and 0.8% in the long term, but also reduces the number of firms by 1%. We find that reducing the number of firms has a strong positive (and hence counteracting) effect on average prices, a 1% reduction raising prices by approximately 1%.     

Rechtlich-normative Rahmenbedingungen der Regierungskommunikation – ein Thema für die Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Governmental public relations, the tax-funded political communication by administrative bodies in Germany, can very well be described as an area of constant conflict. Actors are legally obliged to communicate their policies and decisions to the electorate; on the other hand there is the constant peril of infringements of democratic rights of oppositional actors through communicative measures. Major juridical debates have arisen. Communication studies have approached the subject of legal restrictions of governmental public relations rather cautiously so far. With the issue becoming more and more salient—especially due to the accelerating process of digitisation—the question of whether this is still satisfactory gains importance. This paper is to stimulate a debate. It highlights connections and delimitations between the different perspectives and points out the possible contributions of communication studies to the establishment of valid normative and legal frameworks and the emerging fields of research for the discipline itself.     

Labor market deregulation and globalization: empirical evidence from OECD countries

This paper empirically investigates the influence of globalization on various aspects of labor market deregulation. I employ the data set by Bassanini and Duval (2006) on labor market institutions in OECD countries and the KOF index of globalization. The data set covers 20 OECD countries in the 1982–2003 period. The results suggest that globalization did neither influence the unemployment replacement rate, the unemployment benefit length, public expenditures on ALMP, the tax wedge, union density nor overall employment protection. In contrast, protection of regular employment contracts was diminished when globalization was proceeding rapidly. In fact, domestic aspects, such as unemployment and government ideology are more important determinants of labor market institutions and deregulation processes in OECD countries than globalization. For this reason, working conditions of unskilled workers are not likely to deteriorate and the jobs of unskilled workers are not likely to disappear in the course of globalization. All this is, of course, not to insinuate that globalization has any benign influence on labor market institutions.     

Does government ideology influence budget composition? Empirical evidence from OECD countries

This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced the allocation of public expenditures in OECD countries. I analyze two datasets that report different expenditure categories and cover the time periods 1970–1997 and 1990–2006, respectively. The results suggest that government ideology has had a rather weak influence on the composition of governments’ budgets. Leftist governments, however, increased spending on “Public Services” in the period 1970–1997 and on “Education” in the period 1990–2006. These findings imply, first, that government ideology hardly influenced budgetary affairs in the last decades, and thus, if ideology plays a role at all, it influences non-budgetary affairs. Second, education has become an important expenditure category for leftist parties to signal their political visions to voters belonging to all societal groups.     

Electoral cycles in perceived corruption: International empirical evidence

I examine whether elections influence perceived corruption in the public sector. Perceived corruption in the public sector is measured by the reversed Transparency International's Perception of Corruption Index (CPI). The dataset includes around 100 democracies over the period 2012–2016, a sample for which the CPI is comparable across countries and over time. The results show that the reversed CPI was about 0.4 points higher in election years than in other years, indicating that perceived corruption in the public sector increased before elections. The effect is especially pronounced before early elections (1.0 points) compared to regular elections (0.4 points). Future research needs to investigate why perceived corruption in the public sector increased before elections.     

Thoughts on a Fiscal Union in EMU

Using an estimated large‐scale New Keynesian model, we assess the consequences of introducing a fiscal union within EMU. We differentiate between three different scenarios: public revenue equalisation, tax harmonisation and a centralised fiscal authority. Our results indicate that no country would significantly benefit from introducing any form of fiscal union. Comparing long‐term, that is, steady state, effects we have winners and losers depending on the scenario. Differences in terms of business cycle statistics as well as in terms of risk sharing of asymmetric shocks are minor. This also explains why welfare differences are small across the fiscal union scenarios. A counterfactual exercise indicates that with a fiscal union regime already installed at the start of EMU, key macroeconomic variables would have reacted very similarly while debt dynamics would have changed notably.