Exit polls,turnout, and bandwagon voting: Evidence from a natural experiment

We exploit a voting reform in France to estimate the causal effect of exit poll information on turnout and bandwagon voting. Before the change in legislation, individuals in some French overseas territories voted after the election result had already been made public via exit poll information from mainland France. We estimate that knowing the exit poll information decreases voter turnout by about 11 percentage points. Our study is the first clean empirical design outside of the laboratory to demonstrate the effect of such knowledge on voter turnout. Furthermore, we find that exit poll information significantly increases bandwagon voting; that is, voters who choose to turn out are more likely to vote for the expected winner.     

South–North Refugee Migration: Lessons for Development Cooperation

Migration has become a major concern of European development policies. By improving socio–economic and political conditions through development cooperation, a reduction of South–North migration flows is envisaged. This new approach is examined by analyzing the causes of asylum migration from developing countries to Germany. The econometric findings suggest that support of democracy, economic development and trade will not reduce migration, at least not in the medium-run. However, restrictive legal measures work. Migration control by international development cooperation therefore seems to need a long–term perspective.     

United Nations Sanctions on North Korea's Luxury Goods Imports: Impact and Implications

This article examines the impacts of UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea's banned luxury goods imports from 2004 to 2017 by investigating the bilateral trade flows between North Korea and its 71 trading partner countries. This analysis provides some evidence that the sanctions were effective only for those countries that implemented the sanctions. Overall, it is difficult to conclude that United Nations Resolution 1718, which was mainly targeted to ban luxury goods exports to North Korea, was effective in curtailing North Korea's import of luxury goods for the time period from 2006 to 2007. The article argues that the lack of a clearly defined list of luxury goods and the lack of enforcement are important reasons for the ineffectiveness of the sanctions.     

Informational roles of pre-election polls

This paper introduces a pre-election polling stage to Feddersen and Pesendorfer's two-candidate election model in which some voters are uncertain about the state of the world. While Feddersen and Pesendorfer find that less informed, indifferent voters strictly prefer abstention, which they refer to as the swing voter's curse, I show that there exists an equilibrium in which everyone truthfully reveals his or her preference in the pre-election poll and participates in voting. Moreover, even in the truth-telling equilibrium, the candidate who leads in the poll may lose the election. However, polls can help elections aggregate information more successfully.     

Korea's Growth Performance: Past and Future

South Korea is arguably the premier development success story of the last half century. Rapid growth coincided with extensive state interventions in the economy, and considerable controversy exists as to how much this performance should be credited to the country's state‐led development strategy and to what extent the lessons from that experience might be portable or applied elsewhere. The salience of this issue has grown as South Korea has become a more important provider of development assistance and advice. Now the country faces challenges in maintaining its superior economic performance, notably interrelated problems revolving around the country's demographics, long‐term fiscal position, and lagging productivity in the services sector domestically, and a taxing environment externally. Finally, the country confronts scenarios involving potential instability, collapse, and/or absorption of its neighbor, North Korea.     

Vertical Integration,Firms’ Entry,Exit, Strategic Shifts,Age, and The Productivity Growth in Korea's Core Growth‐Leading Industries

This study attempts to measure the impact of firms’ entry, exit, strategic shifts, and age on the productivity growth of Korea's three core growth‐leading industries and their vertical integration with capital share (VI) firms and non‐VI (NVI) firms in view of the 2008 global financial crisis and the institutional push by the Korean Government. A stochastic frontier production model was applied to firm‐level panel data from 2006 to 2011 for Korea's automobile, electronics and general machinery industries. The results show that exogenous shocks to the market triggered large‐scale resource reallocations from firms with declining productivity to firms with less declining or rising productivity, and market share reallocation between VI firms and NVI firms. The Korean Government's institutional push led the productivity growth of NVI firms to reach their highest levels in 2010. In a VI structure, a structure comprising VI firms only, the agency problem dominated the synergies of secure supply chains and saving on transaction costs, while NVI firms endeavoured to raise their productivity to step into a VI structure to secure stable supply chains, only to find their R&D initiatives stagnated once they took on the VI structure. Therefore, efficient resource reallocation is hindered by the agency problem within the bounds of vertically integrated industrial structures.     

Redefining Europe: Russia and the 2015 Refugee Crisis

ABSTRACT

This article uses approaches embedded in practical and popular geopolitics for analysing how Russia capitalizes on the refugee crisis to redefine Europe. Two of Russia’s European policies are at the centre of this analysis: 1) Moscow’s direct appeal to Russian-speaking communities, and 2) the Kremlin’s liaisons with Eurosceptic parties of national conservative background. The main questions these two policies raise are: 1) how Russia benefits from anti-refugee attitudes among European national conservative groups, and 2) how illustrative Russia’s policies are of Moscow’s strategy toward Europe in the context of the refugee crisis. The article argues that, for Russia, these two policies constitute a strategy of re-entry into Europe from which Moscow was increasingly isolated in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In this context, the authors claim that the refugee crisis has widened room for Russia’s return to the European (geo)political scene through a strategy of redefining Europe in more conservative and traditionalist terms, as opposed to the liberal cosmopolitanism of EU’s project. Using the concepts of trans-ideology and biopolitics, the article claims that Russia’s strategy of re-entry includes narratives of othering today’s Orientalized Europe and salvaging it from liberal tolerance, political correctness and cultural fragmentation.     

Long-Run and Short-Run Behavior of Korea's Current Account

Recent research indicates that an error correction mechanism exists for current account imbalances in Germany, Japan, and the United States. In this paper, I test whether current account imbalances in Korea are also self-correcting. The Empirical results are ambiguous: while no conintegrating relationship can be detected, and error correction mechanism can. Using standard econometric methods, estimates of a small-scale macroeconomic model detect no effect of Korea's lagged net foreign claim position on any relevant variable. However, I do find that the current account is influenced by Korea's lagged net foreign claim position in a direct estimate of Korea's current account. [F32]     

On the Economics of Refugee Flows

Although the phenomenon of refugee flows is not devoid of economic connotations, it has so far been investigated primarily by political scientists and sociologists. The analytical tools of economic inquiry have not yet been applied to this subject, although it stands to reason that such a study will contribute to our understanding of why refugee flows occur and will guide the policy response. This note illustrates how economic analysis can be brought to bear on three key aspects of refugee flows: fear, poverty, and group movement.     

State Trading and Tariff Rate Quotas: The Case of Korea's Rice Imports

This paper analyzes the effects of trade liberalization of tariff‐rate quotas under import “state trading enterprises” (STEs) in agriculture. An analytical framework is provided to determine the importance of which instrument is binding under competition (the in‐quota or out‐of‐quota tariff or the quota) and under the initial STE equilibrium. It also depends on whether or not the STE controls both the domestic market prices and owns/controls the import quota (and whether it is obligated to fill the quota or not). An empirical example of the rice STE in South Korea has simulations showing that an increase in imports can be achieved through a moderate expansion of the quota or a decrease in the out‐of‐quota tariff to the level where it becomes binding. However, a significant level of quota expansion induces the STE to switch to the autarky solution and social welfare declines.     

The learning curve and the yield factor: the case of Korea's semiconductor industry

This article attempts to find out how the Korean economy has grown so rapidly in a short time span of less than 30 years. For that purpose, it focuses on the development of the Korean semiconductor industry-more specifically, the memory-chip segment of the industry-as a case in point. To test the hypothesis that the learning curve effects have been significant in the memory-chip industry, ‘yield factor’ (the ratio of sellable chips to total chips in a wafer) in semiconductor production is used as a measure of the learning progression. That is, by tracing how the yield factor for each generation of memory chips has increased, one is able to see how well the Korean chip makers have exploited the learning effects. This article improves the learning-by-doing modelling by introducing a richer set of yield data; and the unit of analysis employed throughout the article is at the firm level, which is not common in the literature dealing with East Asian development as well as the economics of technology, thus enhancing understanding of the industry dynamics.     

Peril of the Inflation Exit Condition

Recent empirical evidence on monetary policy in Japan suggests that exits from the zero‐interest‐rate policy triggered by policy shocks can be expansionary. This paper provides theoretical examples of such expansionary policy‐induced exits. The examples suggest that the exit condition (the Bank of Japan’s stated commitment of not exiting from the zero‐rate regime unless the inflation rate rises above a certain threshold) may have made it difficult for the economy to escape from the liquidity trap.     

外资银行进入模式选择——考虑退出期权

利用实物期权方法,在考虑未来退出灵活性的情况下,分析了外资银行对进入中国市场模式的选择。研究结果表明:随着市场波动率和外资银行退出收益率的增加,外资银行选择少数股权进入模式时的退出价值大于选择独立发展进入模式时的退出期权价值,因此外资银行倾向于选择少数股权进入;随着外资银行经营效率的提高和中资银行本土化优势的减弱,外资银行倾向于选择独立发展模式进入。     

产业投资基金的退出机制研究

<正>产业投资基金的退出有两个层面 的含义，一是产业投资基金的投资者 从基金中退出，二是产业投资基金从 投资项目中退出。第一个层面的退出 涉及到投资者的本金收回和资本收益 实现，也是基金投资者投资资金流动 性的体现。而第二个层面的退出则是 基金收益实现的保障，是基金所投资 产流动性的体现。第二个层面的退出， 是本文研究的主体。 产业投资基金的收益主要有两个 来源。一是所投资企业或项目的经常 性现金收入，如股利、分红、房租收入 等；另一个就是退出项目时获取的资     

退出钉住美元的时机与路径选择

当前人民币升值压力有其客观经济基础,潜在的美元危机使退出钉住美元变得迫切。从国际经验看,选择钉住一篮子货币或爬行区间难以化解已有的升值压力,也不完全适应中国未来经济发展的需要。近期人民币汇率改革应选择有管理浮动,通过制度安排让汇率动起来,通过政策调整保持汇率的基本稳定。     

Integrating ecosystem services into conservation assessments: A review

A call has been made for conservation planners to include ecosystem services into their assessments of conservation priority areas. The need to develop an integrated approach to meeting different conservation objectives and a shift in focus towards human wellbeing are some of the motivations behind this call. There is currently no widely accepted approach to planning for ecosystem services. This study contributes towards the development of this approach through a review of conservation assessments and the extent to which they include ecosystem services. Of the 476 conservation assessments identified by a set of search terms on the Web of Science, 100 were randomly selected for this review. Of these only seven had included ecosystem services, while another 13 had referred to ecosystem services as a rationale for conservation without including them in the assessment. The majority of assessments were based on biodiversity pattern data while 19 used data on ecological processes. A total of 11 of these 19 assessments used processes, which could be linked to services. Ecosystem services have witnessed an increase in attention received in conservation assessments since the year 2000, however trends were not apparent beyond this date. In order to assess which types of ecosystem services and how they have been accounted for in conservation assessments, we extended our review to include an additional nine conservation assessments which included ecosystem services. The majority included cultural ecosystem services, followed by regulatory, provisioning and supporting services respectively. We conclude with an analysis of the constraints and opportunities for the integration of ecosystem services into conservation assessments and highlight the urgent need for an appropriate framework for planning for ecosystem services.     

2011年韩国科技管理体制和成果

2011年,在韩国政府强有力干预下,由原来韩国各相关部委分散实施的科技管理、协调职能已逐步统一划归韩国国家科委.在确立未来经济研发战略五大支柱产业的基础上,其科技政策支持向绿色、新增长动力产业倾斜,同时加大了对重点技术领域研发的投入比重,加大“走出去”拓展国际科技合作的力度.2011年,韩国造船业翻身重夺全球第一,生物医药领域突飞猛进,电子软件及通信技术取得突破,绿色汽车产业及新能源领域发展迅速,等等.虽然韩国企业的技术水平仍落后于美国、日本等发达国家,但与中国企业的技术差距在明显缩小.     

韩国的农业产业及农业生物技术产业

20世纪70-80年代,韩国农业产业增长较快.从90年代开始,随着工业化进程的加快,农业在国民经济中所占比例不断下降.进入21世纪以后,韩国在形成农业规模经济、农业生产力方式和产品结构调整及科技扶农等方面取得了一些成效.虽然,韩国在改善农业基础设施,推动农村电气化、信息化以及发展农村工业等方面取得不少成绩,但由于农业生产规模和品种的局限,以及农业技术和农业生物技术产业发展滞后的影响,生产力水平提高缓慢.总的看,韩国现代农业技术和农业生物技术产业尚处于初级发展阶段,农业产业依然是韩国发展的软肋,并且渐渐成了经济改革的拖累.