Who voted for Brexit? Individual and regional data combined

Previous analyses of the 2016 Brexit referendum used region-level data or small samples based on polling data. The former might be subject to ecological fallacy and the latter might suffer from small-sample bias. We use individual-level data on thousands of respondents in Understanding Society, the UK's largest household survey, which includes the EU referendum question. We find that voting Leave is associated with older age, white ethnicity, low educational attainment, infrequent use of smartphones and the internet, receiving benefits, adverse health and low life satisfaction. These results coincide with corresponding patterns at the aggregate level of voting areas. We therefore do not find evidence of ecological fallacy. In addition, we show that prediction accuracy is geographically heterogeneous across UK regions, with strongly pro-Leave and strongly pro-Remain areas easier to predict. We also show that among individuals with similar socio-economic characteristics, Labour supporters are more likely to support Remain while Conservative supporters are more likely to support Leave.     

Whose policy uncertainty affects commodity trade between Australia and the United States?

Recent studies are assessing the impact of news-based policy uncertainty measure on trade flows between countries. In this paper we add to this new literature by investigating the symmetric and asymmetric effects of Australian policy uncertainty index and the U.S. index on trade flows of 63 two-digit industries that trade between the two countries. When we estimated a symmetric and linear model for each industry, we found short-run effects of both uncertainty measures on 30% of the industries' trade flows. However, this number increased to 70% when an asymmetric and nonlinear model was estimated. The long-run effects of both policy uncertainty followed similar pattern. Less than 10% of trade was affected by the estimates of the linear models. However, estimates of the nonlinear models predicted that 41.20% (26.53%) of the U.S. exports to Australia was affected by the U.S. uncertainty (Australian uncertainty). As for the Australian exports to the United States, 6.72% (5.5%) of its exports were affected by the changes in the U.S. policy uncertainty (Australian uncertainty). In almost all industries, increased uncertainty was found to hurt the trade and decreased uncertainty was found to boost it at different rate or asymmetrically. In sum, the U.S. and Australian policy uncertainty measure affects U.S. exports to Australia much more than they affect Australian exports to the United States.     

International reserves and swap lines: Substitutes or complements?

Developing Asia experienced a sharp surge in foreign currency reserves prior to the 2008–9 crisis. The global crisis has been associated with an unprecedented rise of swap agreements between central banks of larger economies and their counterparts in smaller economies. We explore whether such swap lines can reduce the need for reserve accumulation. The evidence suggests that there is only a limited scope for swaps to substitute for reserves. The selectivity of the swap lines indicates that only countries with significant trade and financial linkages can expect access to such ad hoc arrangements, on a case by case basis. Moral hazard concerns suggest that the applicability of these arrangements will remain limited. However, deepening swap agreements and regional reserve pooling arrangements may weaken the precautionary motive for reserve accumulation.     

Do Institutional and Individual Investors Differ in Their Preference for Financial Skewness?

Employing a unique sample of individual and institutional investors, we conduct experiments to determine investors’ preference for (or indifference to) financial skewness. We present investors with a series of stocks with varying levels of skewness. Using Instant Response Devices, we then collect investors’ choices to hold or sell each stock. Among stocks with equal expected returns, we find strong evidence that the sample investors use a prospect theory utility function rather than a mean-variance expected utility function to decide to sell or hold stocks. In the loss domain, we find that investors are ambivalent about the choice between positively and negatively skewed stocks. However, in the gain domain, we find that both individual and institutional investors prefer negatively skewed stocks—a contrast from previous research suggesting that individuals (and not institutional investors) prefer positive skewness. We also find evidence suggesting that reference points are important in financial decision making.     

How former business owners fare in the labor market? Job assignment and earnings

This study uses detailed longitudinal matched employer–employee data to examine the impact of entrepreneurial experience on job assignments, careers, and wages. The results suggest that there are significant differences in career mobility between former business owners and workers who were always wage employees. Former business owners enter firms at higher job levels and progress faster up the hierarchy than wage employees without entrepreneurial experience. The majority of the former business owners find jobs in small firms. The return to business ownership experience is lower than the return to wage employee experience, thus suggesting that the labor market imposes a penalty for business ownership experience.     

Job satisfaction and disability: lower expectations about jobs or a matter of health?

This article focuses on the analysis of the reported differentials of job satisfaction for disabled and non-disabled individuals. Using the Spanish data of the European Community Household Panel during the period 1995–2001, we estimate a job satisfaction equation for each group and evaluate job satisfaction differentials through the Oaxaca-Blinder methodology. The results show that disabled individuals are more likely to be more satisfied in their jobs than non-disabled ones, but only after controlling for other variables. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition shows the greater importance of the returns in job satisfaction for disabled people, which is supported by explanations based on the lower expectations about jobs of disadvantaged groups.      

Who to punish? Individual decisions and majority rule in mitigating the free rider problem

We study a voluntary contributions mechanism in which punishment may be allowed, depending on subjects’ voted rules. We found that out of 160 group votes, even when groups had no prior experience with unrestricted punishment, no group ever voted to allow unrestricted punishment and no group ever allowed punishment of high contributors. Over a series of votes and periods of learning we found a distinct reluctance to allow any punishment at the beginning, with a gradual but clear evolution toward allowing punishment of low contributors. And groups allowing punishment of only low contributors achieved levels of cooperation and efficiency that are among the highest in the literature on social dilemmas.     

International migration and real wages: is there any neo-classical ambiguity?

"Recent research has shown that while labor emigration increases the nominal wage rate, the impact on the real wage rate remains quite ambiguous. The present paper reexamines the issue under the standard two-factor, two-commodity international trade model normally employed for this purpose. The principal finding of this paper is that once the problem is correctly formulated and analyzed, introducing utility-maximizing consumers, no such ambiguity exists. Indeed, labor emigration always leads to an increase in the welfare (real wage) of labor in the source country."     

Room to Manoeuvre? International Financial Markets and the National Tax State

Globalisation has triggered a downwards trend in direct taxation as governments compete for internationally mobile capital. This popular postulation has blurred the attention to potential upward constraints on tax policy-making emanating from globalised capital markets. In this paper, we illustrate when and how capital markets exert an upward pressure on taxes. While the increasing access to international capital allowed governments in developed democracies to indulge their voters with deficit-financed spending, the most recent crisis has shown that this is no panacea. When international loans become costly, governments have to revert to raising revenue domestically. Using comparative time-series data since the 1980s, we investigate how rising bond yields affect the number and the direction of tax reforms, as well as the tax mix in the OECD. The empirical analysis provides some evidence that international capital markets place an upward pressure on taxes, recently above all on consumption taxes. Yet, governments have also retained room to manoeuvre as a number of tax decisions are more dependent on domestic political factors than on pressure from the capital markets.     

Whose property is it anyway? The social nature of economic actors and egalitarian remuneration ∗

This article formulates an egalitarian theory of property based on an ethic of remuneration for economic contributions. The principle of egalitarian remuneration is developed by revising basic notions of economic contributions. Economic contributions are found to be those activities that contribute to the value of commodities not just those that produce a product. Consumers, and not only producers, contribute to the creation of value, and these economic contributions make consumers eligible for remuneration. However, the concept of consumer contributions needs to be recast, for consumer contributions do not consist of neoclassical, individualistic actors maximizing subjective preferences. Rather, consumers economic contributions flow from their socially self-determined attributes as formed through relation to the system of economic actors. Indirect social contributions spread responsibility throughout the members of the system, affecting calculations of dueness. Other members indirect contributions are relatively equal in degree of responsibility for the social formation of the consumer's economic contributions. The dispersion and equalization of responsibility for the creation of economic contributions entails a correlative equalization of claims to remuneration, on a principle of dueness for economic contributions. This implies a property right to egalitarian remuneration.     

International bonds and the currency risk: How do macroshocks affect returns?

The currency translation risk borne by international investors and the riskiness of returns on long-term bonds both affect international investors' decisions. For the U.S. investor, excess returns on German, Japanese, Canadian, and U.K. bonds have been positively correlated with the respective excess local currency returns (1978–1997). However, for investors who measure their performance in the currencies of these countries, the comparable correlation between U.S. bond returns and positions in U.S. dollars has been negative. Traditional interest rate or portfolio flow models fail to explain the asymmetry. A sticky-price model with spillover effects from the U.S. to other countries is used to explore the effect of macroshocks on these returns.     

Is the pragmatic response to International Monetary Fund quotas and credit limits favourable?

Under the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s recently developed pragmatic response, the amount a member can borrow is not determined by its quota. We consider two pragmatic responses that produce a Pareto improvement, compared with the IMF rule: one mandated by the IMF and the other related to the trade of the additional credit limit in the market. Both these responses indicate that the additional credit limit on top of the IMF rule should be positive (negative) for a country whose investment return is larger (smaller) than the average investment return across all IMF member developing countries. The rule for the IMF credit limit does not reflect the demand for credit, which induces inefficiency. The first pragmatic response, which has an appropriately small negotiation and distribution cost per unit incurred by the IMF, may dominate the second one.     

Who Counts in Crises? The New Geopolitics of International Migration and Refugee Governance

Recent migration ‘crises’ raise important geopolitical questions. Who is ‘the migrant’ that contemporary politics are fixated on? How are answers to ‘who counts as a migrant’ changing? Who gets to do that counting, and under what circumstances? This forum responds to, as well as questions, the current saliency of migration by examining how categories of migration hold geopolitical significance—not only in how they are constructed and by whom, but also in how they are challenged and subverted. Furthermore, by examining how the very concepts of ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ are used in different contexts, and for a variety of purposes, it opens up critical questions about mobility, citizenship and the nation state. Collectively, these contributions aim to demonstrate how problematising migration and its categorisation can be a tool of enquiry into other phenomena and processes.     

China's Exchange Rate and International Adjustment in Wages, Prices and Interest Rates: Japan Deja Vu?

China's fixed its exchange rate at 8.28 yuan to the dollar from1994 to July 2005, and has only allowed for a small appreciationsince then. China's productivity growth has been very high relativeto most other countries: its trade surplus has been rising andit continues to accumulate large dollar exchange reserves. Manyobservers, including high officials in the US government, takethis as per se evidence that the renminbi is undervalued. Tobalance China's international competitiveness and reduce itstrade surplus, they want the renminbi to appreciate much more.This common presumption of renminbi undervaluation is wrong,and its appreciation need not reduce China's trade surplus butwould cause serious deflation in China. To show this, we considerinternational adjustment between China and the US from bothan asset market and a labor market perspective, and comparethis to Japan's unsuccessful appreciation of the yen from 1971to 1995. During a time of economic catch-up and rapid financialtransformation, fixing the exchange rate is the preferred wayof anchoring the domestic price level. (JEL codes: F15, F31,F33)     

Selection,Market Size and International Integration: Do Vertical Linkages Play a Role?

We analyze how increases in the market size and in the level of international integration affect the process of selection among firms with heterogeneous productivity levels when they are interconnected by vertical linkages. We show that when vertical linkages among firms are relatively weak (strong), an increase in the market size softens (toughens) the competition facing firms in this market and more firms of a lower (higher) efficiency survive, increasing (decreasing) the welfare level. Moreover, an increase in the level of economic integration softens competition only for intermediate vertical linkages, worsening the welfare level only for strong linkages.     

Bosnia's Third Space? Nationalist Separatism and International Supervision in Bosnia's Brčko District

This article analyses how the strategic Bosnian locality of Br?ko emerged as a distinctive geopolitical space during the post-war period. This resulted from the struggle between separatist nationalisms and the international community over the status of displaced persons in Bosnia, but this struggle played out differently in the municipality of Br?ko as its status was unresolved at Dayton and for years afterward. Post-war nationalist rivalry to determine Br?ko's status through the manipulation of displaced persons provoked the creation of the Br?ko District as a territorial condominium nominally shared by Bosnia's two entities but under direct international supervision. Drawing upon fieldwork in Bosnia, we develop a critical geopolitical account of Br?ko from wartime through the post-war period to the present. The article concludes by considering whether Br?ko as a third geopolitical space holds potential to offer Bosnia a third space, overcoming the oppositional binaries of the war.     

Towards Post-neoliberal Resource Politics? The International Political Economy (IPE) of Oil and Copper in Brazil and Chile

The contemporary commodity boom is unprecedented in two ways. On the one hand, it takes place against the backdrop of the failure of neoliberal policies to achieve stable economic growth in Latin America. On the other hand, Left-of-centre governments, which have now been in power for over a decade, are designing new strategies to manage the increase in export earnings accrued from sustained international demand for commodities. In particular, Brazil and Chile have undergone significant market opening reforms in their resource sectors, yet persistent state ownership and the dominant role of state enterprises in key extractive industries continue to characterise their growth models. This article explains this puzzle through the application of Mahoney and Thelen's (2010) historical institutionalist framework on incremental change. In so doing, it offers a process-oriented approach in exploring how resource wealth under certain economic and political conditions provides leverage for states to promote economic development. In sum, the article hopes to contribute to the literature on neoliberal and post-neoliberal political economies in Latin America.     

Local versus International Crises and Bank Stability: does bank foreign expansion make a difference?

We investigate the impact of global and local crises on bank stability in the MENA region and examine the effect of owning bank subsidiaries in other countries. We consider banks that experienced both types of crises during our sample period. Our findings highlight a negative impact of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008 on bank stability but, on the whole, no negative impact of the local crisis. A deeper investigation shows that owning bank subsidiaries outside the home country is a source of increased fragility during normal times, yet a source of higher stability during the local crisis but not during the international crisis. Moreover, owning foreign subsidiaries in one or two world regions is insufficient to neutralize both types of crises, while being present in three or more regions is more stabilizing during a local crisis but also more destabilizing during an international crisis. Our findings contribute to the literature examining bank stability and have several policy implications.     

International Trade and Manufacturing Employment: Is India following the Footsteps of Asia or Africa?

The Indian manufacturing sector has rapidly increased its integration with the world economy since the 1991 trade reforms. We examine whether trade integration created or destroyed jobs in the Indian manufacturing sector, and compare India's employment outcomes with four other countries—Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa, and Vietnam. We find that the impact of international trade on manufacturing employment seems to be similar to those found for the two African countries rather than the two Asian countries, a surprising result for a country with an apparent comparative advantage in labor-intensive manufacturing goods, and a large excess supply of unskilled labor.