Casinos,casino size,and crime: A panel data analysis of Michigan counties

Growth in legal gaming in the United States over the past quarter century or so is well-documented. One important factor fueling this growth was the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which permitted Native American tribes to establish, under agreements or “compacts” with the states in which they are located, casinos offering what is known as Class III gaming: slot machines, blackjack, roulette, and other games. Since the passage of the Act, there have been 21 Native American casinos established in Michigan. Also, three non-Native American casinos opened in Detroit in 1999 and 2000. This growth in the number of casinos has sparked a wide-ranging debate over the social and economic impacts of casino development.The purpose of this research is to focus on the crime issue in the broader casino debate. We investigate the impact of these Michigan casinos on the rates of burglary, robbery, larceny and motor vehicle theft (property crimes) in casino host counties as well as in nearby counties. We employ a panel data set with annual observations on all 83 Michigan counties for the period 1994–2010. The dataset includes crime rates taken from the FBI crime data series, variables for the presence of a casino in a county or in a nearby county, the scale of a casino's operations as measured by revenues, and a variety of control variables suggested by the broader literature investigating the factors that determine crime rates generally.Our results suggest that in most cases the property crime rates studied are not affected by the presence or size of a casino in a county or in a nearby county. The largest such impact, which is negative, is for motor vehicle theft. The size of a casino does have a small positive effect on the motor vehicle theft rate.     

Media activity and public spending

Politicians seeking reelection need voters to know what they have done for them. Thus, incentives may arise to spend more money where media coverage is higher. We present a simple model to explain the allocation of public spending across jurisdictions contingent on media activity. A politician seeking to maximize the probability of reelection will shift more money to jurisdictions where an extra dollar raises more votes because a larger share of the electorate is informed about his policy. The main prediction of the model is that media activity is higher in the core areas of media markets. This implies higher spending levels there and lower spending levels in remote jurisdictions. Empirical support for this prediction is found using United States data on county-level federal grant allocation, Designated Market Areas and the location of licensed television stations.     

Growth and fluctuations: The role of public dividends and public spending

In this paper, we consider a discrete-time version of the endogenous growth model developed by Barro [Barro, R.J., 1990. Government spending in a simple model of endogenous growth. Journal of Political Economy 98, 103–125], but augmented in order to envisage a public participation in the production of private goods. Public dividends are invested in order to provide a public good; in turn, the public good plays a role of indispensable production externality and, eventually, of growth engine.For what concerns the production of private goods, we find that an optimal policy is always based on a positive participation of the government as shareholder; also, when growth is slow, a public intervention or large substitution effects stabilize the economy.A right mix of short-run services and long-run infrastructures is suggested in slow economies to rule out expectation-driven fluctuations. Infrastructures are mainly recommended in presence of moderate income effects, while services are recommended in presence of strong income effects.     

Developed stock market reaction to political change: a panel data analysis

This paper utilized panel data to examine the effects of political change in developed stock market. According to Hausman test, we capture the stock return by the fixed-effect model to fit the stock market. Political change was originally intended as an incumbent party impetus to create opportunities for progress. However, this has caused great political party distress, creating political change with an inverse stock return relationship in developed countries.     

Property taxation and local public spending: the renter effect

The point of departure for this study is the pervasive finding that, other things equal, local jurisdictions tend to spend more on local services the larger the fraction of renters among their residents. This paper seeks to determine the approximate magnitude of this “renter effect” by posing the question “How much smaller would local public budgets be if all residents were home-owners?” Making use of two quite different approaches, the paper finds a typical renter effect on local public expenditure on the order of ten percent. This finding suggests that we might do well to reform the administration of the property tax so that changes in property tax liabilities on rental dwellings are directly and visibly transformed into changes of monthly rental payments.     

Financial development and governance: A panel data analysis incorporating cross-sectional dependence

This study investigates bidirectional causality between governance and financial development using panel data of 101 countries from 1984 to 2013. The financial development–governance nexus is explored using econometric methods robust to cross-sectional dependence, and the relationship between different levels of development and openness is analyzed. Long-run equation estimates show clear evidence that financial development positively affects governance, and this positive impact is found to be robust to three different measures of governance. Further analysis shows that improving governance quality has a positive effect on financial development, while Granger causality tests demonstrate bidirectional causality between financial development and the governance measures. Finally, the impact of financial development on governance is dependent on a country’s level of development and openness. These findings underscore the crucial role of financial development in bringing about good governance reforms and economic growth that, in turn, can further develop the financial sector. As such, a symbiotic and synergistic relationship can persist between good governance, growth, and financial development. The findings provide significant motivation for policymakers to encourage openness and financial sector development to lift the standard of living, especially in emerging economies.     

Institutions and economic development: A Granger causality analysis of panel data evidence

This study examines the causal relationship between institutions and economic development using a panel Granger causality test. The study incorporates two institutional datasets, the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) and World Governance Indicators (WGI). The empirical results based on 60 countries show that there is a bi-directional causality between institutions and economic development. The findings also suggest that causality patterns between institutions and economic performance vary at different stages of income level. Better institutional quality fosters economic development in higher income countries, whereas economic development tends to enhance institutional quality in lower income countries.     

Bypassing Barnett: the comprehensive spending review and public expenditure in Wales

Under UK devolution, public expenditure is distributed to the devolved administrations by means of the population-based Barnett formula. However, in the July 2000 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) the Treasury bypassed the operation of the Barnett formula to determine public expenditure levels in Wales. This was necessary in order to enable Wales to access European Objective 1 funds for economic regeneration. In so doing, the UK government has set a precedent which is destined to accelerate demands for a thorough and independent review of regional public expenditure needs.     

Bypassing Barnett: the comprehensive spending review and public expenditure in Wales

Under UK devolution, public expenditure is distributed to the devolved administrations by means of the population-based Barnett formula. However, in the July 2000 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) the Treasury bypassed the operation of the Barnett formula to determine public expenditure levels in Wales. This was necessary in order to enable Wales to access European Objective 1 funds for economic regeneration. In so doing, the UK government has set a precedent which is destined to accelerate demands for a thorough and independent review of regional public expenditure needs.     

Corruption and distribution of public spending in developing countries

This paper empirically examines the impact of corruption on the structure of government spending by sector. Using the three-stage least squares method on 64 countries between 1996 and 2001, we show that public corruption distorts the structure of public spending by reducing the portion of social expenditure (education, health and social protection) and increasing the part dedicated to public services and order, fuel and energy, culture, and defense. However, civil and political rights seem to be a stronger determinant of expense on defense than corruption. Our results are robust to instrumentation by the latitude of the country.     

Measurement error in causal analysis of panel data: Attenuated versus inflated relationships

The presence of random measurement error is commonly thought to cause attenuation of statistical relationships. While this is an unquestionable truth in bivariate analysis, it cannot be generalized to the multivariate case without qualification. This paper shows that measurement error may give rise to overestimates of parameters in causal analysis whenever there is more than one independent variable and the independent variables are correlated. If the independent variables are not measured with the same amount of reliability, there may also be considerable error in estimates of the relative magnitude of their impact. Both problems are particularly serious when the amount of measurement error is large relative to some of the causal effects such as in panel analysis with lagged dependent variables.     

Exploring the role of FDI in enhancing the entrepreneurial activity in Europe: a panel data analysis

This paper explores the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the entrepreneurial activity in 16 European countries. By using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data, which enables the distinction necessity-driven vs. opportunity-driven entrepreneurs, we assess the influence of both inward and outward FDI on the entrepreneurial activity during the time span 2005–2012. We resort to a static, as well as to a dynamic panel data analysis. Our findings highlight the fact that the FDI has no clear influence on the total entrepreneurial activity, or on the established business ownership rate. Nevertheless, our results clearly state that both inward and outward FDI positively influences the necessity-driven entrepreneurs, while having a negative impact on the opportunity-driven entrepreneurs. The results prove to be robust regarding the use of a fixed and random effects panel model, two stages least square (2SLS) model, as well as the use of a system-Generalized Method of Moments (system-GMM) approach.     

Political determinants of fiscal transparency: a panel data empirical investigation

The investigation of the determinants of fiscal transparency has been mostly performed on cross-sectional data, and it has produced mixed results. This paper improves the existing literature by performing a static and dynamic panel analysis of the effect of a set of political variables on the level of fiscal transparency in 36 democratic countries. By using a recent measure of fiscal transparency based on IMF Governance Finance Statistics and available from 2003 to 2013, we find strong links between political environments and the dynamics of fiscal disclosure. Our results show that government control over the legislature exerts some negative effect on fiscal transparency, while the effect of government ideology is shown to be at least fragile. Furthermore we find that legislature fragmentation exerts a negative effect on fiscal transparency, which suggests that competition within the parliaments does not increase fiscal transparency, but instead it induces governments to react by reducing accessibility to information.     

Women and corruption: evidence from multinational panel data

In this paper we investigate whether the ratio of female population is related with lower corruption, utilizing a multinational panel data with 80 countries for the period 2000–2012 and employing the Generalized Method of Moments as well as the ordered probit regression methods. This is the first study on the impacts of different female groups on corruption. Overall speaking, the estimation results are pluralistic. Higher female ratios in the legislative branch and in the labor force are significantly associated with a lower level of corruption, while the female ratio in secondary enrollment is positively related with corruption; however, the female ratio of the whole population has insignificant impacts on corruption. The policy implications are that a simple enhanced female ratio and educational level are not the effective way to inhibit corruption in our sample countries, whereas improvements of the female ratio in the legislative branch and the labor force contribute to controlling corruption. These results are basically robust for the two estimation methods and for the two subsamples of developed and developing countries. As a result, the estimation results on the relationship between corruption and gender might vary remarkably when different indicators for the female groups are utilized, which should some light on future studies.     

Economic development and growth in Colombia: An empirical analysis with super-efficiency DEA and panel data models

In this paper, we analyse economic development and growth through traditional measures (gross domestic product and human development index) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in Colombian departments over the period 1993–2007. We use a DEA model to measure and rank economic development and growth from different approaches such as poverty, equality and security. The results show considerable variation in efficiency scores across departments. A second-stage panel data analysis with fixed effects reveals that higher levels of economic activity, quality life, employment and security are associated with a higher efficiency score based on the standards of living, poverty, equality and security. All findings of this analysis should demonstrate that economic development and growth could be achieved most effectively through a decrease in poverty, an increase in equality, a reduction in violence, and improved security. This indicates the need to generate effective policies that guarantee the achievement of these elements in the interest of all members of society.     

Knowledge,technological convergence and economic growth: a dynamic panel data analysis of Middle East and North Africa and Latin America

Quality & Quantity - This paper aims to investigate the role of various knowledge indicators, such as research and development, information and communication technologies and trade, in the...     

City size and urban labor productivity in China: New evidence from spatial city-level panel data analysis

The previous literature has generally found that most Chinese cities were undersized in the 1990s. However, little is known about how urban agglomeration in China has evolved since the country began to experience much faster urbanization and deep marketization after 2000. Based on panel data of 281 cities between 2000 and 2013, our spatial panel data regression results show that the scale impact of city size on urban productivity appears to have an inverted U shape, and its effect will grow when the cities’ industrial structure becomes more dominated by the service sector. There are also significant spatial interactions and spatial heterogeneity of urban agglomeration among Chinese cities. Furthermore, we compute the optimal size for each city and find that most Chinese cities are still undersized in recent years. Based on our findings, we argue that the Chinese government should focus on promoting sufficient growth of medium sized cities in its new urbanization strategy.