Political stability and trade agreements: Evidence for ‘endgame FTAs’

This paper empirically examines the idea that Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are more likely to be signed by governments playing ‘endgames’; that is, when governments are about to lose power. Two empirical strategies shed light on this hypothesis. One relies on events that increase the probability of political turnover, the other on term limits. I find that countries are more likely to sign FTAs after the unexpected exit of their leaders, when political instability is high. The key finding is partly confirmed in the term-limits strategy as governments are found to form more FTAs during their last term in office.     

Why the poor do not expropriate the rich: an old argument in new garb

We consider a political economy with two partisan parties; each party represents a given constituency of voters. If one party (Labour) represents poor voters and the other (Christian Democrats) rich voters, if a redistributive tax policy is the only issue, and if there are no incentive considerations, then in equilibrium the party representing the poor will propose a tax rate of unity. If, however, there are two issues – tax policy and religion, for instance – then this is not generally the case. The analysis shows that, if a simple condition on the distribution of voter preferences holds, then, as the salience of the non-economic issue increases, the tax rate proposed by Labour in equilibrium will fall – possibly even to zero – even though a majority of the population may have an ideal tax rate of unity.     

Rent extraction,revolutionary threat,and coups in non-democracies

This paper studies the political turnover process in autocracies due to coup d’états. We present a model in which autocratic rulers are politically constrained both by the elite and by the street. These political constraints are inter-related such that when leaders extract rent from the economy on behalf of the elite they increase the probability of facing a revolt in the street. We suppose that rulers differ in the efficiency with which they extract rents and citizens make inferences about the ruler’s type when idiosyncratic shocks occur. Equilibria are characterized in which elite-led coups serve to reset citizens’ beliefs about the leader’s type and pre-empt revolutions during periods of popular unrest. We then investigate the empirical implications using panel data on popular unrest and coups in sub-Saharan Africa. OLS and IV estimates support the causal mechanism highlighted in our theory. The magnitude of the effect is substantial – a one standard deviation increase in protest intensity increases the probability a coup occurs by a factor of almost three in our baseline IV specification.     

The voting mechanism and market allocation: A note

An example is provided identifying a new case of inefficiency arising from the interplay between the political and market mechanisms.     

The effects of bureaucracy on political accountability and electoral selection

This paper examines how bureaucracy affects political accountability and electoral selection, using a three-tier political agency model consisting of voters, politicians and bureaucrats. In the model’s hierarchy, politicians are constrained by elections while bureaucrats are controlled by budgets. If voters and bureaucrats prefer different types of politicians (i.e. they have a conflict of interests), incumbents pass oversized budgets to prevent bureaucrats from engaging in strategic behaviours that damage incumbents’ reputations. If, instead, voters and bureaucrats prefer the same type of politicians (i.e. they have an alignment of interests), bureaucrats cannot obtain a concession from politicians. In the latter case, however, bureaucrats send voters a credible signal regarding an incumbent’s type, which improves electoral selection. This paper also shows that political appointment systems improve political accountability in the conflict-of-interests case while they weaken electoral selection in the alignment-of-interests case.     

生态经济理论的发展与政治经济学的创新

长期以来,我国社会主义政治经济学由于忽视研究生态经济问题,使之缺乏创新与发展。现在生态经济学得到了迅速的发展,政治经济学必须研究生态经济问题,必须吸收生态经济理论,真正成为社会主义现代化建设的坚实的理论基础。     

农业生态系统中政策性资源及效应的探讨

本文阐述了政策性资源的定义、特点及相关的效应,指出任何政策都有效应,良好的政策产生的效应是正向的,而不良的政策产生的效应是负向的。并对有关政策性资源的存在及度量作了分析。     

论政府供给偏好的短期决定:政治均衡与经济效率

本文以财政支出为主体,研究了我国政府供给偏好(规模与结构)短期决定问题。政治均衡而非经济市场均衡是理解这一问题的关键。在“有管理的竞争性政治市场”和政府追求政治支持最大化等假定下,我们考察了政治均衡决定政府供给偏好的过程及其效率属性,以及“政治价格”在两级“政治市场”上的形成机制。结论表明:政治均衡决定资源配置固有的低效率属性,因政府供给范围的“越位”和“缺位”而加剧。当前改革的重点应是推动经济市场化转轨的完成和公共财政的转型,而非完全的民主化。权威因素对“政治价格”的管理在利益分化严重的当前形势下具有建设性作用。推动渐进民主化,完善权力对等的“二级政治市场”则是长远之策。     

Finance and politics: the wealth effects of special interest group influence during the nationalisation and privatisation of Conrail

Conrail, nationalised in 1976 and privatised in 1987, was themost significant nationalisation and privatisation by the USgovernment in recent years. It was created from six bankruptrailroads under the pressure of interest groups, formed by customers,existing claimants, employees and related companies. We documentthe gains and losses to these special interest groups at keypoints in the nationalised and privatised time periods. Overthis period, the US government had outlays of $6.59 billion,and cash inflow of $6.15 billion, and internal return of –6.4%.The paper provides evidence that a state-owned firm with goodgovernance could deliver superior performance.     

The determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration

The paper formulates hypotheses and reports on individual attitudes towards immigration based on data for 24 countries on socioeconomic position, sociodemographic characteristics and political attitudes. The results are consistent with the predictions of factor proportions trade theory, but also suggest that a range of other economic and cultural factors influence attitudes towards immigration.     

A MODEL OF AN OPPORTUNISTIC-PARTISAN POLITICAL BUSINESS CYCLE

According to political business cycle theory, separate opportunistic and partisan approaches exist. It is obvious, as seen from theoretical and empirical points of view, that politicians aim for both opportunistic as well as partisan goals. This paper presents a model of a pre‐election political business cycle that manifests an indication of competence and a post‐election political business cycle that occurs because of the uncertainty of an election's winner monetary policy. In the pre‐election period competent governments expand the economy. The post‐election cycle depends on whether a leftist or a conservative government is in power in the pre‐election period, and if they are re‐elected or not.     

非政府组织——公民政治参与的“领导者”

非政府组织（Non—Government Organizations，缩写为NGO），出现于50年代，兴起于70年代，在过去20年有了飞跃性的发展。如今非政府组织已经渗透到社会生活的方方面面，并且发挥着越来越大的作用。随着世界民主化浪潮波及全球，公民的政治参与成为当代政治生活的重要内容。但是由于种种原因，中国公民的政治参与无论是广度，还是深度都是比较低的，谁能“领导”公民参与政治，非政府组织无疑是最好的领导者!     

Institutionalized pollution havens

A multiple-principal, multiple-agent lobby group model suggests that the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on environmental policies is conditional on the structure of host countries' political institutions such as the number of legislative units (veto players). The model also yields the novel concept of “aggregate honesty” which combines veto players and corruption. FDI raises environmental policy stringency where the number of legislative units are many (aggregate honesty is high), but reduces it where the legislative units are few (aggregate honesty is low). Our panel data evidence is fully consistent with these predictions. An additional contribution is to show the empirical importance of endogenizing environmental policy in Pollution Haven Hypothesis studies. Only when treated as endogenous does environmental policy have a significant negative effect on FDI.     

Exposure to corruption and political participation: Evidence from Italian municipalities

This paper aims to study the effects of exposure to corruption on all the aspects of political participation. Focusing on Italian municipalities in the period 1999–2014, we generate a daily and local measure of exposure to corruption, screening newspaper articles of the main Italian press agency. We concentrate on local elections and, in an event-study analysis, we find three main results. First, corruption exposure affects citizens' participation in election by reducing voter turnout. Second, corruption impacts on politicians’ participation: the number of candidates and electoral lists decreases after a scandal and candidates with political tenure are more likely to run. Finally, these changes affect local political outcomes as tenured politicians are more likely to be elected, while freshmen lose ground. These results suggest that exposure to corruption has general and negative effects on political participation, leading people to lose interest in politics.     

Political risk and the expectations hypothesis

This paper develops and empirically supports, using 3 and 6 month interest rates, a theory that political risk can explain the shifting term premia found in U.S. data. We find that incorporating these political regime shifts yield results that support the expectations hypothesis.     

中日传统文化对政治现代化的影响

对任何国家来讲,政治现代化既是现代化运动的一个重要方面,也是现代化运动的一个重要支撑,而传统文化对政治现代化有着不可低估的影响。传统文化是民族历史的结晶,蕴涵了本民族思维方式、价值观念、行为准则等因素,一方面具有强烈的历史性、遗传性,另一方面又具有鲜活的现实性、变异性。因此,传统文化为政治现代化提供历史的根据和现实的基础。本文将就中日两国不同的传统文化对各自政治现代化的影响进行浅析,以求对中国政治现代化道路做有益的探索。     

Parenthood and political engagement

This paper analyzes the impact of parenthood on political engagement using the longitudinal British survey data and a repeated cross-sectional European Social survey. I construct a political engagement measure by applying confirmatory factor analysis to observable indicators of several different aspects of political engagement. Then, I estimate the impact of becoming a parent on political engagement based on an event study around the birth of an individual’s first child, using UK data. The results indicate that having children reduces the political engagement of female parents but does not significantly affect the political engagement of male parents. The impact on women is temporary and disappears several years after the birth of their first child. The analysis of the impact of additional children on political engagement suggests that women’s political engagement is reduced by the fact of becoming a mother rather than by the number of children. The results are confirmed using repeated cross-sectional data for European regions, controlling for fixed regional characteristics. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Polarisation, uncertainty and public investment failure

In a political economy model, the effect of political polarisation on a government's intertemporal choice between redistribution and public investment is shown to be similar to the effect of political uncertainty. Moreover, polarisation and uncertainty reinforce one another in their impact on public underinvestment and may ultimately lead to no investment at all.     

政治关系“力量”与民营企业价值研究:腐败的调节效应

从社会网络理论的强弱关系视角对2012-2014年福布斯中国富豪榜的企业家及其企业进行了政治关系的度量,检验了腐败是否会调节政治关系"力量"对企业价值的影响。研究发现,企业家本身所具有的政治关系对企业价值具有明显的正向影响作用,关系的"力量"越强,对企业价值的正向影响就越大;与此同时,腐败的出现会强化政治关系"力量"对民营企业价值的影响。通过分组验证发现,这种"力量"在腐败程度较高环境下更易对企业价值产生正向影响,但在腐败程度较低的环境中,政治关系对民营企业价值的影响很多时候并不显著。     

Why does democracy need education?

Across countries, education and democracy are highly correlated. We motivate empirically and then model a causal mechanism explaining this correlation. In our model, schooling teaches people to interact with others and raises the benefits of civic participation, including voting and organizing. In the battle between democracy and dictatorship, democracy has a wide potential base of support but offers weak incentives to its defenders. Dictatorship provides stronger incentives to a narrower base. As education raises the benefits of civic engagement, it raises participation in support of a broad-based regime (democracy) relative to that in support of a narrow-based regime (dictatorship). This increases the likelihood of successful democratic revolutions against dictatorships, and reduces that of successful anti-democratic coups.