Socio-demographics,political attitudes and informal sector employment: A cross-country analysis

In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between informal sector employment and micro-level socio-demographic characteristics, political acts and attitudes, and individual norms. Using self-reported individual micro-level data from the World Values Survey for seven developing countries (China, Ecuador, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Yemen), our cross-country regressions and principal component analysis reveal that socio-demographic characteristics of individuals are strong predictors of their informal sector employment. Our estimations further document that individual preferences for an economically strong, interventionist and egalitarian state and confidence in state and political institutions are positively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment, whereas variables associated with confidence in free market institutions and support for competition are negatively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment. We also show that individuals who participate either actively or inactively in peaceful and lawful political processes are significantly less likely to work in the informal sector. Finally, we document that individual norms, such as religiosity and tax morale, are negatively correlated with informal sector employment. Throughout our analysis, instead of having to rely on ad-hoc informality categorizations of third parties, we base our measurement of informal sector employment directly on the self-evaluation of individuals, who have the best information on the degree of their informality.     

Domestic political connections and international expansion: It's not only ‘who you know’ that matters

Former politicians on the board of directors bring to the firm domestic political connections and political knowledge. Previous research has mainly highlighted the role of contacts, without fully recognizing the role of political knowledge accumulated at home. By focusing on the effect of domestic political connections on foreign direct investment, we show that domestic political knowledge also shapes foreign expansion. We argue that contacts provided by former politicians may not be useful for foreign expansion whilst their political knowledge can be of help in countries with discretionary governments and with similar institutional environments to the one of the home country.     

以企业文化为切入点加强和改进企业思想政治工作

企业为了搞好经营，都十分重视提高员工的工作积极性，而提高员工的工作积极性往往采取增加薪酬、改善福利的方式，当然，这种方式的运用无可厚非，也比较见效，但随着企业各项制度的不断完善和员工构成的高学历化，单纯的经济刺激已不足以应对员工的多元化需求；因此重新审视我党的思想政治工作，将它与企业文化建设有机结合，在提高员工经济收入的同时，努力提高员工的“精神收入”，成为企业提升管理品质、吸引人才、锻造内力的有效途径。     

思想政治课教学改革应着力于"新、活、多"

思想政治课教学，是强化青年学生德育素质的重要环节和基本渠道，当前改革的重点应着力于内容上求“新”，方法上求“活”，手段上求“多”。     

Delegation and polarization of platforms in political competition

Summary. We consider a model of political competition among two ideological parties who are uncertain about the distribution of voters. The distinguishing feature of the model is that parties can delegate electoral decisions to candidates by nomination. It is shown that if the credible platform commitments of the candidates is feasible, then at least one of the parties nominates in equilibrium to a candidate who has an ideology that is more radical than the delegating party's ideology. In a variety of circumstances, this, in turn, yields a polarization of equilibrium policy choices of the candidates. It is thus argued formally here that strategic nomination of the candidates may well be one of the major reasons behind the well documented observation that the platforms associated with the political parties in two-party democracies are often surprisingly polarized. Received: January 10, 2002; revised version: May 8, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We thank Alberto Alesina, Levent Ko?kesen, Antonio Merlo, Ronny Razin, Vijay Krishna, Alessandro Lizzeri, and seminar participants at Alicante, Columbia, Copenhagen, and NYU for helpful comments. We also thank an anonymous referee for its useful suggestions. A good fraction of this research was conducted while Ok was a visitor in the Department of Economics at University of Alicante; he thanks for the kind hospitality of this institution. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education through grant CICYT BEC2001-0535 (Faulí-Oller) and BEC2001-0980 (Ortu?o-Ortín). Correspondence to:I. Ortu?o-Ortin     

Candidate stability and nonbinary social choice

Summary. The requirement that a voting procedure be immune to the strategic withdrawal of a candidate for election can be formalized in different ways. Dutta, Jackson, and Le Breton (Econometrica, 2001) have recently shown that two formalizations of this candidate stability property are incompatible with some other desirable properties of voting procedures. This article shows that Grether and Plott's nonbinary generalization of Arrow's Theorem can be used to provide simple proofs of two of their impossibility theorems. Received: August 15, 2001; revised version: March 11, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" Parts of this article were previously circulated in somewhat different form in a working paper with the same title by the second author. We are grateful to Michel Le Breton and an anonymous referee for their comments. Correspondence to:J.A. Weymark     

中日传统文化对政治现代化的影响

对任何国家来讲,政治现代化既是现代化运动的一个重要方面,也是现代化运动的一个重要支撑,而传统文化对政治现代化有着不可低估的影响。传统文化是民族历史的结晶,蕴涵了本民族思维方式、价值观念、行为准则等因素,一方面具有强烈的历史性、遗传性,另一方面又具有鲜活的现实性、变异性。因此,传统文化为政治现代化提供历史的根据和现实的基础。本文将就中日两国不同的传统文化对各自政治现代化的影响进行浅析,以求对中国政治现代化道路做有益的探索。     

生态经济理论的发展与政治经济学的创新

长期以来,我国社会主义政治经济学由于忽视研究生态经济问题,使之缺乏创新与发展。现在生态经济学得到了迅速的发展,政治经济学必须研究生态经济问题,必须吸收生态经济理论,真正成为社会主义现代化建设的坚实的理论基础。     

Benefits of Downward Earnings Management and Political Connection: Evidence from Government Subsidy and Market Pricing

This paper examines the role of downward earnings management and political connection on the receipt of government subsidies and market pricing of subsidies. Using subsidies data hand-collected from Chinese listed firms over the period 2004–2014, the results show a significantly positive association between downward earnings management and the receipt of government subsidies. The results also reveal that a firm's political connection is conducive to securing subsidies for poor performers, but not for good performers. Market pricing analyses demonstrate that share markets value subsidies positively in general, but the effect is ameliorated in firms conducting downward earnings management. No discernible difference is found between the market pricing of subsidies received by firms with political connections and those without.     

Politically connected boards,value or cost: evidence from a natural experiment in China

This study investigates the net effect of a politically connected board for a firm. Using a natural experiment in China – a regulatory change to forbid bureaucrats from sitting on the board of public firms – we address the causality of the net effect of a politically connected board by testing the market reaction of the shares of firm targeted by the regulatory change to the policy announcement. The stocks of firms with politically connected directors who are targeted by the regulatory change show on average a significantly positive abnormal return, which suggests that the agency cost effect of a politically connected director dominates the value effect. The result is robust to various model settings and to a matched sample using the propensity score methodology. Additionally, the announcement effect of the resignation of a politically connected director is significantly positive, and significantly higher than that of a non‐connected director. Overall, our results suggest that the agency cost effect of a politically connected director dominates the value effect.