The Determinants and Impact of State Abortion Restrictions

This paper shows that a state's abortion policy is determined by the strength of interest advocacy groups and political forces. The greater the membership in the National Abortion Rights Action League, the percentage of female state legislators and the percentage of Democratic female legislators, the less restrictive a state's abortion policy. The greater a state's population that are Roman Catholics, the more restrictive a state's abortion policy. The paper also estimates the impact abortion restrictions have on a state's abortion rate. The empirical results show that abortion restrictions have no statistically significant impact on a state's abortion rate. A state's abortion restrictions do not significantly increase out-of-state abortions.     

Explaining the Choice Among Regulatory Plans in the U.S. Telecommunications Industry

We investigate why different states in the United States choose different regulatory plans in their telecommunications industry. We present a simple theoretical model and an empirical analysis of the issue. We find that a state is more likely to replace rate-of-return regulation with incentive regulation when: (1) residential basic local service rates have historically been relatively high; (2) allowed earnings under rate-of-return regulation in the state have been either particularly high or particularly low; (3) the state's leaders tend to come from both major political parties, rather than from a single party; (4) the state's urban population is growing relatively rapidly; and (5) the bypass activity of competitors in the state is less pronounced.     

The shaky legal foundations of European monetary union

A paper currency is underpinned by the power of a state to define and control the issue of legal tender. In legal theory, EMU will centralise this power. But in practice, the legal structure might not be strong enough to enforce currency issue rules against a member state in conditions of crisis. Instability could result if investors move euro balances out of a state's banking system to avoid perceived risk.     

DIVORCE LAW REFORMS AND DIVORCE RATES IN THE USA: AN INTERACTIVE FIXED‐EFFECTS APPROACH

This paper estimates the effects of unilateral divorce laws on divorce rates in the USA from a panel of state‐level divorce rates. We use the interactive fixed‐effects model to address the issue of endogeneity due to the association between cross‐state unobserved heterogeneity and divorce law reforms. We document that earlier studies in the literature do not fully control for unobserved heterogeneity and result in mixed empirical evidence on the effects of divorce law reforms. While reconciling these conflicting results, our results suggest that divorce law reforms have temporal positive effects on divorce rates, thus confirming the 2006 findings of Wolfers. Via simulation experiments, we assess the degree to which faulty inclusion or faulty exclusion of interactive fixed effects affects the policy effect estimators. Our results suggest that faulty inclusion only results in efficiency loss whereas faulty exclusion causes bias. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional perspective of financial sector development: A multidimensional assessment

Financial sector development is a multidimensional process that plays a vital role in the economic growth and development of a country. This study investigates the effect of institutional quality on multidimensional financial sector development, and its dimensions, such as, depth, access, and efficiency. We used a panel dataset of 85 emerging and developing economies from 1996 to 2018 for analysis. Our findings based on 2SLS estimation demonstrate that institutional quality has a significant positive effect on the progress of the financial sector, especially its depth, access, and efficiency. The breakdown analysis shows that most of the key components (control of corruption, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and voice and accountability) of institutional quality enhance the financial sector development. Our empirical results are robust across alternative measures of institutional quality, split-sample analysis, alternative instrument, and estimator. This paper also offers useful policy implications to the stakeholders in emerging and developing economies.     

When Elites Forget Their Duties: The Double‐Edged Sword of Prestigious Directors on Boards

Previous research indicates that the performance effect of prestigious directors is ambiguous. Our study addresses this issue by integrating the theoretical lens of board capital and the institutional perspective. We argue that prestigious directors can bring benefits as well as costs. We claim that the emergence of these costs depends on the institutional context, specifically the institutional characteristics of the country's corporate elite circle which is characterized by the elite cohesion and the elite exclusiveness. Our empirical results with a 15‐country sample covering the period of 2005 to 2014 provide evidence for the overall existence of a positive performance effect of prestigious boards. However, our results also indicate that these beneficial effects of prestigious boards are mitigated in countries with high elite exclusiveness. Hence, under these certain institutional conditions, the elite‐favouring behaviour of prestigious directors also brings costs.     

Economic, organizational, and political influences on biases in forecasting state sales tax receipts

This paper investigates factors influencing fixed bias in forecasting state sales taxes revenues. By extending an existing model used to explain forecast accuracy to include a series of complex interactions related to the potential political and policy use of revenue forecasts, the paper extends our understanding of the forecasting process in government. Exploratory empirical analysis based on survey data is used to provide evidence that bias in forecasting results, at least in part, from political and policy manipulation. There is also evidence that institutional reforms associated with ‘good management’ practices affect forecast bias, but in complex ways depending upon the extent to which political competition exists within the state.     

村落如何终结?--中国农村城市化的制度研究

中国城乡二元分割制度背景下的城市化是世界城市化进程中的一种特殊类型,其突出特征是需要制度转型.然而目前我国尚未对村落向城市的转型做出统一的制度安排,导致了城市化的滞后.另一方面,没有建立权利义务关系对等的土地房屋税收体系,也是导致目前征地拆迁过程中众多矛盾和冲突的症结所在.本文试图从理论上解决这两个问题.(1)从系统的制度安排的角度,探讨中国城市化过程中村落终结的路径;(2)探讨城市化(村落终结)过程中国家与被征地及拆迁人在土地房屋权利和义务关系上合理的制度化安排.这对于厘清和解决目前城市化过程中存在的问题,具有重要理论和现实意义.     

职业体育联盟制度安排的反垄断法分析

职业体育联盟起源于西方发达国家,随着市场经济的进一步深入,职业体育联盟的一些制度安排不可避免的受到反垄断法的规制,所以,职业体育联盟制度安排必须考虑反垄断法问题,考虑职业体育联盟生存的制度环境的差异性,尽量规避职业体育联盟的反垄断诉讼。     

Can inflation targeting reduce price information asymmetry and alleviate corruptive behavior? Evidence from developing countries

This paper examines the role of inflation targeting as a price signaling mechanism reducing price information asymmetry and potentially reducing incentives for corruptive actions through its direct control on the inflation rate, thus simultaneously increasing institutional quality. The obtained evidence suggests that adopting inflation targeting lowers corruption in a sample of 61 developing countries for the period between 1990 and 2018. Countries that have adopted inflation targeting experience lower corruption levels, as measured by the corruption perceptions (CP) index, controlling for other relevant determinants of corruption identified in the empirical literature, such as inflation, level of income, income distribution, trade openness and the rule of law. This result is sensitive to the type of inflation targeting adopted. Soft (unofficial) inflation targeting has no significant effect on the corruption level, giving support to the claim that strong institutional commitment, accompanied by transparency and constant communication with regards to inflation targets by the central bank, provides an adequate price signaling mechanism. In addition, the analysis provides evidence that an efficient rule of law reduces corruption levels significantly, although its effects are rather modest to support the claims that it can solely lessen corruptive behavior in the sample of developing countries.     

Urban Commoning as a Vehicle Between Government Institutions and Informality: Collective Gardening Practices in Tampere and Narva

This article examines the processes of urban commoning and its co-produced features of urbanity, making the claim that, through these processes, informality becomes translated into institutionalized city planning. Commoning is analysed through a comparative study that utilizes contingent features of urbanity and three modalities accommodating the informality–formality meshwork during urban change. The article contributes to research on urban transformations by integrating commons, informality dynamics and the constitution of state institutions. This focus is elaborated with reference to collective gardening practices in the context of two of the less studied European cities, Narva in Estonia and Tampere in Finland. The results of the study indicate that urban commoning takes place through delegating a public mandate and enacting uncertainty, two processes that informalize city government practices. Particular differences appeared in regard to the institutional porosity that enables unregulated spaces of collective gardening to be mobilized as part of urban politics. We argue that networked movements appear as an essential part of the urban logic of action producing meaningful connections in an informal–formal meshwork and bringing together multiple sites in the commoning process.     

Anti-Abortion Activities and the Market for Abortion Services: Protest as a Disincentive

Cross-section data for the US are used to estimate the effects of anti-abortion activity on the demand and supply of abortion services in 1992. Empirical results show that anti-abortion activity had a signi~cant negative impact on both the demand and supply of abortion services. Using estimates from a two-stage least-squares estimation of demand and supply, anti-abortion activities (measured as picketing with physical contact or blocking of patients) have decreased the market equilibrium abortion rate by an estimated 19 percent and raised the price of an abortion by approximately 4.3 percent. Taken together, the empirical results show that anti-abortion activities have been successful in making abortion services scarcer.     

Local institutional shareholders and corporate hedging policies

This paper examines the effectiveness of monitoring function from institutional investors on corporate hedging strategy in Taiwan over the period from 2005 to 2012. The empirical results show that institutional investors are effective monitors of corporate risk management to enhance the probability and extent of hedging. In addition, the monitoring function from institutional investors is effective for mitigating the risk-shifting problem of high leveraged firms. Moreover, local institutional investors play more important role in monitoring distressed firm's magnitude of hedging than foreign institutional investors. These results are robust to the consideration of endogeneity, selection bias, and industrial difference. This is the first empirical evidence in the literature regarding the monitoring effect of institutional investors on risk management strategy from the angle of monitoring costs.     

Investor protection and value creation in cross‐border M&As by emerging economies

Previous research investigating cross‐border M&As (CBM&As) by emerging economies (EEs) provided contrasting evidence on the value enhancement role of investor protection rules. We conduct a new empirical study to address the issue with an accurate sample selection of bidders from more homogeneous developing countries and transactions on developed countries only. Our analysis over the 1997–2012 period on a sample of M&A deals by companies from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) does not provide evidence that better institutional standards in the destination country are rewarded by the local stock market. We find that foreign governance quality is not associated with positive excess stock returns around the announcement date. Rather, these returns are affected by firm‐specific and deal‐specific factors, such as the relative deal size, the listed status of the target company, and the acquirer size. Comparison with other studies on excess returns for emerging markets (including BRICs) suggests that the results could be driven at least partially by country choice.     

MIND THE GAP: UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE NEW EU REGIONS

Abstract.  The paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on regional unemployment during transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on optimal speed of transition (OST) models and on comparison of them with the neo-classical tradition. In the typical neo-classical models, spatial differences essentially arise as a consequence of supply side constraints and institutional rigidities. Slow-growth, high-unemployment regions are those with backward economic structures and constraints on factors mobility contribute to making differences persistent. However, such explanations leave the question unanswered of how unemployment differences arise in the first place. Economic transition provides an excellent testing ground to answer this question. Pre-figuring an empirical law, the OST literature finds that the high degree of labour turnover of high unemployment regions is associated with a high rate of industrial restructuring and, consequently, that low unemployment may be achieved by implementing transition more gradually. Moreover, international trade, foreign direct investment and various agglomeration factors help explain the success of capital cities compared to peripheral towns and rural areas in achieving low unemployment. The evidence of the empirical literature on supply side factors suggests that wage flexibility in Central and Eastern Europe is not lower than in other EU countries, while labour mobility seems to reinforce rather than change the spatial pattern of unemployment.     

Investment and Capital Structure of Partially Private Regulated Firms

We develop a model that examines the capital structure and investment decisions of regulated firms in a setting that incorporates two key institutional features of the public utilities sector in many countries: firms are partially owned by the state and regulators are not necessarily independent. Among other things, we show that regulated firms issue more debt, invest more, and enjoy higher regulated prices when they face more independent regulators, are more privatized, and when regulators are more pro‐firm. Moreover, regulatory independence, higher degree of privatization, and pro‐firm regulatory climate are associated with higher social welfare.     

A survey of enterprise reforms in China: The way forward

The strategic importance of the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector to the Chinese economy cannot be underestimated, thus the success of SOE reform is a significant factor in China's future economic prosperity. The dilemma facing state authorities is to develop market-orientated corporations while at the same time coping with potentially high unemployment and a range of equity and social justice issues. This paper presents an analysis of the current issues in SOE reform in China, drawing on relevant empirical evidence, and proposes a strategic direction and a framework for reform that challenges the recently announced program of privatization of listed SOEs. The literature indicates that state ownership is generally negatively correlated to performance. Conversely, Legal Person ownership positively influences performance. Other forms of private ownership are generally positively correlated to performance, with institutional ownership showing significant promise. Consequently, the divesture of state ownership is recommended and could be accomplished over three or four tranches. The state could divest its ownership by auction to strategic investors, both domestic and foreign, and in the next tranche an auction to the broad populace through units in mutual funds. The final proposed tranche being a distribution to nationwide pension funds to support retirement schemes, which should be made nationwide. Finally, listed firms should also issue shares as rights issues to offer present shareholders protection from dilution.     

Political, Ideological and Economic Determinants of Abortion Position: An Empirical Analysis of Stale Legislatures and Governors

A bstract . The Supreme Court's decisions in the 1989 Webster and 1992 Casey cases shifted the focus of abortion legislation from the federal to the state level. In light of this shift, the factors that affect the position taken by state level office holders on abortion is examined using state level data. Results of a probit analysis show that a governor's position on abortion is significantly influenced by the governor's ideology as well as the abortion demand of his or her constituency. Similar probit analyses for state senates and stale houses shows that a constituency's abortion demand as well as factors representing the constituency's demand for access to legal abortion services significantly affect the position both legislative bodies take on abortion. Policy maker's ideology is found to play a significant role in shaping state senates' position on abortion, but not the positions of state houses'. This last result is consistent with the proposition that policy makers who have a narrow constituency, such as state house members, have less freedom to make decisions based on their own ideology and are more beholden to the views of their constituency, all else equal.