What constitutes a constitutional amendment culture?

Why are some constitutions amended frequently and others hardly at all? An obvious candidate determinant is constitutional rigidity, i.e., the size and number of procedural barriers to amendment. Given some demand for amendment, greater rigidity implies a smaller supply. However, measures of rigidity often do not correlate significantly (or even with the predicted sign) with amendment rates. Ginsburg and Melton (2015) argue that amendment culture – “shared attitudes about the desirability of amendment” – is a more important determinant of amendment rates. We study up to 128 constitutional episodes from 54 countries and estimate relationships between amendment rates and Hofstede cultural indices. Cultures that are more individualistic and less prone to uncertainty avoidance are associated with higher amendment rates. When cultural dimensions are controlled for, the lagged amendment rate (Ginsburg and Melton’s proxy for culture) is not a robust correlate.     

Forecasting the volatility of asset returns: The informational gains from option prices

A new class of forecasting models is proposed that extends the realized GARCH class of models through the inclusion of option prices to forecast the variance of asset returns. The VIX is used to approximate option prices, resulting in a set of cross-equation restrictions on the model’s parameters. The full model is characterized by a nonlinear system of three equations containing asset returns, the realized variance, and the VIX, with estimation of the parameters based on maximum likelihood methods. The forecasting properties of the new class of forecasting models, as well as a number of special cases, are investigated and applied to forecasting the daily S&P500 index realized variance using intra-day and daily data from September 2001 to November 2017. The forecasting results provide strong support for including the realized variance and the VIX to improve variance forecasts, with linear conditional variance models performing well for short-term one-day-ahead forecasts, whereas log-linear conditional variance models tend to perform better for intermediate five-day-ahead forecasts.     

The impact of research collaboration on academic performance: An empirical analysis for some European countries

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of internal and external research collaborations on the scientific performance of academic institutions. The data are derived from the international SCOPUS database. We consider both quantity (the number of publications) and quality indicators (the field-weighted citation impact and the share of publications in the 10% most-cited articles) to evaluate universities' performance in some European countries (Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Russia). To this end, we develop a non-overlapping generations model to evidence the theoretical idea of research externalities between academic institutions. Moreover, we implement an empirical model to determine the extent to which the impact of internal and external collaborations on universities' performance is sensitive to the geographical dimension of the data.     

Investigating Treatment Effects of Participating Jointly in SNAP and WIC when the Treatment Is Validated Only for SNAP

The U.S. Department of Agriculture operates several food assistance programs aimed at alleviating food insecurity. We study whether participation in both participation in both SNAP and WIC alleviates food insecurity compared with participation in SNAP alone. We bound underlying causal effects by applying nonparametric treatment effect methods that allow for endogenous selection and underreported program participation when validation data are available for one program (treatment) but not the other. We estimate average treatment effects using data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). FoodAPS includes administrative data to validate SNAP participation. Information on local food prices allows us to construct a food expenditure‐based monotone instrumental variable that does not require a typical instrumental variable exclusion restriction. Under relatively weak monotonicity assumptions, we identify that the impact of participating in both programs relative to SNAP alone is strictly positive, suggesting that the programs are nonredundant. This evidence can support improved design and targeting of food programs.     

Natural resource rents and internal conflicts: Can decentralization lift the curse?

We study how natural resource rents affect the risk of internal conflict within countries and how the federal structure of countries influences this relationship. Natural resource abundance may induce excessive rent-seeking and thus increase the risk of internal conflict. Fiscal and political decentralization as an institutional arrangement for rent-sharing and political codetermination of regions within a country may limit the destructive effect of natural resource rents on internal stability. Using cross-country and panel data from more than 90 countries covering the period 1984–2004, we find evidence that natural resource rents indeed increase the risk of internal conflict, but this relationship is significantly mitigated by political decentralization.     

Welfare Cost of Fluctuations When Labor Market Search Interacts with Financial Frictions

We study the welfare costs of business cycles in a search and matching model with financial frictions. The model replicates the volatility on labor and financial markets. Business cycle costs are sizable. Indeed, the interactions between labor market and financial frictions magnify the impact of shocks via (i) a credit multiplier effect and (ii) an endogenous wage rigidity inherent to financial frictions. In addition, in a nonlinear framework, large welfare costs of fluctuations are explained by the high average unemployment and the low job finding rates with respect to their deterministic steady‐state values.     

Effects of scale economies and production seasonality on optimal hub locations: the case of regional fresh produce aggregation

Interest in supporting local and regional food systems is rising and food hubs have attracted considerable attention among Federal, State, and local policymakers. This study explores the problem of endogenous hub location in fresh produce value chains in the Northeastern United States. To overcome limitations in the literature, we incorporate the effects of economies of scale and production seasonality into our models. Three experimental models are designed to examine the effects of alternatively applying yearly, quarterly, and monthly data on model solutions. We explicitly assess how interactions of scale economies and seasonality influence the structure and spatial attributes of an optimal regional produce aggregation hub system. The three models generate marketed different solutions and in many respects they lead to different conclusions about developing local/regional supply chains. The monthly model allows for production seasonality and actual hub operation cycle frequency and thus leads to more efficient hub solution with rich policy implications.     

Fiscal rules to tame the political budget cycle: Evidence from Italian municipalities

The paper provides evidence that fiscal rules can limit the political budget cycle. It uses data on Italian municipalities during the 2000s and shows that: 1) municipalities are subject to political budget cycles in capital spending; 2) the Italian sub-national fiscal rule (Domestic Stability Pact, DSP) introduced in 1999 has been enforced by the central government; 3) municipalities subject to the fiscal rule show more limited political budget cycles than municipalities not subject to the rule. In order to identify the effect, we rely on the fact that the domestic fiscal rule does not apply to municipalities below 5000 inhabitants. We find that the political budget cycle increases real capital spending by about 10–20 percent on average in the years prior to municipal elections and that municipalities subject to the DSP show a pre-electoral increase in capital spending which is only a quarter of the one of municipalities not subject to the rule.     

互联网金融规制与市场有效性改善*——来自中国网络借贷行业的证据

中国的互联网金融经历了一个先创新发展后监管规制的过程，本文通过对网络借贷行业的实证研究，分析监管规则的出台实施对新型互联网融资市场有效性的影响。实证结果表明，网络借贷平台资金的银行存管、持有ICP证等强制性规定缓解了投资者、平台企业与借款人之间的信息不对称，对克服早期平台间通过竞相承诺高回报率来吸引投资者导致的“柠檬市场”问题、对解决网贷市场上缺乏平台风险性高低有效信号的问题都起到了正向作用，有助于互联网融资市场的有效性提高。