Sounding the alarm: Impact of political instability on growth and fiscal health of the Indian economy

A noticeable change evident in the Indian political scenario since the eighties has been a sharp rise in the frequency with which governments have been ousted out of power. This augurs well for Indian democracy as it reflects a ‘political awakening’. Such changes in government, after an election reflect ‘orderly’: transfer of power and are inherent to the democratic form of governance. However, a close scrutiny of the political scenario at the state government level shows that there have been very frequent changes in government between elections. A high frequency of changes in government could be expected to result in frequent reversals or modifications in policy decisions and have a destabilizing effect on the economy. The present study is an empirical exercise undertaken at the level of state governments. It makes a first attempt to examine the impact of political instability on growth and on the fiscal health of the Indian economy. Received: September 25, 2000/Accepted: January 11, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" Sincere thanks to Professors Ajit Karnik and Abhay Pethe for their comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and suggestions, which have been of great help. The usual disclaimer applies.     

An empirical test of individual and institutional trading patterns in Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

We examine the pattern of daily stock returns in Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Our results support the information-processing hypothesis: Average returns on Monday are lower than on other days of the week, particularly when the previous trading day’s return is negative. Our results also support the positive-feedback-trading hypothesis: Daily returns exhibit positive autocorrelation, particularly when the previous trading day’s return is positive. Further analysis reveals that institutional investors (Japan), individual investors (Taiwan), or both (Hong Kong) can cause these patterns. Our findings are consistent with the relative importance of institutional and individual investors in each of these markets. We thank three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.     

To dissent or not to dissent? Informative dissent and parliamentary governance

Legislative dissent has detrimental effects for both party and legislator, i.e., legislators depend on their party label for re-election, which value in turn depends in part on the party’s reputation of cohesiveness. Commonly dissent has been attributed to “extreme” preferences. I provide an informational rationale for dissent. Costly dissent allows the legislator to credibly signal information about his constituency’s preferences to the Cabinet. As a result the Cabinet can better calibrate its policies with the electorate’s preferences. Dissent is shown to depend on policy preferences as well a the legislators’ electoral strength, electoral volatility, and the cost of dissent. Finally, the results suggests that parties may sometimes benefit from tolerating some level of dissent. I am grateful to Christopher Kam, Randall Calvert, John Duggan, Mark Fey, Eduardo Leoni, Sona Golder, and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank the Political Institutions and Public Choice Program at Michigan State University for its support. All remaining errors are mine.     

A mechanism implementing the proportional solution

We consider the problem of a commonly owned technology which transforms a single input into a single output. We are interested in implementing a social choice rule called theproportional solution. We introduce a mechanism which implements the proportional solution in Nash, strong (Nash) and undominated Nash equilibria. In the mechanism each agent announces only two numbers which can be interpreted as the total output and her share of the total input-output combination. This paper was originally titled "Doubly implementing the proportional solution." I would like to thank my advisor William Thomson for his detailed comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Jeffrey Banks and Sung-Whee Shin for their comments. Two anonymous referees and an editor’s comments improved this paper substantially.     

Bargaining and exclusivity in a borrower–lender relationship

This paper presents a stylized model of a borrower–lender relationship where funds are gradually invested in a project with uncertain return. We show that an exclusive financing relationship arises endogenously in equilibrium due to initial lender’s superior information on the project’s progress. The analysis also identifies a novel distortionary effect of exclusivity and the consequent loss of future rents on the ex-ante choices of the borrower. When she chooses the amount of funds to be initially invested in the project, the borrower chooses to overinvest making the future rent extraction by the initial lender as costly as possible. We would like to thank Alberto Bisin, Andrew Chen, Boyan Jovanovic, Hideo Konishi, David Mauer, Efe Ok, Mike Riordan, Charles A. Wilson, and seminar participants at Society of Economic Design 2002 meetings in New York and Southern Methodist University for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.     

The Nature of Corruption Deterrence in a Competitive Media Sector

This paper compares the deterrence provided by a competitive media sector towards government induced corruption with that of a media monopoly in a setting where the media might raise both true as well as false allegations of corruption. It finds that competition’s impact on corruption deterrence is not necessarily better than a monopoly but rather hinges on a delicate balance between government’s kickback from corruption and the media’s potential benefit from exposure. While the paper does identify conditions in which a competitive media sector would improve upon the deterrence provided by a monopoly, it also find conditions under which it would do no better than a monopoly and in some situations its strategic response could be even worse especially when it intensifies effort towards justifying false allegations.     

Constitutions as self-enforcing redistributive schemes

We present a model of a fiscal constitution (i.e., a transfer scheme between income classes) that is self-enforcing against a background in which predatory activities (‘revolutions’) are feasible. In this environment, a constitution self-enforces by structuring society’s interests in such a way that non- compliance necessarily results in a revolution which society would rather avoid.      

General Election: How would the parties' plans impact the outlook?

• Our modelling suggests that, based upon the three main parties’ economic and fiscal plans, the outcome of the General Election would have a modest, but not immaterial, impact on the UK's economic and fiscal outlook. The Liberal Democrat plans would deliver the strongest GDP growth, followed by Labour, but both would also involve higher debt servicing costs and a higher level of government debt than the plans of the Conservatives.
• In our view these premiums on debt and borrowing costs are so small that it is very difficult to argue that the UK should pursue a more austere fiscal policy and reject the opportunity of stronger growth. But with the latest opinion polls suggesting that it is likely that the next government will be either a minority administration, or a coalition consisting of three or more parties, it is most likely that we will ultimately see some combination of the main parties' plans enacted.
• The experience of 2010 suggests that such political uncertainty could mean that we see several bouts of market nervousness between now and May 7th, particularly in equity markets. However, such turbulence is likely to be short‐lived, providing that the resulting government is perceived to be strong and durable. Even a multi‐party coalition may not be such a bad thing, particularly if it watered down the more contentious policies of the main parties. The worst‐case scenario would be a weak minority government which is both unable to pass any meaningful legislation and unable to seek a fresh mandate. Such a scenario could seriously undermine confidence amongst investors and firms.

     

Elfving’s method for <Emphasis Type="Italic">m</Emphasis>-dimensional models

Elfvings method is a well known graphical procedure for obtaining c-optimal designs. Although the method is valid for any dimension it is rarely used for more than two parameters. Its usefulness seems to be constrained by the difficulty on the construction of the Elfving set. In this paper a computational procedure for finding c-optimal designs using Elfvings method for more than two dimensions is provided. It is suitable for any model, achieving an efficient performance for three or four dimensional models. The procedure can be implemented in most programming languages.Acknowledgments. The authors would like to thank Dr. Torsney for his helpful comments. This research was supported by a grant from JCyL SA004/01.     

An error-correction model of the demand for equity mutual funds in the U.S. 1973–1994

The purpose of this paper is to estimate an error-correction model of the U.S. demand for equity mutual funds. Using annual data for the period 1973–1994, this study finds that changes in the demand for equity mutual funds have been significantly influenced by the changes in the rate of return on equity mutual funds and savings deposits, as well as by the growth in income over the long run. The authors would like to thank an anonymous referee of this journal for many useful comments and suggestions.     

Can’t the university be more like business?

Businesspeople sigh, Cant the university be more like business. The faculty complain about business values crowding out academic values. The truth, I contend, lies in the muddy middle. In some respects the university is becoming more like business, and in other respects business is becoming more like the university. The university would do well to emulate business on some dimensions, and business would do well to emulate the university on other dimensions. The worst-case scenario is for the university to move away from those of its non-businesslike qualities that are worth preserving even while it apes business precisely on those qualities business is giving up.JEL Classification: I2, I21Susanne Lohmann: I would like to thank two referees for their insightful comments and Amihai Glazer for handling editorial matters.     

Gamma-minimax estimation of a multivariate normal mean

Summary The mean vector of a multivariate normal distribution is to be estimated. A class Γ of priors is considered which consists of all priors whose vector of first moments and matrix of second moments satisfy some given restrictions. The Γ-minimax estimator under arbitrary squared error loss is characterized. The characterization follows from an application of a result of Browder and Karamardian published in Ichiishi (1983) which is a special version of a minimax inequality due to Ky Fan (1972). In particular, it is shown that within the set of all estimators a linear estimator is Γ-minimax. The authors would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financial support.     

Social identity,inequality, and conflict: correction and extension

This paper corrects and extends the analysis in Social Identity, Inequality, and Conflict by James Robinson (Economics of Governance, 2(1), 2001). For conflict along class lines, Robinson finds the total impact of mobility on conflict to be ambiguous. Contrary to his result, I show that, under his assumptions, the effect of social mobility on class conflict is unambiguous. Higher mobility always decreases conflict. In my extension to Robinsons model, I explore mobilitys impact on class conflict in a society where the tax rate is not fixed. I demonstrate that if the tax rate is proportional to the population of the group in power relative to the total population of the society, then the effects of social mobility on class conflict are indeed ambiguous.Submitted: February 2002, Accepted: July 2003,I am grateful to an anonymous referee and Amihai Glazer for their comments. I would also like to thank Herschel Grossman for his help along the way.     

The flypaper effect and political strength

Simple models of local government behavior predict equal effects of private income and unconditional federal grants on local government expenditures. Numerous empirical analyses, however, find that the effect of grants is larger than the income effect. We argue that this flypaper effect may be a result of weak political leaderships in multi–issue and multi–party decision–making environments. In multi–issue institutions, a strong political leadership may reduce inefficiency due to interest group influence and inter–party bargaining in the local council. Utilizing data for Norwegian local governments in the 1930s, we find that political strength reduces the size of the flypaper effect. When the local council consists of only one political party, we cannot reject absence of a flypaper effect, while the flypaper effect is large in fragmented local councils. Received: June 2000 / accepted: February 2001     

Relationships among project manager’s leadership style, team interaction and project performance in the Taiwanese server industry

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships of the project manager’s leadership style with team interaction, and their impact on project performance. The second objective was to determine whether the effect of leadership style on project performance may be mediated by team interaction. To address the primary aims, a questionnaire-based survey was used to measure the project manager’s leadership style, team communication and collaboration, and overall performance of research and development (R&D) projects in the Taiwanese server industry. The analyses suggest that transformational leadership may be positively related to team communication and collaboration. Additionally, levels of team communication and collaboration are positively associated with projects’ levels of performance. The results also indicate that team communication and collaboration may serve as mediators between transformational leadership and project performance.     

关于新常态下政府财政支出绩效管理的思考

新常态下,我国社会经济不断发展,社会主义建设也在不断推进,城镇化建设逐渐完善,政府部门的财政支出也在不断加大.为了进一步实现对政府财政支出的优化管理,针对政府财政支出进行的绩效管理体系建设也逐渐铺开.为了有效提升政府财政支出的绩效管理,以及政府财政支出的工作效率和工作质量,需要从绩效管理角度对财政支出管理进行优化和创新性改革.     

Finding Meaning in Labor’s “Perfect Storm”: Lessons from the 1981 PATCO Strike

Attention is given to four constructive lessons in employee relations that can be drawn from the 1981 PATCO strike of our traffic controllers. First, separate truth from fiction in a strike’s record and alleged impact. Second, learn the shortcomings of one party of an organization. Third, learn that the “new employee” is best managed by a mix of mutual respect, consideration, and flexibility. Finally, learn that radical organizational change always remains possible, but only if there is first a major overhaul of top leadership.     

Why Voters Veto Vouchers: Public Schools and Community-Specific Social Capital

This article explains voters‘ attachment to public education the public benefit of local schools accrues to adults, not children. Having children in local schools increases parents’ “community-specific social capital.” Through local school connections, parents get to know other adults in their community better, which in turn reduces the transaction costs of citizen provision of local public goods. Vouchers would disperse students from their communities and thereby reduce localized social capital. Empirical evidence supporting this also explains the rise and fall of Robert Putnam’s national indicators of social capital, which have moved in lock-step with the number of children per household. For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I thank without implicating Eric Brunner, Paul Carrington, Timothy Goodspeed, William Hoyt, Myron Lieberman, Robert Putnam, Lisa Snell, Jon Sonstelie, Michelle White, John Yinger, and two ananymous referees.     

The political economy of regional opting out: distributive implications of a prospective Europe of Regions

This paper builds up a model for analysing regional attitudes towards separation from national states, where separation implies `opting out' of the national income redistribution system and starting a regional one, while at the same time having direct access to supranational institutions. In an overlapping generations (OLG) framework, we show that interregional cooperation can perform the same task as intergenerational cooperation, and can prevent rich regions from wanting to separate from poor nations. In the second part of the paper, we estimate the impact of alternative institutional settings on regional welfare by using data on the inter-governmental financial relations of the Italian regions with the central government. June, 2001 / Accepted: May, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We would like to thank Margherita Borella, Chris Flinn, Harold Hochman, Jeff Petchey, Stefano Piperno, Pierre Salmon, Bob Searle and seminar participants at Brescia, Torino, Paris (annual meeting of the European Public Choice Society 2001) and Marseille for comments and discussion. We would also like to thank the editor, Kai Konrad, and three referees for their helpful comments.     

Explaining Income Nonresponse – A Case Study by means of the British Household Panel Study (BHPS)

Many validation studies deal with item nonresponse and measurement error in earning data. In this paper, we explore motives of respondents for the failure to reveal earnings using the British Household Panel Study (BHPS). The BHPS collects socio-economic information of private households in Great Britain. We explain the evolution of income-nonresponse in the BHPS and demonstrate the importance of a discrimination between refusing the income-statement or don’t know. This study is done during my fellowship at the University Essex and is part of the ECASS Project “Respondent Behaviour in Panel Studies”. In particular I would like to thank Heather Laurie, Cheti Nicoletti and Peter Lynn (ISER, Essex) as well as Gert G. Wagner (DIW Berlin and Berlin University of Technology, TUB) for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.