中国人大代表行动中的“分配政治”——对2009-2011年G省省级人大大会建议和询问的分析

分配政治理论认为,民主国家的议员在竞选连任驱动下,热衷为选区谋取特殊利益,但从未关注到其他国家立法机关成员是否也存在分配政治行为.文章透过对中国G省756名省级人大代表连续3年的建议和询问的数据分析发现,普遍存在代表为选举单位争取地方利益的情形,这些地方利益在内容上具有利益集中而成本分散的分配型利益特点,以争取上级政府的交通基础设施建设和重点经济项目扶持为主,来自欠发达地区代表往往比发达地区的代表更乐于表达地方性利益.文章进一步分析代表行动的动机发现,除代表选举和运行机制强化了代表的地域归属感外,当地人大和政府在动员和组织代表表达地方事务方面形成结盟关系,是代表“分配政治”行动的主要驱动力,并首次提出“地方利益表达的结盟者”的概念,期望丰富中国人大代表角色行为研究的同时,为分配政治理论提供独特视角.     

加大对地市农业科技创新平台的投入——访全国人大代表山东省滨州畜牧兽医研究院院长沈志强

3月8日，Ⅸ经济》记者来到了全国“两会”山东代表团驻地的中国职工之家，采访全国人大代表沈志强。多年扎根在农业科技工作第一线的沈志强对我国当前农业发展中存在的问题有很深的认识，并积极寻求解决的办法。连任两届人大代表的沈志强，今年在人大会上的议案就是加大地市级农业科技创新平台条件投入的问题。     

人大代表的民主代理影响公共支出的社会福利导向性吗?

文章基于政府(官员)和民主代理人(人大代表)的"公共决策—民主监督"博弈模型阐述了民主作为普世价值可制约政府公共决策的短期行为,从而延伸出民主代理的独立性、充分性和阶段性假说。经验部分利用来自285个地级市省级人大代表样本,设定了民主代理能力(人大代表的年龄和学历)、民主独立性和民主充分性等指标,实证估计发现民主代理可以提升公共支出倾向于民生领域的结构优化系数Expen以及供需匹配性ρ;随着代理人能力、非官员人大代表比重(即民主独立性)、基层代表相对精英代表比重(即民主的充分性)的提升,政府公共决策更具有福利导向性;且民主代理在落后和市场化程度低的地区存在监督功能缺陷,即验证了民主阶段性假说。     

中国农业对外直接投资现状分析

中国农业对外直接投资规模不断增加,农业企业对外直接投资可能性不断增大。本文通过对微观数据分析得出,国有农业企业投资更倾向于发展中国家,而民营农业企业投资更倾向于发达国家,进而提出如今农业对外直接投资过程中存在的问题、并提出相关建议。     

中国的选举、法律和政治改革

中国特色的选举20世纪70年代末期，中国开始了后毛时代的改革纪元，实施并修订对人大选举的相关法律。在中国，人大是从副县级到国家级一直存在的层级代表机构。改革开放以来，中国的国家政权和民主体系一直与美国和其他自由民主国家有着根本性差别。事实上，中国国家主席胡锦涛和总理温家宝—直对外宣告，西式民主不符合中国国情。在中国，人民代表的直接选举局限在县和乡镇一级，省级以上都实行的是间接选举。     

地方人大预算监督立法能抑制政府支出规模吗——来自省级预算审查监督条例立法的证据

加强地方人大预算监督法制化建设,抑制地方政府支出规模膨胀,是当前财政收支矛盾加剧背景下防范和化解财政风险的重大问题。以1999—2017年各地区省级预算审查监督条例立法作为准自然实验,检验通过立法强化地方人大预算监督能力能否对地方政府支出规模形成有效制约及其作用机制。研究发现：省级预算审查监督条例立法能够显著抑制地方政府预算支出和决算支出规模,使预算支出和决算支出平均下降约8%,且其效应在2015年新《预算法》实施以后进一步强化;省级预算审查监督条例立法对政府支出规模的抑制作用在财政分权程度更高或者地方官员晋升激励更强的地区更大;对机制的研究表明,预算审查监督条例立法对削减地方政府经济建设支出规模的作用最为显著。因此,为发挥人大预算审查监督条例立法对政府支出规模的抑制作用,应扩大地方人大预算监督权力和监督范围,加强对重点财政支出的监督力度,不断推进地方人大预算监督法制化建设。     

国家金融体系差异与海外金融资产投资组合选择

本文从分析国家金融体系差异性角度入手,讨论国家金融体系的差异对双边金融资产交易的影响,运用2001-2010年间39个投资国对52个东道国的双边金融资产投资数据进行国际经验分析。研究结果表明:对于投资国,市场主导型金融体系的经济体更倾向于持有权益类金融资产,而银行主导型金融体系的经济体更倾向于持有债务类金融资产;同时,无论是权益类还是债务类金融资产,均更倾向于配置到具有市场主导型金融体系的东道国。本文最后基于中国目前状况提出相应的政策建议。     

东道国舆论环境与海外进入模式选择 ——基于海量媒体数据的定量考察

逆全球化背景下日趋复杂的东道国舆论环境给我国国际化进程带来严峻挑战,对其如何影响跨国企业进入国际市场的关键决策还缺乏系统的实证检验。基于情感分析技术（NLP）和网络爬虫,对2015-2022年间830余万条媒体报道进行文本分析,构建涉华舆情指数,系统分析与检验了东道国舆论环境对我国企业海外进入模式选择的影响。研究发现,东道国舆论环境越差,相比于独资模式,中国企业更倾向于选择合资模式进入海外市场;相比于跨国并购,中国企业更倾向于选择绿地投资进入海外市场;跨国企业的产权性质和国际化经验起到正向调节作用。在影响机制方面,东道国舆论环境通过影响企业的规制、规范和认知合法性来影响跨国企业投资设立模式的选择。本文的研究结论为跨国企业恰当地选择海外市场进入模式、积极规避或弱化舆论风险,更好地在东道国投资布局与经营发展提供对策建议。     

终极控制人特征和创业导向关系的实证研究——市场化进程的调节作用

以中国创业板上市公司为样本,探讨了市场化进程对终极控制人特征与企业创业导向间关系的调节作用。层次回归分析结果发现:整体强度方面,非国有企业比国有企业具有更强的创业导向,终极控制人存在两权分离的企业的创业导向比不存在两权分离的企业更强;选择倾向方面,国有企业和存在终极控制人两权分离的企业更倾向于选择资产增值型创业导向;市场化进程负向调节终极控制人特征与创业导向选择倾向的关系,这说明市场化进程的提高可在一定程度上缓解终极控制人创业导向选择中的代理问题。     

民营企业家政治关联、政府干预与多元化经营

本文以2004-2007年中国民营上市公司为研究对象,分析了民营企业家政治关联对企业多元化经营的影响,研究显示,同企业家不具有政治关联的民营企业相比,企业家具有政治关联的民营企业更倾向于进行多元化经营.进一步分析了政府干预对政治关联与多元化经营关系的影响,结果发现,政府干预越是严重的地区,企业家具有政治关联的民营企业越倾向于进行多元化经营.     

How Do Business Interest Groups Respond to Political Challenges? A Study of the Politics of German Employers

Social scientists dealing with business and politics have tended to focus mostly on the power of business and less on the political challenges and constraints that business interest groups face. This paper analyses how business interest groups respond to political initiatives that challenge their interests, using four episodes of political conflict in Germany. The paper elaborates a model of response strategies and their likely impact on political outcomes. The model suggests that business interest groups can respond to political challenges in two ways: by seeking confrontation or by pursuing adaptation. The paper illustrates these two response strategies with four episodes of political conflict in the political-economic history of Germany: (i) the adoption of social insurance under Bismarck, (ii) the adoption of unemployment insurance in the 1920s, (iii) the adoption of board-level codetermination in the early 1950s, (iv) and the Agenda 2010 labour market reforms of the early 2000s. These four case studies show that adaptation facilitates social compromise, while confrontation results in a bifurcated outcome, producing either dominance or defeat of business interests, depending on what side government takes. Furthermore, the analysis finds that confrontation tends to be associated with a unity of interests within the business community, while adaptation tends to be associated with a fragmentation of interests. The discussion emphasises that the role of business in politics should not be seen solely in terms of business ‘influencing’ politics, but also as potentially adaptive.     

The age of the universal consumer: a reconsideration of Ricardo's politics *

This paper reconsiders Ricardo's political thought, its relationship with his political economy and, more generally, Ricardo's connection with the ‘philosophical radicalism’ of Bentham and James Mill. It is arguedinter alia, that Ricardo's politics were utilitarian and individualistic; that he developed a notion of a shared, homogeneous interest; that he believed that individuals should know their ‘real’ interests as a condition for their suffrage; and that he subscribed to a doctrine of virtual representation. It is also argued that Ricardo was considerably less ‘radical’ in his political views than some previous commentators have recognized.     

War and local collective action in Sierra Leone

We study the brutal 1991–2002 Sierra Leone civil war using nationally representative household data on conflict experiences, postwar economic outcomes, local politics and collective action. Individuals whose households directly experienced more intense war violence are robustly more likely to attend community meetings, more likely to join local political and community groups, and more likely to vote. Tests using prewar controls and alternative samples suggest that selection into victimization is unlikely to be driving the results. More speculatively, the findings could help partially explain the rapid postwar political and economic recoveries observed in Sierra Leone and after several other recent African civil wars.     

Local representation and strategic voting: Evidence from electoral boundary reforms

We analyze whether voters value local political representation by exploiting municipal mergers, which increase the number of candidates available to voters and intensify political competition. In the Finnish open-list proportional representation system, voters rank the candidates within parties, and thus, concentrating votes to local candidates increases the extent of local representation. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the vote distributions become more concentrated in municipalities less likely to gain local representation after the mergers. Moreover, the effect is much larger in municipalities where the benefits of local representation to voters are large. The latter result disentangles voters' responses from the responses of other political actors. The results are important also for designing local government mergers, which are an important policy tool in many countries. They highlight that concerns over deteriorating local democracy due to mergers have merit, because voters have preferences for local representation. At the same time, the vote concentration patterns we find alleviate these concerns.     

Politics and Income Inequality: Does Politics Still Matter in New Democracies

Does politics still matter for reducing income inequality in new democracies? The standard explanation is that political institutions, in particular the left government and proportional representation, are negatively associated with income inequality among advanced industrial countries, but there have been so few studies attempting to explain the variation of distributional outcomes across new democracies. This article tests the hypotheses about the effects of political institutions on income inequality with unbalanced pooled time-series cross-sectional data that cover 26 fledgling democracies for 1975–2006. The evidence presented here suggests that, other things being equal, a parliamentary system and PR are substantially more likely to be associated with lower levels of income inequality, but a left government and more years of democracy do not appear to be related to lower income inequality.     

Coalition and Party Formation in a Legislative Voting Game

We examine a legislative voting game where decisions are to be made over both ideological and distributive dimensions. In equilibrium legislators prefer to make proposals for the two dimensions together, despite having preferences that are separable over the two dimensions. The equilibria exhibit interaction between the ideological and distributive dimensions, and the set of legislators who approve winning proposals does not always consist of ideologically adjacent legislators. There is more than one ideological decision that has a positive probability of being proposed and approved. We show that legislators can gain from forming political parties, and consider examples where predictions can be made about the composition of parties. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D72, C71, C78.     

Gender and climate change: Do female parliamentarians make difference?

This paper investigates whether female political representation in national parliaments influences climate change policy outcomes. Based on data from a large sample of countries, we demonstrate that female representation leads countries to adopt more stringent climate change policies. We exploit a combination of full and partial identification approaches to suggest that this relationship is likely to be causal. Moreover, we show that through its effect on the stringency of climate change policies, the representation of females in parliament results in lower carbon dioxide emissions. Female political representation may be an underutilized tool for addressing climate change.     

Exposure to corruption and political participation: Evidence from Italian municipalities

This paper aims to study the effects of exposure to corruption on all the aspects of political participation. Focusing on Italian municipalities in the period 1999–2014, we generate a daily and local measure of exposure to corruption, screening newspaper articles of the main Italian press agency. We concentrate on local elections and, in an event-study analysis, we find three main results. First, corruption exposure affects citizens' participation in election by reducing voter turnout. Second, corruption impacts on politicians’ participation: the number of candidates and electoral lists decreases after a scandal and candidates with political tenure are more likely to run. Finally, these changes affect local political outcomes as tenured politicians are more likely to be elected, while freshmen lose ground. These results suggest that exposure to corruption has general and negative effects on political participation, leading people to lose interest in politics.     

From one to many central plans: Drug advertising inspections and intra-national protectionism in China

This paper provides the first micro-level evidence for the existence and patterns of intra-national protectionism in China. We demonstrate that drug advertising inspections are used by provincial governments to discriminate against firms from outside the province. We further reveal systematic patterns in the degree of discrimination across firms: those from neighboring areas, those from regions with more economic links to the destination province, those from provinces with a stronger presence in the market, and those with political ties to “allied” provincial governments are less likely to be targeted. Our findings highlight the unique politico-economic structure in China and confirm that giving local governments strong incentives to compete with each other may exacerbate the market distortions inherent in a partially reformed economy.     

Constitutional Implications of Electoral Assumptions

The paper discusses the implications of three models of elections (the median voter model, the proportional representation model, and the probabilistic voting model) on three functions of constitutional rules (constraining the majority of the people, monitoring political and bureaucratic agents, and keeping separate the levels of constitutional rules and of ordinary politics).