Do Federal Reserve Bank presidents’ interest rate votes in the FOMC follow an electoral cycle?

We find that Federal Reserve Bank presidents’ regional bias in their dissenting interest rate votes in the Federal Open Market Committee follows an electoral cycle. Presidents put more weight on their district’s economic environment during the year prior to their (re-)election relative to nonelection years.     

Vox Populi,Vox Dei? Tacit collusion in politics

We study competition between political parties in repeated elections with probabilistic voting. This model entails multiple equilibria, and we focus on cases where political collusion occurs. When parties hold different opinions on some policy, they may take different policy positions that do not coincide with the median voter's preferred policy platform. In contrast, when parties have a mutual understanding on a particular policy, their policy positions may converge (on some dimension) but not to the median voter's preferred policy. That is to say, parties can tacitly collude with one another, despite political competition. Collusion may collapse, for instance, after the entry of a new political party. This model rationalizes patterns in survey data from Sweden, where politicians on different sides of the political spectrum take different positions on economic policy but similar positions on refugee intake—diverging from the average voter's position, but only until the entry of a populist party.     

国外责任制研究综述:从单层次到多层次的研究视角

回顾了单层次(即微观及宏观层次)的责任制研究,梳理了现有的多层次责任制研究,重点探讨了国外学者提出的多层次责任制研究模型。最后指出现有研究存在的不足,并展望了未来的研究方向。     

An institutional analysis of voter turnout: the role of primary type and the expressive and instrumental voting hypotheses

Recent events highlight primary type as an institutional variable that merits further examination in the economics literature on voter turnout. Using panel data for U.S. gubernatorial elections and treating primary type as a proxy for candidate deviation from the median voter, we test whether primary type changes voter turnout and whether that change is dominated by instrumental or expressive voting. The results show that states with more open primaries tend to have greater voter turnout in general elections, and that this increase reflects the effect of open primaries on expressive voting.

公司治理投票机制优化设计初探

借鉴一般性政治投票机制,并结合公司治理目的及其利益主体特性,提出两种改进公司治理投票机制的方案——可转移的累积投票和贮存式投票,并对这两种改进方案的积极意义进行评估和分析。最后,对公司治理投票机制优化设计的后续研究问题进行了展望。     

政府责任:制度逻辑与实现路径初探

政府责任内涵的广泛性和本质的复杂性,导致了其在实现过程中遭遇的一系列困境,同时也催生了若干责任追究机制的产生和逐渐演进。从行政问责制到高官问责制,体现了政府责任诉求在制度层面的逻辑演进经历了制度内涵、价值原则以及制度程序的深化与聚集,这使得政府责任的实现路径日渐清晰。     

Electoral competition with policy-motivated candidates

In the multi-dimensional spatial model of elections with two policy-motivated candidates, we prove that the candidates must adopt the same policy platform in equilibrium. Moreover, when the number of voters is odd, if the gradients of the candidates' utility functions point in different directions, then they must locate at some voter's ideal point and a strong symmetry condition must be satisfied: in particular, it must be possible to pair some voters so that their gradients point in exactly opposite directions. If the number of dimensions is more than two, then our condition is knife-edge. When the number of voters is even, the situation is worse: such equilibria never exist, regardless of the dimensionality of the policy space.     

管理层问责:后国企改革时代的新课题

改革开放以来,我国国企改革取得了令人瞩目的成就,但仍未能从根本上革除国企绩效低下、所有者缺位、内部人控制等弊端。在依次经历扩大企业自主权、从经营权向所有权过渡、推进建立现代企业制度和深化国家控股股份公司(特别是上市公司)内部改革等四个阶段之后,我国已进入到后国企改革时代。从委托代理的视角来看,产权制度改革后的国企仍然存在多级委托代理关系,这是单纯的产权制度改革并不能解决国企顽疾的症结之所在。在后国企改革时代要根除国企诸多弊病,必须从深层次推动国企改革,重点是加强对管理层的约束和监管,切实建立和完善有效的管理层问责机制。     

Electoral Balancing in Federal and Sub-national Elections: The Case of Canada

The major premise of this study is that in federal countries voters can balance and moderate national policy by dividing electoral support between different parties in federal and sub-national elections. We compare the non-concurrent federal and provincial elections in Canada to assess the balancing properties of sub-national elections. The balancing hypothesis implies that the federal incumbent party may suffer additional electoral losses in provincial elections. We use several statistical tests - ordinary OLS, fixed effect and unbalanced random effect cross-section time series - to analyze Canadian electoral data for the period of 1949-1997. All tests sustain that the incumbent party at the federal level loses votes in provincial elections.     

乡镇政府问责制度安排

自2003年因SARS风暴引起的政府问责事件以来,在政治社会生活中,对政府问责的制度设计和制度实践渐趋成形,但由于以造成严重损害后果为导向的、党政系统内的同体问责制度设计不当,从而限制了政府问责制度应有的功能。这种狭义上的政府问责制度,同样规范和制约着乡镇政府问责,乡镇政府作为我国政府层级体系中的最基层组织,与农民有着最为紧密的联系,其主要职责是对农村公共事务的管理。探索建立科学、合理、全面的乡镇政府问责制度,不仅为乡镇政府职权的规范行使,满足农民的利益诉求,提供切实保障;同时也为与此相关的基层民主政治建设,提供制度支持。     

The Political Economy of Social Security

We consider a two-period overlapping generations model in which individual voters differ by age and by productivity. In such a setting, a redistributive pay-as-you-go system is politically sustainable, even when the interest rate is higher than the rate of population growth. The workers with medium wages (not those with the lowest wages) and the retirees form a majority which votes for a positive level of social security. This level depends on the difference between the rates of population growth and interest as well as on the redistributiveness of the benefit rule.