The effect of remittances prior to an election

The objective of the article is to assess whether remittances have an influence on political manipulation, which may occur prior to an election, through an increase in the government consumption-to-GDP ratio. We combine data from the National Elections across Democracy and Autocracy data set compiled and discussed in Hyde and Marinov (2012) and the World Development Indicators data set. We focus on 70 developing countries over the period 1990–2010. It appears that the political budget cycle is reduced up to the point where it is fully cancelled out at a remittance threshold of 10.7% of GDP. Those findings are robust to different robustness checks.     

The likelihood of dubious election outcomes

Summary. A disturbing phenomenon in voting, which causes most of the problems as well as the interest in the field, is that election outcomes (for fixed preferences) can change with the way the ballots are tallied. This causes difficulties because with each possible choice, some set of voters can be dubious about whether it is the “correct” one. But, how likely are these settings allowing multiple election outcomes? By combining properties of the geometry of voting developed by Saari with a analytic-geometric technique created by Schlafli, we determine the likelihood that a three candidate election can cause these potentially dubious outcomes. Received: April 11, 1997; revised version: November 12, 1997     

Grants-in-aid and election outcomes in recipient jurisdictions: The impact of EU funds on mayoral elections in Poland

We analyze the impact of EU funds on the outcomes of Polish mayoral elections in 2010 and 2014. We employ an instrumental variable approach to account for the endogeneity of EU funds. Our instruments approximate the availability of EU funds. The first instrument builds on the alignment of the local electorate with the regional donor government. The second instrument uses the funds spent in municipalities in the same sub-region dropped from the sample because the mayors do not run again. We do not find convincing empirical evidence in favor of the notion that EU funds increase the vote shares of mayors. We go on to test whether the electoral effect of EU funds is conditional on the attitude towards the donor institution among the population in the recipient population. This conditional factor is under-researched and politically virulent – given citizens’ skepticism towards the EU that Krastev (2017) describes for Central and Eastern European EU members. Our results are affirmative. EU funds increase the vote shares of mayors in municipalities where Krastev (2017) predicts the degree of EU skepticism to be low while they are not found to do so in municipalities where EU skepticism is predicted to be widespread. These results suggest that citizens’ attitudes towards the donor of vertical grants determine the political gains of recipients from using them.     

The effect of political volatility on capital markets in EU accession and neighborhood countries

Political instability has the potential to disrupt financial markets. But how do political institutions affect financial movements in an environment where all institutions are in flux? This paper looks at the effects of formal and informal political volatility in the new EU countries of central and eastern Europe, in the Eastern Neighborhood, and farther afield in Central Asia to answer this question. Using asymmetric GARCH modeling on monthly data, I find that informal political volatility has a significant negative effect on stock returns, while formal political institutions generate much higher financial volatility than changes in monetary policy.     

The effect of income inequality on political polarization: Evidence from European regions, 2002–2014

This article investigates whether income inequality leads to political polarization and provides new evidence that an increase in the Gini coefficient at the local level increases the probability of supporting a political party at the extreme left and right of the ideological distribution. Using individual data for 25 European countries from 2002 to 2014, I find that increasing inequality leads on average to more support for left‐wing parties. I also find that increasing inequality leads to more support for far‐right parties among older individuals. Support for far‐right parties seems to be driven by rising anti‐immigrant sentiments. The results are robust to different specifications, including an instrumental variable that addresses the endogeneity of income inequality.     

The probability of conflicts in a U.S. presidential type election

Summary. In a two candidate election, it might be that a candidate wins in a majority of districts while he gets less vote than his opponent in the whole country. In Social Choice Theory, this situation is known as the compound majority paradox, or the referendum paradox. Although occurrences of such paradoxical results have been observed worldwide in political elections (e.g. United States, United Kingdom, France), no study evaluates theoretically the likelihood of such situations. In this paper, we propose four probability models in order to tackle this issue, for the case where each district has the same population. For a divided electorate, our results prove that the likelihood of this paradox rapidly tends to 20% when the number of districts increases. This probability decreases with the number of states when a candidate receives significatively more vote than his opponent over the whole country.Received: 12 August 2002, Revised: 7 March 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: D71. Correspondence to: Vincent R. MerlinSpecial thanks are due to Franck Bisson, a Caen PhD student, who helped collect the data. The authors also gratefully acknowledge Ashley Piggins and an anonymous referee for their comments.     

The financial costs of political uncertainty: Evidence from the 2016 US presidential elections

The victory of Mr. Donald Trump came as a surprise to a wide range of market participants. Some of the elements of his economic plan were envisaged to affect all US sectors. This paper assesses the reactions of disaggregated US stock market to the 2016 US presidential election results, and possible deregulation that is to follow after his inauguration. We find that the different US sectors were significantly and varyingly influenced by the election result, and were greatly reactive during the days after the inauguration. This underscores that uncertainty tends to persist and even rises since the President-elect took office.     

The effect of telehealth insurance mandates on health-care utilization and outcomes

This paper uses panel data techniques to investigate the impact of state mandates to cover telehealth services on private insurance premiums and enrollment, health-care utilization, and health outcomes. There is evidence that telehealth insurance mandates are associated with an increase in primary care, but no significant changes in overall health outcomes. However, there is evidence of a reduction of secondary care and improvement in health outcomes in non-metropolitan areas. The results provide useful information regarding the potential of telehealth to reduce health-care costs as well as to reduce disparities in access to health care and in health outcomes.     

A note on the effect of minimum drinking age laws on youth alcohol consumption

This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to investigate the effect of minimum drinking age laws (MDALs) on youth alcohol consumption. Two considerations motivated the analysis. First, results from previous studies provide conflicting evidence of the effect of MDALs on alcohol consumption. Second, all previous studies of the effects of MDALs on alcohol consumption have failed to control for unmeasured time-varying state effects. This study addresses this latter issue by using a difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) methodology. The results of this study were mixed. On the one hand, a preponderance of estimates of the effect of MDALs on alcohol consumption are negative, although many are not significantly different from zero. On the other hand, estimates of the effect of MDALs differ by gender and exhibit some variation across samples and methods. In the end, I believe the estimates presented in this article are not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion and suggest the need for additional research.     

The effect of fiscal system reform on fiscal policy outcomes

We investigate how reform in governmental accounting affects fiscal policy outcomes including debt, balance, and fiscal transparency. Since a change from cash to accrual accounting can be regarded as a natural experiment among governments, a fixed-effects model is exploited. We discover that the change diminishes debt in developed countries, but expands it in less-developed ones, with strong effects in highly indebted countries. The change improves balance in developed countries and worsens it in less-developed countries, which is significant for developed countries with large deficits. Transparency is improved only in less transparent developed countries.     

The effect of political factors on sovereign default

This aricle examines the effect of political factors on sovereign default. Using a theoretical model, we find that political instability increases the likelihood of default. To test this theoretical implication, we use a panel logit model to estimate the effect of long- and short-run political factors, along with other macroeconomic variables, on the probability of default. Data from 68 developed and developing countries between 1970 and 2010 is used to conduct the study. Our findings suggest that a country is more likely to default when (i) it has a relatively younger political regime in place; (ii) it faces a higher chance of political turnover; and (iii) it has a less democratic political system. Economic factors are also vital; a country with stronger growth and less external debt is less likely to experience sovereign default. Robustness tests using alternative measures of political risk, trade balance and EMBI sovereign bond spreads also support the baseline findings.     

Examining the effect of IMF conditionality on natural resource policy

Can International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending improve natural resource governance in borrowing countries? While most IMF agreements mandate policy reforms in exchange for financial support, compliance with these reforms is mixed at best. The natural resource sector should be no exception. After all, resource windfalls enable short-term increases in discretionary spending, and office-seeking politicians are often unwilling to forgo this discretion by reforming the oil, gas, or mining sector. I investigate how and when borrowers go against their political interests and establish natural resource funds—a tool often promoted by the IMF—in the wake of a loan agreement. Using text analysis, statistical models, and qualitative evidence from natural resource policy and IMF conditionality for 74 countries between 1980 and 2019, I show that borrowers under an IMF agreement are more likely to create or regulate a resource fund, particularly if the agreement includes binding conditions that highlight the salience of natural resource reforms. This study contributes to extant research by proposing a new method to extract information from IMF conditions, by introducing a novel dataset on country-level natural resource policy, and by identifying under what circumstances international reform efforts can help combat the resource curse.     

The influence of remittances on education and health outcomes: a cross country study

We study the effect of international remittances on aggregate educational and health outcomes using a sample of 69 low- and middle-income countries. We find that remittances play an important role in improving primary and secondary school attainment, increasing life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. Our results suggest that as migration laws continue to support greater emigration and remittances, policies should be enacted to facilitate the flow of remittances as they represent a significant source for economic development.     

The effect of female representation on political budget cycle and public expenditure: Evidence from Italian municipalities

This study analyzes the impact of the gender composition of political institutions on the political budget cycle (PBC) and on the size and structure of public expenditure. An instrumental variable approach is implemented to evaluate the influence of female politicians in municipal councils. The introduction of gender quotas for Italian municipalities is used as an exogenous variation in female participation in politics. The results show that: (i) fluctuations in local public spending are only slightly affected by the presence of a wider female representation; (ii) an increase in the number of elected women reduces the overall amount of public expenditure; (iii) this reduction involves fields typically affected by PBC (e.g., roads' maintenance) except those related to females' needs (e.g., kindergarten, primary education, and social care).     

The effect of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on consumer bankruptcies

Medical expenses have been associated with a large proportion of consumer bankruptcies in the United States. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between the Medicaid expansion implemented in the context of the Affordable Care Act and consumer bankruptcy, overall and by chapter filing. We used a longitudinal study design with a study period of 2008–2017. We tested three approaches: difference-in-differences, fixed effect panel linear regression, and triple difference. We constructed a panel dataset from 2008 to 2017 with states’ data using data from various sources on insurance, bankruptcy filings, and characteristics that may affect bankruptcy, such as income and ethnicity. The outcomes were the annual rates of consumer bankruptcies overall and by chapter at the state level. Between 2008 and 2017, the overall unadjusted bankruptcy filing rate fell from 0.36% to 0.24%. We found that the expansion was associated with a decrease in overall consumer bankruptcy varying between 0.035 and 0.039 percentage points and that the intensity of the effect was modulated by the intensity of the treatment. Results were consistent across models and suggest that the Medicaid expansion had a significant negative effect on overall bankruptcy filings and specifically on Chapter 7 filings.     

The effect of vaccination on children's physical and cognitive development in the Philippines

We use data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS) in the Philippines to link vaccination in the first 2 years of life with later physical and cognitive development in children. We use propensity score matching to estimate the causal effect of vaccination on child development. We find no effect of vaccination on later height or weight, but full childhood vaccination for measles, polio, Tuberculosis (TB), Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus (DPT) significantly increases cognitive test scores relative to matched children who received no vaccinations. The size of the effect is large, raising test scores, on average, by about half an SD.     

The effect of forest land use on the cost of drinking water supply: A spatial econometric analysis

Forest land use is often associated with the protection of water resources from contamination and the reduced cost of drinking water supply. This study attempted to measure the value of the forest on the quality of water resources from a contingent market, namely drinking water supply, by estimating variations in drinking water costs as a function of variations in land uses. Spatial correlations were taken into account because of the use of different geographical scales (i.e., water service area and land uses) and the potential existence of organizational and technological spillovers between water services. We found a significant negative effect of forest land use on water costs. We found no evidence of spatial spillovers concerning the management regime but did find that factors related to the scarcity of resources in neighboring water services have an impact on water costs.     

The long-run effect of aid on health: evidence from panel cointegration analysis

Although a major objective of aid donors is to improve health outcomes in recipient countries, there is relatively little research on whether aid to the health sector leads to improved health outcomes, and even less on the impact of total aid. This paper examines the relationship between total aid and population health using panel cointegration and causality techniques designed to deal with problems afflicting previous aid-health studies: spurious regressions, omitted variables, endogeneity, cross-sectional dependence, and parameter heterogeneity. The main results are: (i) aid has, on average, a small but negative long-run effect on health, (ii) while the long-run (or trend) effect of aid on health is negative, the short-run (temporary) effect of aid on health is positive, (iii) causality runs in only one direction, from aid to health, and (iv) aid worsens health mainly in sub-Saharan countries, but has a positive, albeit statistically insignificant, long-run impact on health in Latin American and Caribbean countries and in countries with negative values of net ODA.     

Impact of sanitation,safe drinking water and health expenditure on infant mortality rate in developing economies

Despite of significant growth in all walks of life, the issue of infant mortality still a major concern in most of the developing economies. The World Development Indicators have reported that 4.45 million infants died across the globe in 2015, meaning that 32 deaths per every 1,000 live births. A number of times, the World Health Organization (WHO) have stressed the significance of sanitation, safe drinking water and healthcare facilities in reducing infant mortality rate, though most developing countries still lacks in these services. Given this background, the present study aims to examine the role of sanitation, water facilities and health expenditure on infant mortality rate across a panel of 84 developing economies using annual data from 1995 to 2013. The study also account for per capita income and depth of food deficiency as the control factors in the model. The findings of this study establish a significant long-run equilibrium association among the variables. The long-run elasticities on infant mortality suggest that improved water and sanitation facilities, health expenditure and per capita income substantially reduce infant mortality rate, while food deficiency increases. Given these findings, we suggest that increasing access to improved water, sanitation and healthcare facilities will significantly reduce child mortality in developing economies around the world.     

政府政策镶嵌度与企业行为对企业绩效的影响

通过拓展镶嵌自主性理论,构建了政策镶嵌度、企业行为与绩效理论模型,实证检验了政策的获益性、复杂性、适合性、信赖度对企业行为和企业绩效的影响。研究结果证实,政策的获益性、信赖度对企业行为和企业绩效有正向影响,而政策的复杂性对企业行为和企业绩效有负向影响。该结果说明,政府在制定和执行政策过程中应该着眼于提升政策的获益性和信赖度,降低政策的复杂性,从而促进企业绩效的改进。本研究最后还发现,企业绩效的改善受企业资本额大小的影响。