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Subnational public debt sustainability in Mexico: Is the new fiscal rule working? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Ernesto del Castillo, René Cabral
In 1997, after a costly bailout, the central government of Mexico passed legislation intending to improve subnational finances through fiscal decentralization. As a result, many states rapidly began to accumulate debt during the following decade. Subnational public debt grew threefold between 1996 and 2006. The global financial crisis only aggravated the debt accumulation problem, which increased by
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Discretion and public procurement outcomes in Europe* Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Bernard Hoekman, Bedri Kamil Onur Taş
Public procurement regulations aim to ensure the state minimizes contract award prices by specifying the processes to be used in issuing calls for tenders and award of contracts. Cost minimization goals may be complemented by ancillary objectives such as supporting small firms or disadvantaged groups. Recent theory suggests procurement regulations and practices constraining the ability to exercise
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“Whatever It Takes!” How tonality of TV-news affected government bond yield spreads during the European debt crisis Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Patrick Hirsch, Lars P. Feld, Ekkehard A. Köhler, Tobias Thomas
Were government bond risk premia affected by the media in addition to the effects of major events? Revisiting the European debt crisis, we analyze the role of television news in the rise and re-convergence of GIIPS bond spreads vis-à-vis Germany from 2007 to 2016. We use a dataset of more than one million human-coded news items from leading newscasts worldwide to identify over 25,000 news on the Eurozone
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Scarring effects of major economic downturns: The role of fiscal policy and government investment Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-03-07 Martin Larch, Peter Claeys, Wouter van der Wielen
Long shunned as slow and ill timed, the response to the Covid-19 pandemic initiated a reassessment of fiscal policy as stabilisation tool. At the same time, there is ample evidence that major economic downturns produce lasting effects on real GDP in spite of active fiscal policy interventions. This paper takes a fresh look at economic scarring in 26 OECD countries, including 14 EU member states, since
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Logistic hubs and support for radical-right populism: Evidence from Italy Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Liliana Cuccu, Nicola Pontarollo
Increasing discontent and the associated growing support for populist parties have been attributed to several drivers, including globalization, technological change, and migration waves. We analyse a phenomenon that encompasses a mix of economic and cultural grievances — the logistic revolution. The Italian logistics industry is characterized by a heavy reliance on low-paying and precarious contracts
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Social expenditure composition and inequality: A dynamic panel threshold analysis for OECD countries Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-02-27 Pedro Bação, Joshua Duarte, Melissa Pereira, Marta Simoes
This paper studies the relationship between inequality and public social spending for an overall sample of 28 OECD countries spanning 1997 to 2017. We add to the literature by dissecting social expenditure according to nine programs and allowing for the existence of a non-linear relation in the context of a dynamic panel threshold model. The analysis reveals a positive contribution of old-age pensions
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Investing in friends: The role of geopolitical alignment in FDI flows Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-02-16 Shekhar Aiyar, Davide Malacrino, Andrea F. Presbitero
Firms and policy makers are increasingly looking at friend-shoring to make supply chains less vulnerable to geopolitical tensions. We test whether these considerations are shaping FDI flows, using investment-level data on over 300,000 instances of greenfield FDI between 2003 and 2022. Estimates from a gravity model, which controls for standard push and pull factors, show an economically significant
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Procurement cartels and the fight against (outsider) bribing Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Roberto Burguet, Elisabetta Iossa, Giancarlo Spagnolo
We study the relationship between collusion and corruption in a stylized model of repeated procurement where the cost of reporting corrupt bureaucrats gives rise to a free riding problem. Cooperation among long-run (honest) firms alleviates free-riding in reporting. However, it also facilitates collusion in bidding by increasing the value of the collusive rent. In turn, bidding collusion facilitates
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Empowering the next generation: The role of direct democracy in youth enfranchisement Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-02-03 Anna Maria Koukal, Patricia Schafer, Reiner Eichenberger
When are voters willing to enfranchise a new group? In this paper, we analyze whether and how the extent of direct democracy affects the willingness of the electorate to extend suffrage to young people. We exploit a new municipality-level dataset from two Swiss federal referendums that concerned lowering the voting age from 20 to 18. Based on a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) design, we demonstrate
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Fiscal rules to the test: The impact of the Spanish expenditure rule Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Ana Herrero-Alcalde, Javier Martín-Román, José Manuel Tránchez-Martín, Ignacio Moral-Arce
Despite the large spread of fiscal rules around the world, there is still not enough evidence of their effectiveness in ensuring fiscal sustainability. Furthermore, there is little evidence of the impact of expenditure rules in countries’ fiscal performance. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the Spanish expenditure rule that has been in force since 2012 in controlling the growth of public expenditure
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Alternatives to plurality rule for single-winner elections: When do they make a difference? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Romain Lachat, Jean-François Laslier
Declining levels of turnout and growing distrust in political elites are often seen as symptoms of a crisis of representative democracy. Various proposals of reform have been made to reinvigorate representation and political participation. This paper focuses on one aspect of that debate: finding an alternative to FPTP, which is the electoral rule most frequently used in single-member districts, but
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District versus at-large voting: Why district voting results in worse policy for minorities Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Donald Wittman
By making use of voting-rights acts, minorities have forced cities to convert from at-large elections to district elections when there is racially polarized voting and the minority percentage on the city council is significantly below the percentage of the minority population. The voting-rights acts also provide for the creation of majority/minority districts so that minorities are more likely to be
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Early warning models for systemic banking crises: Can political indicators improve prediction? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Tran Huynh, Silke Uebelmesser
This study provides a novel attempt to assess whether an early warning system (EWS) for systemic banking crises can produce better predictions when political indicators are used alongside traditional macro-financial indicators. Based on a dataset covering 32 advanced economies for the period 1975–2017, we show that the inclusion of political indicators significantly improves the predictive performance
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Employee trust and performance constraints in public sector organizations Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Philip Keefer, Razvan Vlaicu
Theory suggests that employee trust is key to productivity in organizations, but empirical evidence documenting links between trust and performance constraints is scarce. This paper analyzes self-collected observational and experimental data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries and finds that individual-level trust is relevant to three types of performance factors. First
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Transition to broader-based politics: The role of suffrage extension in early 20th century Japan Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-01-15 Shuhei Kainuma
The period of modern industrialisation is commonly characterised by gradual democratisation through enfranchisement and intra-elite competition between traditional landlords and emerging capitalists. This raises the question of whether the redistribution of de jure political power via suffrage expansion can catalyse the transition of intra-elite power structures, as reflected in political representation
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Women’s voice on redistribution: From gender equality to equalizing taxation Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2024-01-06 Monica Bozzano, Paola Profeta, Riccardo Puglisi, Simona Scabrosetti
We investigate the role played by gender equality in redistributive policies through taxation and in preferences for redistribution. First, at the cross-country level, we study how the historical roots of gender equality –i.e., the time of women’s enfranchisement and the role of women in the family – are related with the level of redistribution through taxation. We find that in countries that are historically
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Political budget cycle and the alignment effect: Evidence from South Korea Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-12-03 Dongwon Lee, Sujin Min, Sangwon Park
This study examines the effect of political alignment on the political budget cycle in multi-level local governments (municipal and regional governments). The central government may increase transfers to politically unaligned municipalities before local elections if (1) these municipalities are part of politically aligned regions and (2) the alignment of regional incumbents determines the political
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Making monetary policy in Poland: Are Polish hawks and doves different? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-11-30 Ryszard Kokoszczyński, Joanna Mackiewicz-Łyziak
In this study we analyse the voting behaviour of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in Poland, applying a panel probit model using an original, hand-collected dataset of 48 MPC members and 168 votes from 2000 to 2022. We determine voting behaviour (hawkish vs. dovish) using personal characteristics of gender, age, education, previous career as well as the appointing institution for each member and
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Perceived position on the social ladder and redistributive preferences – A survey experiment from the Kyrgyz Republic Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-11-28 Franziska Gassmann, Eszter Timár
Prior research has established that perceived inequality, and not actual inequality matters for redistributive preferences. Hence, misconceptions can alter public demand for government intervention. Survey experiments have found systematic biases in people's inequality perceptions and found that, in some contexts, the provision of correct information may alter their preferences for redistribution.
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Social trust and the support for universal basic income Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-11-24 Michele Gubello
This paper presents a theoretical model showing how political mistrust affects people’s preferences for Universal Basic Income (UBI) when its implementation involves a reduction in spending for other public services (welfare retrenchment). The model shows that individuals with lower levels of political mistrust are more likely to endorse UBI, reflecting their trust in the government’s ability to manage
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Well-being foundations of populism in Europe Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-11-23 Rui Silva
Models of retrospective voting assume that voters’ preferences and choices depend on their subjective well-being, and thus, the belief that a particular candidate if elected, shall implement policies to improve it. We use this framework to address the populist phenomenon in Europe over the last 20 years. We find an inverse relationship between individual life satisfaction and self-reported support
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Dominance and technology war Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-11-21 Kai A. Konrad
Three regimes of technology leadership are compared. Firstly, technological innovation in a unipolar world with one dominant country that can sell its technology to a set of small countries. Secondly, competition for leadership between two large countries, with small countries that are independent. Thirdly, a decoupled world in which all small countries are allied with one or the other big country
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Is Populism reversible? Evidence from Italian local elections during the pandemic Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-11-10 Massimo Bordignon, Federico Franzoni, Matteo Gamalerio
We study the effect of economic insecurity on electoral outcomes using data on municipal elections in Italy. We implement a difference-in-differences approach that exploits exogenous variation across municipalities in the share of inactive workers due to the economic lockdown introduced by the central government to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. We show that lockdown-induced economic insecurity positively
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Should Italy switch to a flat tax? An assessment based on a heterogeneous agents OLG model Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-11-04 Alessandro Sommacal
We use a heterogeneous agents overlapping generations (OLG) model to quantitatively assess the impact of a reform in which a personal income tax with increasing marginal tax rates is replaced by a flat tax possibly complemented with a deduction. The value of the flat tax rate is set in order to balance the government budget and accordingly it increases with the value of the deduction. The model is
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Opportunistic privatization Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-11-04 Vladan Ivanović, Luca J. Uberti, Drini Imami
In the run-up to elections, self-interested politicians use privatization opportunistically to buy votes and increase their probability of re-election. When state-owned firms are privatized, politicians use (implicit) subsidies to persuade managers to choose inefficient but politically beneficial strategies such as excess employment. Under plausible assumptions, politicians have a strict preference
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The value of a party: Local politics and the allocation of intergovernmental transfers Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-10-12 Matthias Quinckhardt
This paper investigates how party connections affect the ability of local politicians to obtain central government funds for their municipality. Using a novel data set for mayoral elections in Germany spanning 2322 municipalities in eight states in the years 2000 to 2008 and regression discontinuity design, I find that party alignment between a local mayor and the state government increases transfers
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The distributional impact of local banking. Evidence from the financial and sovereign-debt crises Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Valentina Peruzzi, Pierluigi Murro, Stefano Di Colli
This paper investigates whether local cooperative banks played a role in mitigating income inequality within Italian municipalities following the main crises that marked the European landscape from 2008 to 2015, namely the financial and sovereign-debt crises. Our empirical findings indicate that, despite the overall rise in income inequality during the post-crisis periods, municipalities hosting at
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Fiscal decentralization and structural versus cyclical unemployment levels Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-10-04 Benard Akalbeo, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Bauyrzhan Yedgenov
The literature on fiscal federalism has long debated whether fiscally decentralized countries are inherently more economically and fiscally unstable. This paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the impact of fiscal decentralization on one of the most important dimensions of macroeconomic stability, the unemployment level. This is the first study in the literature to address the relationship
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Pension reform preferences in Germany: Does information matter? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-10-01 Jana Schuetz, Silke Uebelmesser, Ronja Baginski, Carmela Aprea
Demographic change has an impact on pay-as-you-go pension systems. To maintain their financial sustainability, reforms are necessary, but often lack public support. Using representative survey data from Germany, we conduct a survey experiment to investigate whether salience or information about demographic change increases preferences for reforms in general and for specific reform measures. We find
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Political referenda and investment: Evidence from Scotland Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-30 Andres Azqueta-Gavaldon
We present evidence that referenda have a significant, detrimental outcome on investment. Employing an unsupervised machine learning algorithm over the period 2008-2017, we construct three important uncertainty indices underlying reports in the Scottish news media: Scottish independence (IndyRef)-related uncertainty; Brexit-related uncertainty; and Scottish policy-related uncertainty. Examining the
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Consequences of Thailand’s 2006 military coup: Evidence from the synthetic control method Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Wisarut Suwanprasert
In this paper, I study the consequences of Thailand’s 2006 military coup for various dimensions of Thailand’s economy. I use the synthetic control method to construct synthetic Thailand, which represents how Thailand would have been if the 2006 coup had not occurred. There are three main results. First, the synthetic control method does not detect statistically significant changes in real GDP, GDP
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The causal effect of regulation on income inequality across the U.S. states Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Sanchari Choudhury
In the last several decades, despite widespread concerns about rising income inequality and increasing federal regulations in the United States, only a small group of researchers have tried exploring and understanding this relationship to date. Relevant empirical studies, overall, find regulations to exacerbate income distribution, thereby increasing income inequality within an economy. Recently, a
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Divided government, polarization, and policy: Regression-discontinuity evidence from US states Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-27 Luca Repetto, Maximiliano Sosa Andrés
In this paper we use data on US states and a regression-discontinuity design to study how divided government affects the polarization of the legislature, inter-branch conflict, and policy implementation. We document that Republican legislators serving under a divided government have more conservative ideologies than those serving under a fully unified government. Correspondingly, Democrats have more
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A gate to the world for all? The reaction of neighborhoods in Hamburg to refugee housing Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Marek Endrich
This paper analyzes the political reaction of residents to refugee housing in their neighborhood. The city of Hamburg, Germany, experienced between 2014 and 2017 large refugee inflows that required many new accommodations. Openings of refugee houses led to an increase of 0.9 percentage points in the vote share of right-wing anti-immigrant parties in a neighborhood. The negative reaction applies to
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Bureaucracy and labor market inefficiency: A contest model Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-16 Doron Klunover
The theory of bureaucracy describes the internal rent-seeking incentives in government agencies. A consequence is that a government agency competing with other agencies for budgetary funding will value rent-seeking ability rather than individual productiveness when choosing who to hire. With private-sector firms valuing personal productiveness, I look at labor-market incentives when job seekers facing
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Leaders, factions and the determinants of electoral success Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Benoît S.Y. Crutzen, Sabine Flamand
We model the internal game between the leader and the factions of a party, to study the effect of party leadership on the determinants of electoral success. Factions are of interest or of principle. The probability of winning the election is increasing in how close the party is to the median voter, the leader’s charisma, party coherence and the factions’ contributions. The leader offers both types
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The consequences of CIA-sponsored regime change in Latin America Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Samuel Absher, Robin Grier, Kevin Grier
The CIA intervened regularly in Latin America politics during the Cold War, in some cases going as far as bringing about regime change. We study the economic, political, and civil society effects of CIA-sponsored regime change in five Latin American countries and find that these actions caused moderate declines in real per-capita income and large declines in democracy scores, rule of law, freedom of
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Households’ inflation expectations and concern about climate change Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-09 Christoph Meinerding, Andrea Poinelli, Yves Schüler
Using survey data from German households, we find that individuals with higher concern about the consequences of climate change have lower inflation expectations up to five years ahead. We show that the link between climate concern and inflation expectations goes above and beyond individuals’ perception of their personal exposures to climate-related risks, their distrust in the central bank, and a
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Television market size and political accountability in the U.S. House of Representatives Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-09 Patrick Balles, Ulrich Matter, Alois Stutzer
This paper examines the role of local TV market structure in U.S. congressional politics, exploiting variation in the overlaps of political markets and TV markets. Local TV stations are hypothesized to report relatively more per U.S. House representative in less populous markets (where the number of House districts covered is smaller), leading to better-informed voters and more accountable representatives
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Do immigrants ever oppose immigration? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-09-03 Aflatun Kaeser, Massimiliano Tani
This paper analyzes immigrants’ views about immigration, contributing to the behavioral literature on the subject. In particular, it explores the role of statistical discrimination as a cause of possible opposition to immigration in the absence of stringent immigration policies and a large amount of undocumented immigration. We test this hypothesis using US data from the seventh wave of the World Value
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Media fabrication of corruption and the quality of the political class: The case of Italy Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-27 Giovanni B. Pittaluga, Elena Seghezza, Pierluigi Morelli
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, the level of perceived corruption in Italy has risen markedly, diverging significantly from the perceived corruption of other high-income countries and from the corruption as experienced. We propose that newspapers, in order to maximize their profits, have given directed emphasis to episodes of political corruption, which has contributed to the increase in
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Fiscal multipliers, public debt anchor and government credibility in a behavioural macroeconomic model Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-26 Amélie Barbier-Gauchard, Thierry Betti, Théo Metz
We develop a behavioural macroeconomic model to investigate the question of fiscal policy credibility and how agents’ expectations about the output gap, public debt, expenditure and taxation affect the fiscal multiplier and debt stability. To do this, we model heterogeneous expectation-formation processes in a market populated by fundamentalists and chartists, agents being able to switch from one rule
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Surfing the credit wave: Government popularity as driver of credit cycles Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-26 Etienne Lepers
This paper analyses the interaction between credit and political cycles, arguing that short-termist governments will seek to ride and amplify credit cycles for political gains. Specifically, it tests for the existence of political credit cycles not only before elections but throughout the term when executives seek to bolster support in periods of popularity drops. Compiling a unique database on government
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Regime-based debt sustainability analysis: Evidence from euro area economies Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-23 Benjamin Owusu, Bettina Bökemeier, Alfred Greiner
This paper empirically studies non-linearities in debt sustainability analysis by resorting to the modern estimation technique of panel smooth transition regression (PSTR). We assess euro area debt sustainability by analysing the reaction of the primary balance to changes in public debt, relative to GDP respectively, in annual frequency from 2000-2019 in a panel framework. The PSTR allows to estimate
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Can health passport overcome political hurdles to COVID-19 vaccination? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Abel François, Olivier Gergaud, Abdul Noury
In this paper we examine whether a health passport that increases the cost of not getting vaccinated, can change the individual trade-off in favor of vaccination. To address this question, we study the impact of the announcement of the French health passport on factors affecting vaccine hesitancy. First, using data from a survey conducted on the eve of the announcement date, we examine the determinants
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Judicial independence: Why does de facto diverge from de jure? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-19 Bernd Hayo, Stefan Voigt
An independent judiciary is often hailed as one of the most important aspects of the rule of law. Securing judicial independence (JI) via explicit constitutional rules seems straightforward and there is evidence that de jure and de facto JI are linked, at least in the long term. However, the realized degree of judicial independence often diverges significantly from the constitutionally guaranteed one
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Consistent flexibility: Enforcement of deficit rules through political incentives Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Valerio Dotti, Eckhard Janeba
We study the optimal design of a deficit rule in a model in which the government is present-biased, shocks to tax revenues make rule compliance stochastic, and a rule violation reduces the payoff from holding office. We show that: (i) the benchmark policy of the social planner can be always implemented via an optimal nonlinear deficit rule and under certain conditions even under a linear rule; (ii)
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Does ethnic heterogeneity decrease workers’ effort in the presence of income redistribution? An experimental analysis Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Christoph A. Schütt, David Pipke, Lena Detlefsen, Gianluca Grimalda
Ethnic discrimination is ubiquitous, and it has been shown to exert adverse effects on income redistribution. The reason is that a country’s ethnic majority, if richer than the average, may be unwilling to transfer resources to the country’s ethnic minorities if poorer than the average. A yet untested mechanism is that a country’s ethnic majority may reduce their work effort knowing that their income
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How does expropriation affect FDI? A synthetic control analysis of oil and gas sector nationalizations in South America Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Bernd Lucke, Erik Rehfeldt
How do expropriations of foreign oil and gas assets affect the net inflow of FDI? We analyze political and legal developments which led to increased government control of natural resource extraction industries in South America in the early 2000s and discuss at which point in time foreign investors saw legislation as violating their legitimate property rights. We use synthetic control methods (SCM)
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Comparative politics with intraparty candidate selection Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Benoît S.Y. Crutzen, Nicolas Sahuguet
Politicians respond to incentives when they decide how to allocate their campaigning time and effort. The literature suggests electoral rules impact politicians’ incentives. We argue that the candidate selection process is an equally important source of incentives. We develop a two-stage model in which parties select candidates before the election. Elections are under first past the post (FPTP) or
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Economic freedom and life satisfaction: A moderated mediation model with individual autonomy and national culture Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Johan Graafland
Previous research has shown that economic freedom is associated with life satisfaction. Nonetheless, how economic freedom affects life satisfaction remains relatively unexplored. Test results on a sample of 238,944 observations from 78 countries in the period from 1990 to 2020 show that individual autonomy is a possible channel (so-called mediator): whereas economic freedom is found to foster individual
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The effect of populism on high-skilled migration: Evidence from inventors Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Wei-Fong Pan
This study investigates the nexus between populism and inventor migration across 36 economies during the period of 1978–2012. The primary focus of our analysis lies in the examination of inventor migration due to its potential impact on innovation within an economy. By employing a gravity model, we analyse the relationship between populists gaining power in the destination economy and the influx of
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Pandemic panic? Effects of health system capacity on firm confidence during COVID-19 Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-07-26 Balagopal Gopalakrishnan, Jamus Jerome Lim, Sanket Mohapatra
We examine whether firms’ business confidence—defined as their perceptions of risk and sentiment associated with the COVID-19 pandemic—is affected by ex ante health system capacity and ex post government responses. Using firm-level data from 53 countries, we find that ex ante proactive measures, such as healthcare spending and the availability of medical staff, favorably impact firms’ confidence. This
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Reputation and perverse transparency under two concerns Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Ascensión Andina-Díaz, José A. García-Martínez
Quite often an expert takes position on an issue where certain actions can be perceived as biased. If the expert has an informational concern and she does not want the listener to perceive her as biased, she has an incentive to avoid the biased action, even if she thinks this is the correct action. This paper shows that when an expert has multiple types and two concerns, an informational concern and
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Kinship ties and female political participation: The case of Philippine mayors Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Charles Irvin S. Siriban
Recent years have seen improvements in gender representation in the political sphere. One important contributor is the female politicians’ kinship ties to incumbent or previous politicians. There are concerns, however, that such improvements are merely nominal. I quantify the extent to which female politicians with kinship ties are more likely to serve as placeholders. I utilize the transitory nature
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Defector Politicians and Economic Growth: Evidence from India Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-07-22 Karan Makkar
Political defectors refer to politicians who switch parties. This paper uses a close-election regression discontinuity (RD) model to estimate the impact of electing political defectors to Indian state legislatures on economic growth (proxied by night-light growth) in their electoral constituencies. I estimate that the election of a defector from the governing party causes a 0.13–0.48 percentage point
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The heterogeneous effects of internet voting Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-07-22 Alberto Ciancio, Fabrice Kämpfen
A decline in voter turnout over the last decades has prompted governments to introduce technological innovations for voting. This paper studies the heterogeneous effects of internet voting on voter turnout and vote shares in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. Exploiting across-time and across-municipalities variations during the introduction of internet voting between 2006 and 2013, we find that internet
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Corruption, scandals and incompetence: Do voters care? Eur. J. Political Econ. (IF 2.343) Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Harm Rienks
Accountability theory posits that elections weed out badly performing politicians, whereas type-selection theory posits that politicians who do not represent a (sufficiently large) group are ousted. This paper tests this by estimating the impact of various forms of misconduct by Dutch local government politicians on the vote share of their parties. It shows that incidents that reveal incompetence cost