The electoral migration cycle

This paper proposes a new test of Tiebout sorting that relies on the exogenous time structure of recurrent local elections. The test is based on the idea that competitive elections represent periodic perturbations to the Tiebout equilibrium of local public good provision and allocation of households to communities, so that their schedule should affect the timing of households' sorting decisions. On the other hand, internal migration flows that have nothing to do with the demand for public goods over which localities vote recurrently ought to be orthogonal to the timing of elections in a reduced-form migration equation. I exploit the staggered schedule of mayoral elections in Italy to analyze migration, elections, and public budget data across several thousands of municipalities, and find evidence of a systematic influence of the electoral calendar on the timing of sorting decisions.     

Is it the economic policy,stupid? Economic policy,political parties & the gubernatorial incumbent advantage

Incumbent politicians have a well-known advantage in seeking re-election. Using the Economic Freedom of North America dataset, we examine how changes in economic policy during an incumbent governor's tenure influence the probability of losing their re-election bid. Put simply, does economic policy matter for the incumbent advantage? The results suggest that a decrease in economic freedom increases the probability of an incumbent loss, regardless of the governor's party. A decomposition analysis indicates that these results are primarily driven by the government spending sub-index. Furthermore, a more granular analysis suggests that: (1) increases in government consumption spending and government employment are associated with a lower probability of re-election among Democratic incumbent governors, but a higher probability among Republicans; (2) increases in transfer payments relative to personal income reduce the likelihood of re-election, regardless of party; and (3) among Republican incumbents, increases of income taxation and of top marginal tax rates are associated with a higher and lower, respectively, probability of losing re-election. Finally, controlling for a variety of demographic, political and socioeconomic factors, we find that high unemployment increases the probability that an incumbent loses re-election, while increasing net population migration reduces it.     

Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry

Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009–2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.     

Spatial determinants of productivity growth on agri‐food Spanish firms: a comparison between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms

This study analyses the effect of the spatial factor, location, and interaction effects among peer companies, on the productivity growth of agri‐food companies in Spain. With this aim, we build a productivity growth index and apply a multiequational Seemingly Unrelated Regression on a sample of 344 Spanish cooperatives and investor‐owned firms for the period 2010–2012. Our findings show that agri‐food firms are influenced by spatial factors finding interesting differences between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms. With regard to the geographical location, cooperatives in the western of Spain show higher productivity growth rates, whereas investor‐owned firms in the northeast of Spain present better results. The interaction effect among closer peer companies is also a relevant factor to determine the productivity growth in agri‐food companies. This factor is more relevant for cooperatives than for investor‐owned firms.     

Economic Impacts of Improved Connectivity for ASEAN: An Application of the Geographical Simulation Model

We compare the prioritized projects of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC) and the Comprehensive Asia Development Plan (CADP) by utilizing the Institute of Developing Economies/Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia Geographical Simulation Model. The prioritized projects of the MPAC mainly focus on specific hard or soft infrastructure projects connecting one remote area of an ASEAN member state to another and thus fail to capture the full potential of the infrastructure because of neglected important links within a state. On the other hand, the CADP emphasizes the importance of economic corridors or linkages between a large cluster and another cluster. Our simulation analysis shows that CADP projects will result in an addition to gross domestic product (GDP) of $US 1544bn over the period from 2021 to 2030 (in 2010 dollars) or an impact on ASEAN countries that is 12 times larger than MPAC projects. The results strongly suggest that the CADP projects should be adopted and implemented to fully realize the potential economic growth of the ASEAN countries. Moreover, the CADP will contribute more to narrowing the development gaps among the ASEAN countries than MPAC prioritized projects.     

The effects of China's Sloping Land Conversion Program on agricultural households

In the late 1990s, China aimed to mitigate environmental degradation from agricultural production activities by introducing the world's largest “Payments for Environmental Services? program: the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP). We develop a microeconomic Agricultural Household Model, which can model the production, consumption, and nonfarm labor supply decisions of agricultural households in rural China in a theoretically consistent fashion. Based on this theoretical model, we derive an empirical specification, which we econometrically estimate using the Hausman–Taylor method and a large longitudinal farm household data set. The empirical results significantly differ between regions, but are generally consistent with the results of our theoretical comparative static analysis, for example, that the SLCP significantly decreases agricultural production. While the SLCP only increases nonfarm labor supply and total consumption in some regions, these effects could not be observed in others. The recent reduction of the SLCP compensation payment rates generally had negligible effects on agricultural production and off‐farm work and only very small effects on household consumption.     

北京R&D投入与经济增长的灰色关联分析

随着科技投入的加大,R&D投入也越来越被人们所重视。R&D投入不仅对所在区域科技与经济发展具有重要作用,而且对整个国家的科技与经济发展都具有推动作用。本文运用北京2001~2011年R&D经费投入与经济增长的有关数据变量进行灰色关联分析,并根据不同结构建立了相应模型,揭示了北京R&D经费投入与经济增长的关系。     

跨国公司研发投资技术外溢效应探究:浙江案例

近年来,浙江吸收的跨国投资在促进产业结构升级、推动经济增长方式转型方面具有独特的优势。本文综合运用相关理论,通过实证研究,对跨国公司研发投资的技术外溢效应进行了实证分析。本文创新点在于,外溢效应的大小,更多地取决于本土企业竞争力的强弱,只有不断增强本地企业的技术创新能力,才能吸收跨国企业的技术外溢效应。