Would letting people vote for multiple candidates yield policy moderation?

We investigate whether letting people vote for multiple candidates would yield policy moderation. We do so in a setting that takes three key features of elections into account, namely, strategic voting, endogenous candidacy and policy motivation on the part of the candidates. We consider two classes of voting rules. One class consists of the voting rules where each voter casts several equally-weighed votes for the different candidates. The other class consists of the voting rules where each voter rank-orders the candidates. We identify conditions under which these voting rules yield policy moderation. We also show that these voting rules may yield policy extremism instead of policy moderation if one (or several) of the conditions is not satisfied! Finally, we find that amongst these voting rules the extent of policy moderation is maximal under the Borda Count if we consider only equilibria where all candidates are serious contenders. However, this result does not carry over to spoiler equilibria, where Approval Voting can yield more moderate policy outcomes than the Borda Count.     

Book Reviews

Brun, Jacques and Catherine Rhein (eds.) La ségrégation dans la ville: concepts et mesures Smith, Michael Peter and Joe R. Feagin (eds.) The bubbling cauldron: race, ethnicity and the urban crisis MacShane, Clay (ed.) Down the asphalt path: the automobile and the American city McAndrew, John P. Urban usurpation — from friar estates to industrial estates in a Philippine hinterland     

Soft commitment: a study on demand and compliance

This article explores the demand for soft, self-imposed commitment, and subsequent compliance behaviour, using a framed field study in a higher education setting. We find a substantial soft commitment demand and a remarkably high failure to comply with the chosen commitment. Students are more likely to demand soft commitment if they expect the task to be more time-consuming and their relative performance to be lower. Failure to comply is associated with previous grade and personality traits. We find no evidence that soft commitment affects grades.     

Do China and oil exporters influence major currency configurations?

This paper analyses the impact of the shift away from a US dollar focus of systemically important emerging market economies (EMEs) on configurations between the US dollar, the euro and the yen. Given the difficulty that fixed or managed US dollar exchange rate regimes remain pervasive and reserve compositions mostly kept secret, the identification strategy of the paper is to analyse the market impact on major currency pairs of official statements made by EME policy-makers about their exchange rate regime and reserve composition. Developing a novel database for 18 EMEs, we find that such statements not only have a statistically but also an economically significant impact on the euro, and to a lesser extent the yen against the US dollar. The findings suggest that communication hinting at a weakening of EMEs’ US dollar focus contributed substantially to the appreciation of the euro against the US dollar in recent years. Interestingly, EME policy-makers appear to have become more cautious in their communication more recently. Overall, the results underscore the growing systemic importance of EMEs for global exchange rate configurations.     

Factor exposures and diversification: Are sustainably screened portfolios any different?

Financial Markets and Portfolio Management - We analyze the performance, risk, and diversification characteristics of global screened and best-in-class equity portfolios constructed according to...     

Functional diversity from network response dynamics

We consider competing functional groups of tree species and develop a model of network response dynamics in order to measure the impacts of perturbations on the population distribution and diversity. The analysis of the equilibrium states relies on the connection between mean field game dynamics and replicator dynamics. We simulate our theoretical results from the data inventoried in French Guiana. Our results show that different types of disturbances modify the competitive interactions by affecting the evolutions of group densities. At the high regimes of disturbance, the canopy shade-intolerant species supplant the canopy shade-tolerant species. Tropical forest managers can thus take advantage of the competitive interactions between the functional groups to stimulate the abundance of marketable timber species. We also validate the hypothesis of maximum diversity at the intermediate disturbance levels.     

Ripeness and Grief in Conflict Analysis

In assessing the timing of a conflict resolution effort, one of the most frequently used explanatory frameworks is ripeness theory. Despite its popularity, ripeness theory has some limitations: poorly established generalization outside international situations, empirical validation is difficult to objectify, limited consideration of non-rational factors, and low predictability. The purpose of our study is to contribute to enriching ripeness theory by bringing in the theory of grief developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. The anchovy fishing conflict in the Bay of Biscay (off the coast of France and Spain) lends itself to this type of analysis, as it is a conflict that has seen many reversals, making the place of resolution efforts hard to explain. It is from this perspective that grief theory is put forward as a complementary explanatory model. The model is tested using an original methodology that has the merit of being reproducible through the lexical analysis of newspaper articles. The results, confirming the grief model’s relevance, can then be proposed as an enhancement to ripeness theory by incorporating the grief model. This improvement leads to a better understanding of the issues of initiating a conflict resolution effort.     

Education,Occupation and Career Expectations: Determinants of the Gender Pay Gap for UK Graduates*

Despite anti‐discrimination policies, women are paid 20% less then men in the UK. A large proportion of this wage gap is usually left unexplained. In this paper, I investigate whether the unexplained component is due to mis‐specification. Using a sample of recent UK graduates, I examine the role of choice variables (subject of study and occupation) as well as career expectations and aspirations. The evidence indicates that women are more altruistic and less career‐oriented than men. Career break expectations, for example, explain 10% of the gender wage gap in the favoured model. By omitting attitudinal variables, most studies are likely to overestimate the unexplained component of the gender wage gap. Women with a more traditional view concerning childrearing are also found to have less intensive search behaviour. Since aspirations may reflect perceived discrimination or social pressure, current legislations are unlikely to reduce the gender wage gap.