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Economics and Politics

Impact factor: 0.583 Print ISSN: 0954-1985 Online ISSN: 1468-0343 Publisher: Wiley Blackwell (Blackwell Publishing)

Subjects: Economics, Political Science

Most recent papers:

  • How Political Alignment Affects Regional Growth and Inequality: Evidence From India.
    Sanjay Kumar Mangla, Chih‐Hai Yang.
    Economics and Politics. April 09, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper examines the role of political alignment in affecting regional growth and interstate inequality in India, the world's largest multiparty democratic country with three layers of fiscal federalism system. Using a state‐level data set during the 1991–2022 period, we find that political alignment overall has a positive effect on states' growth. It also affects income inequality across states: a broader measure of political alignment (when both the Union and state are governed by the same party or its allies) has no impact on interstate income inequality. Whereas the narrow definition (when the heads of both the Union and state governments belong to the same political party, not just allies) demonstrates a divergence effect. The effects of political alignment on growth and interstate inequality weaken as institutional capability improves. The growth and inequality effects of political alignment vary considerably during different periods. During the period when an alliance was mandatory to form the government (1991–2013), politically aligned states experienced higher growth and generated a divergence effect. During the period of a single‐party stable government (2014–2022), political alignment tended to have a negative growth effect and reduced interstate income inequality. The overall divergence effect is attributed to the faster growth of politically aligned states with higher income levels in the below‐median income group.\n"]
    April 09, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70048   open full text
  • Health Risks and the Decision to Purchase Commercial Health Insurance in China: The Moderating Role of Trust.
    Yihong Zhu, Bo Qiu, Wei Zhao.
    Economics and Politics. April 08, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nFrom the perspective of moderating effects, this study examines the role of trust in insurance in the process of shaping households' decisions to purchase commercial health insurance (CHI). On the basis of panel data obtained from three waves of the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), a logit model is employed to estimate the impact of health risk on CHI uptake, after which the moderating effect of trust in insurance on this relationship is analyzed. The results indicate that trust in life insurance significantly moderates the decision to purchase CHI, whereas trust in other insurance products, such as property insurance, has no significant effect in this context. This study clarifies the differentiated ways in which trust in insurance influences CHI purchasing decisions, thus contributing to the literature on the determinants and mechanisms that underlie such decisions. Furthermore, this study offers practical insights for efforts to mitigate adverse selection in the CHI market and enhancing public participation in commercial health insurance.\n"]
    April 08, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70049   open full text
  • A Theory of Repression and Democratic Transition.
    Gaétan Nandong.
    Economics and Politics. April 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWhat is the relationship between authoritarian repression and democratization? I reexamine this question by analyzing the problem of an autocrat who intends to install a democracy but faces a highly diverse policy environment. Using a theoretical framework, I show that a strategic use of repression can often contribute to a democratic political transition. In other words, repression and democratization are not always substitutes. A transition to democracy can follow a series of repressions aimed at eliminating ideologically distant opposition. The paper identifies two factors that determine whether this mechanism dominates: the severity and the cost of repression. The model is illustrated by the episodes of democratic transitions in Sub‐Saharan Africa.\n"]
    April 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70045   open full text
  • How Institutions Interact With Exchange Rates After the 2024 US Presidential Election: New High‐Frequency Evidence.
    Joshua Aizenman, Jamel Saadaoui.
    Economics and Politics. April 05, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper investigates how institutional quality shaped currency responses to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, using high‐frequency exchange rate data for 73 countries. We document that virtually all currencies depreciated against the U.S. dollar immediately following the election result, which markets had not anticipated. Surprisingly, countries with stronger institutional quality, typically considered more resilient, experienced larger and more persistent depreciations. We interpret this through the lens of a geopolitical realignment: the election marks a structural break in the U.S. role as guarantor of a rule‐based international order. Under the new administration's more transactional and bilateralist orientation, strong institutional alignment with liberal democratic norms may have increased perceived exposure to U.S. policy uncertainty. Our findings reveal how political regime shifts in leading economies can reconfigure the global distribution of financial risk premia.\n"]
    April 05, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70047   open full text
  • Discrepancies in Trade Statistics in 2003–2024: The Impact of Sanctions.
    Svetlana Golovanova, Alexandr Rodichev, Yurii Zinyakov.
    Economics and Politics. April 02, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper is aimed at quantitatively assessing changes in the quality of international trade statistics over the last 22 years and the impact of trade sanctions on the discrepancies between direct and mirror data. Using bilateral flows classified by 2‐digit HS codes for all available nations, we find discrepancies declined until 2019, then surged amid recent global shocks. Panel analysis reveals sanctions' dual effect. Sanctioned countries show lower discrepancies, suggesting stricter customs enforcement reduces errors. Conversely, sanction‐imposing nations exhibit higher discrepancies, indicating statistical opacity shifts to complex supply chains and re‐export hubs used to circumvent restrictions.\n"]
    April 02, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70046   open full text
  • How Do Geopolitical Shocks Shape Analyst Forecast Bias? Evidence from the US–China Trade War.
    Zheyuan Ji, Zixiao Yan, Xiaorong Zheng.
    Economics and Politics. March 19, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nGeopolitical risk (GPR) has emerged as a major source of global economic uncertainty, yet its impact on key information intermediaries remains underexplored. This paper examines how GPR shapes analyst forecast bias. We exploit the 2018 US–China trade war as a quasi‐natural experiment and construct a firm‐level GPR exposure measure based on pre‐shock profit sensitivities. We find that analysts significantly reduced their optimistic bias for firms with high GPR exposure in the post‐trade war period. This correction, however, is consistent with a behavioral, non‐rational learning path. Analysts showed initial over‐pessimism during the conflict, and this was followed by significant over‐compensation after the conflict de‐escalated. Mechanism tests show analysts also use coverage termination as an “implicit sell” signal, rather than expressing pessimism directly through revised forecasts. Heterogeneity analyses show the effects are concentrated in non‐SOEs and firms with deep, rather than broad, international exposure. Our study contributes to the literature on GPR and information intermediaries, offering key insights for regulators and investors navigating geopolitical uncertainty."]
    March 19, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70044   open full text
  • From Capabilities to Peace: Can Mobile Money Reduce Conflicts in Developing Countries?
    Alfred Michel Nandnaba.
    Economics and Politics. March 05, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWhile armed conflict remains a major impediment to economic and political stability in developing countries, the potential role of digital financial inclusion, particularly mobile money, in mitigating violent conflict remains largely unexplored. This article examines the impact of mobile money adoption on armed conflict across 103 developing countries from 2000 to 2020, using the Entropy Balancing method to address selection bias. The findings show that mobile money significantly reduces violent conflicts, with an average decrease of 282 conflict‐related deaths. These results remain robust across various sensitivity checks, including alternative model specifications, instrumental variable techniques to account for the reverse causality, and analyses of dynamic and spillover effects. The study also highlights important heterogeneity in the impact depending on the type of mobile money service, the country's level of development, the duration of the conflict, financial sector development, and geographic region. Moreover, it identifies key economic channels, including income, unemployment, inequality, and consumption volatility, through which mobile money contributes to the reduction of violent conflict. These findings underscore the strategic importance of digital financial services for promoting peace and fostering economic development in low‐ and middle‐ income countries.\n"]
    March 05, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70040   open full text
  • Does Long‐Term Local Government Debt Destabilize Corporate Stock Prices? Empirical Evidence From China.
    Wanting Zhang, Ning Ding, Shidi Dong, Hong Yue.
    Economics and Politics. March 01, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThe paper investigates how the maturity structure of local government debt influences corporate financial stability. Using a matched panel data set of Chinese A‐share listed firms between 2009 and 2023, we document that a shift toward longer public debt maturity substantially raises corporate stock price crash risk. This effect operates through three channels that induce corporate maturity mismatch, lower investment efficiency, and increase default risk. We further show that structural monetary policy can mitigate the adverse consequences, while debt issuance intensity exhibits a nonlinear threshold. These findings identify a significant microtransmission mechanism through which local government debt maturity decisions amplify financial fragility.\n"]
    March 01, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70041   open full text
  • How Metro Expansion Influences Enterprise Labor Misallocation.
    Mengting Zhang, Ziwen Bao, Feng Yu, Changbiao Zhong.
    Economics and Politics. February 26, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper investigates the effect of metro expansion on enterprise labor misallocation in China, using a double machine learning (DML) model with data from A‐share listed companies from 2013 to 2022. Our findings reveal that metro expansion significantly mitigates enterprises' labor misallocation. This effect is more pronounced for labor‐intensive and state‐owned enterprises, as well as for those located in developing urban agglomerations and regions with advanced digital infrastructure. Further mechanism analysis shows that this reduction operates through two distinct channels. On the supply side, metro networks deepen the labor market, thereby improving job‐matching efficiency. On the demand side, by intensifying competition, metro expansion erodes enterprises' market power, thereby improving allocative efficiency through the realignment of wages with marginal productivity. This study provides empirical evidence at the micro level, highlighting the role of urban transit infrastructure in improving resource allocation.\n"]
    February 26, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70042   open full text
  • Broke Autocrats, Broken Elections: Trade Shocks and Electoral Fraud in Autocracies.
    Antonis Adam, Sofia Tsarsitalidou.
    Economics and Politics. February 26, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWe argue that when terms‐of‐trade (ToT) shocks reduce resource rents, autocrats lose the fiscal capacity to sustain loyalty through patronage and increasingly rely on electoral manipulation as a survival strategy. We present a simple model in which rents finance patronage in normal times, while adverse shocks reduce the effectiveness of loyalty‐buying and induce substitution toward electoral manipulation. We test these implications using a panel of 114 autocracies from 1980 to 2021. Shocks are defined as ToT declines larger than 10%, and their impact is estimated on V‐Dem's Clean Elections Index using a difference‐in‐differences design with country and year fixed effects. Results show that negative trade shocks are associated with worse electoral conditions, especially in resource‐rich regimes, consistent with a shift from patronage to manipulation. These findings highlight how volatility in global markets can shape electoral strategies and authoritarian control.\n"]
    February 26, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70039   open full text
  • Politics and Financial Development: Is Populist Leadership Important?
    Wojciech Przychodzen.
    Economics and Politics. February 25, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nPolitical factors have an essential role to play in financial development. Populism is one of them that still has not captured sufficient attention in the existing body of literature. This paper aims to address this gap based on empirical data analysis from 59 countries worldwide over the years 1997–2021. Obtained results show that populist political leadership has had beneficial effects on financial institutions development, while being significantly detrimental for financial markets development. Additionally, increased level of development of the banking sector raised the possibility of electoral success of populist political movements, while the opposite was true for stock and debt securities markets. The proportion of female legislators in national parliaments and rule of law acted as stimulators of financial institutions development. The findings also show that central government debt, population and research and development expenditure constituted significant catalysts of financial markets development.\n"]
    February 25, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70043   open full text
  • International Trade and Forced Labor.
    Facundo Albornoz, Matthias Dahm, Luis Frones, Todd Landman.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 157-182, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWe explore the link between trade liberalization and forced labor theoretically and empirically. Our theoretical framework predicts that the net effect of trade on the use of forced labor depends on which sectors improve their relative terms of trade and if openness to trade triggers anti‐forced labor policies in the country or by trade partners. Using two datasets, we show that trade openness increases the intensive margin of forced labor but not the extensive margin. Splitting trade partners by labor standards, we show that trade with high‐standard countries reduces both margins, whereas trade with low‐standard countries raises the intensive margin.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70016   open full text
  • Supply Chain Finance and Enterprise Supply Chain Configuration: Centralization or Diversification.
    Xin Liu, Xiaoru Zhang, Tingyun Pang, Shidi Dong, Mei Lim.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 5-17, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nUnder globalization and economic uncertainty, enterprises optimize supply chain configurations via supply chain finance (SCF). From the perspective of supply chain governance, we use A‐share listed company data (2007–2021) and find that SCF reduces concentration and promotes diversification, especially in high‐trust, uncertain environments. When the mechanism test is adopted, the supply and demand coordination cost and the financing cost and enterprise risk of core enterprises in the upstream and downstream transaction process can be significantly reduced, and the transparency of the supply chain can be improved. These features promote the diversified supply chain configuration of enterprises and ensure supply chain security.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70008   open full text
  • Bipartisan Firms.
    Emanuele Caggiano, Lorenzo Rocco.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 18-45, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nCorporate donations significantly shape the landscape of US presidential elections, yet we have a limited understanding of how firms' internal finances and external political risks influence these contributions. Using a data set that merges firm‐level information with campaign records from 1992 to 2020, we analyze the propensity, intensity, and distribution of corporate giving between parties. We find that while companies often employ a bipartisan donation strategy, they consistently exhibit a stronger preference for Republican candidates. We further show that escalating political polarization is associated with a 2% increase in the likelihood of donating and a 21.8% rise in total contributions, especially among non‐research‐oriented sectors. These patterns underscore the importance of both financial imperatives and broader political incentives in driving firms' campaign finance decisions.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70010   open full text
  • Institutional Quality Convergence Among BRICS and BRICS Plus.
    Yasin Kutuk.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 62-92, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThe paper seeks to assess the relevance of BRICS as an analytical category by examining six indicators of good governance and investigating whether BRICS membership has led to institutional convergence among its members. The primary data source for this study is the Worldwide Governance Indicators provided by the World Bank for the period 2006–2020. These indicators focus on six key dimensions that assess the quality of governance within the BRICS countries and the six BRICS Plus candidate nations. Following the approach outlined by Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009), the analysis reveals convergence in five of these indicators among the BRICS countries, with the exception of the Control of Corruption. This discrepancy raises questions about the BRICS' role and influence as an international organization. However, it is worth noting that none of the six potential BRICS Plus candidates exhibit full cointegration or convergence with all the indicators used to assess the BRICS. The results, encompassing both cointegration and convergence, highlight the significant challenges in achieving complete alignment for the emerging BRICS Plus group.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70011   open full text
  • The Impact of Capital Market Activity and Investor Sentiment on the Yield of Internet Money Market Funds: Evidence From Yu'ebao.
    Jing Yang, Fan Ma, Yongmin Zhang, Yirong Liang.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 93-103, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThe high liquidity and flexibility of internet money market funds enable investors to subscribe and redeem their holdings conveniently at any time. Yu'ebao, as one of China's most representative internet money market fund products, has attracted considerable attention regarding the determinants of fluctuations in its yield. Taking Yu'ebao as the research subject, this paper explores the mechanisms through which capital market activities and investor sentiment—captured through both stock and bond markets—affect the fund's yield. Empirical results indicate that: (1) stock market trading volume exhibits a significant positive correlation with Yu'ebao's yield, whereas bond market trading volume shows a significant negative impact; (2) the influence of bond market trading volume on Yu'ebao's yield is more pronounced compared to that of the stock market; (3) although investor sentiment is significantly positively correlated with Yu'ebao's yield, it does not constitute a decisive determinant. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the yield formation mechanism in internet money market funds. Through empirically validated findings and multiple robustness checks, it provides crucial evidence for financial regulatory authorities concerning monetary policy formulation and market stability management.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70012   open full text
  • Director Network and Corporate Digital Technology Innovation: The Role of Resource and Peer Effects.
    Jingmiao Li, Dehong Liu, Ella Guangxin Xu.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 122-141, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis study explores how the director network (DN) influences corporate digital technology innovation (CDTI) by considering resource and peer effects. Focusing on Chinese listed enterprises, our results reveal that enterprises with higher director network centrality (DNC) achieve greater CDTI. Moreover, peers' CDTI boosts the focal enterprise's CDTI and strengthens the positive effect of DNC on CDTI. Mechanism analysis suggests that DNC enhances CDTI through promoting research and development investment and digitalisation. Furthermore, the effects of DNC on CDTI are confirmed through heterogeneity analysis of non–state–owned enterprises, non–Big4 enterprises, and enterprises in growth and mature stages.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70014   open full text
  • The Quality of Government and Educational Performance Across Countries.
    Horst Feldmann.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 183-198, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nUsing a new indicator of government quality, two different indicators of educational performance and two different datasets covering up to 120 countries, this study finds robust evidence that a higher quality of government improves educational performance. This is probably because a competent bureaucracy, a good legal system, and an able government that is responsive to its people all combine to support and impel education providers to achieve high standards. By contrast, poor governance, as exemplified by widespread corruption, military involvement in politics and a weak, incompetent and unpopular government, hampers the working of the educational system, thus reducing learning outcomes.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70015   open full text
  • Poverty and Perceptions of Electoral Integrity in the USA.
    Douglas Cumming, Sofia Johan, Ikenna Uzuegbunam.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 216-230, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWe propose two opposing forces that impact the relation between electoral integrity and poverty. On the one hand, it is more costly to provide electoral integrity in states where there is more poverty due to transaction costs and opportunity costs. On the other hand, extreme levels of poverty attract media scrutiny and greater external monitoring of electoral integrity, giving rise to more demand for electoral integrity. Taken together, we expect electoral integrity to be a U‐shaped function of poverty. We also hypothesize that electoral integrity will vary depending on the strength of state electoral laws. Expert‐level survey data on electoral integrity from the 2016 US presidential election and the 2018 US congressional election, in combination with US state‐level data on poverty, are strongly consistent with these predictions.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70018   open full text
  • Economic Policy Uncertainty and Crime: An Asymmetric Relationship.
    Leo M. Doerr, Stefan Wilhelm.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 273-286, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nUsing a sample of US counties for the period 2010–2018, this study is the first to isolate the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on crime rates. We employ an estimator that controls for joint endogeneity of regressors and find a crime inducing effect of rising uncertainty for violent crime. Complementary analyses reveal that this relationship is both asymmetric and transitory: spikes in uncertainty trigger temporary increases in crime rather than persistent level shifts, whereas declines in uncertainty fail to generate a comparable reduction. Finally, a comprehensive set of robustness checks confirms that our findings are not driven by changes in reporting behavior or uncertainty‐induced shifts in policing policy, and that the main results extend to property crime as well.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70022   open full text
  • Why Interest Groups With Divergent Goals Collaborate: Evidence From Climate Regulation.
    Dahyun Choi.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 46-61, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWhy do interest groups with contrasting interests and policy goals work together? I present a theory of collaborative policy production and show that interest groups can achieve higher policy gains through collaboration, even though their ideal policy goals may diverge significantly. To test theoretical results, I introduce original measurement strategies that reveal systematic patterns in which firms and environmental groups invest in joint efforts to improve fine‐grained details of policy to achieve greenhouse gas emissions targets. The analysis, using public comments spanning 2010–2020, demonstrates that comments written jointly by environmental groups and firms contain more information that can contribute to the quality of policy implementation than individual efforts alone, despite compromises on policy preferences. These findings highlight the hidden dynamics of regulatory politics, wherein divergent political goals are reconciled for high‐quality policy implementation.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70009   open full text
  • How Do Investors Respond to Data Asset Disclosure: Evidence From China.
    Yibo Huang, Zhuoran Wang, Huili Zhang.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 142-156, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nData have become increasingly important in almost all aspects of society, including government, business, finance, and education. This study examines stock market reactions to the publication of formal regulations on the accounting treatment of data assets, which, among other things, specifies the accounting treatment related to corporate data resources and boosts the disclosure of related accounting information. We document that firms with higher data asset potential receive more positive market reactions to the regulations than those with lower data asset potential. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that the positive market reactions are concentrated in firms with technological attribute, higher technological factor intensity, and stronger market position. In addition, we observe that stronger external monitoring, higher stock liquidity, and better information disclosure amplify the positive market reactions. Overall, our findings provide systematic evidence of positive market reactions following data assets regulations and shed light on relevant policy‐making and regulatory processes, which may be extrapolated to other emerging countries.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70017   open full text
  • Central Bank Independence and Fiscal Stance: The Role of Institutions in Supporting Fiscal Sustainability.
    Ryszard Kokoszczyński, Joanna Mackiewicz‐Łyziak.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 104-121, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWe investigate the effect of central bank independence (CBI) on fiscal stance: the direct impact on the primary balance and the impact on the reaction of the primary balance to the public debt. We also analyze the role of institutions in the effects of CBI on fiscal policy. We estimate fiscal reaction functions augmented by a measure of CBI using a panel of 98 countries. We find that CBI lowers the primary balance but strengthens its reaction to the government debt, hence increasing long‐term fiscal sustainability. Other institutions, such as democracy, seem to strengthen the negative direct reaction of the primary balance to CBI."]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70013   open full text
  • Doubling Down Political Budget Cycles: The Role of State‐Owned Enterprises.
    Zareh Asatryan, Désirée I. Christofzik, Justus Nover.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 306-326, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWe study the degree and nature of political budget cycles in public investments when two instruments are available: investments by core governments and, more indirectly, by state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). While fiscal pressure on core budgets may induce politicians to shift election‐induced investments to SOEs, voters' uncertainties in clearly attributing the benefits of SOE investments to incumbent politicians may encourage the opposite. Using administrative micro‐data for over 10,500 SOEs and their public owners at the municipal level in Germany, we document substantial election cycles in both instruments. This suggests that German municipal councilors use investments broadly to enhance their re‐election prospects. The total effect of elections on municipal investments in our sample is over EUR 1 billion for the pre‐election year in each electoral cycle, while the past literature focusing only on core budgets would miss about a third of this effect.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70025   open full text
  • Contested Compromise: Public Policy Reforms as Share Contests.
    Achim Hagen.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 327-337, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nPublic policy reforms often benefit certain societal groups while being costly for others. Both supporters and opponents of reforms can form lobby groups to influence the policy outcome in their preferred direction. This paper presents a simple two‐stage model of a public policy reform that results from the partial implementation of a policy proposal. The compromise is modeled as a share contest. I analyze the influence of lobby groups on equilibrium policies and how regulators' preferences for lobbying activities influence the policy proposal. The results show that in regimes where these activities are regarded as harmful, lobby efforts lead to modest reform proposals and equilibrium reforms, whereas in regimes where regulators favor lobbying activities the levels of reform proposal and resulting policy are higher. Interest groups that suffer costs from the reform are always better off in regimes that regard lobbying as harmful, whereas groups that profit from a reform can be better off with regulators that favor lobby contributions.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70024   open full text
  • Data Elements Marketization and Corporate ESG Performance: A Quasi‐Natural Experiment Based on China's Data Trading Platforms Pilot Policies.
    Caishi Zhang, Fangyi Lin, Yichuan Shi.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 287-305, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis article investigates the impact of Data Element Marketization (DEM) on corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance, using a quasi‐natural experiment based on China's data trading platforms pilot policies. Employing a Difference‐in‐Differences (DID) framework, we find that DEM significantly enhances ESG outcomes by alleviating financing constraints, promoting digital transformation, and strengthening external supervision. Our results highlight that firms with higher intangible asset intensity and those located in more marketized regions experience stronger improvements in ESG performance. Additionally, DEM also helps mitigate greenwashing behaviors. This study contributes to the understanding how market mechanisms for data circulation can drive corporate sustainability and offers policy implications for advancing DEM reforms.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70023   open full text
  • The Impact of Government‐Guided Funds on Enterprises Innovation Quality: Evidence From China.
    Chenze Song, Zhihua Guan.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 252-272, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis study examines the impact of China's government‐guided fund policy on corporate innovation quality from a venture capital perspective. It holds significant implications for comprehensively understanding the economic effects of government venture capital and the realization of sustainable development of enterprises. Using a multi‐period difference‐in‐differences (DID) approach, we analyze data from A‐share‐listed firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen (2008–2023) to empirically assess how government‐guided funds influence enterprises innovation quality. Results show that firms receiving such investments exhibit a statistically significant improvement in their innovation quality. The effect is more pronounced among firms facing higher financing needs, including growth‐stage enterprises, strategic emerging industries, and Nonpolitical connections enterprises. Mechanism analysis further reveals that government‐guided funds enhance enterprises innovation quality by alleviating financing constraints and lowering agency costs.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70021   open full text
  • Linking National Security to Economic Growth: An International Political Economy Approach.
    Panagiotis Palaios, Georgios Kapogiannis.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 231-251, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper focuses on developing a utility—maximizing model, which points to an optimal defense budget allocation as well as a relationship between security and growth. We test the validity of our model empirically in the case of Greece and Turkey for the period 1971–2023, considering a set of geopolitical, institutional, and economic variables. Our results indicate that if the level of security attained is inadequate in terms of the threat faced, the economic environment becomes highly uncertain, thus depriving the economy from increasing its GDP. In addition, we point to the need for investment in domestic defense technology and infrastructure, both for facing threats and for promoting economic growth. At the institutional level our results indicate the crucial role of the regime type in smoothing the relationship between the two adversaries. The policy implications derived are based on the close relationship between national security, economic growth, and institutions, indicating the need for economies to invest in their domestic industrial base, in light of the latest technological progress and the multipolar nature of the international system.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70020   open full text
  • Online Local Budget Transparency and Local Elections in Croatia.
    Francisco J. Veiga, Marija Opačak Eror, Simona Prijaković.
    Economics and Politics. February 06, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, Volume 38, Issue 1, Page 199-215, March 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis study empirically analyses the impact of online local budget transparency (OLBT) on the electoral performance of city mayors and municipal heads who sought re‐election in Croatia's local elections in 2017 and 2021. Based on the literature on political budget cycles (PBC) and voting behavior, the study tests two main hypotheses: (1) that budget transparency is rewarded by voters; and (2) that it diminishes the electoral benefits of opportunistic pre‐election increases in expenditures. These hypotheses are examined using fixed‐effects panel models applied to data from up to all 556 Croatian cities and municipalities where incumbents ran for re‐election. The dependent variable is the vote share received by the incumbent in the first round of the local elections. The empirical results provide support for both hypotheses.\n"]
    February 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70019   open full text
  • How Does Temporary Labor Migration Affect Voting Behavior and Political Polarization? Evidence From the USA.
    Dariia Mykhailyshyna.
    Economics and Politics. January 28, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nIn this article, I examine how temporary labor migration affects political outcomes using microdata on H2A and H2B temporary work visas. I construct a Bartik‐type instrument for the number of temporary labor migrants in each county and merge this data with election results and measures of political polarization. My results suggest that temporary labor migration decreases the vote share of anti‐immigration parties and far‐right political polarization while increasing far‐left polarization. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that temporary migration affects political outcomes differently from previously studied migration types.\n"]
    January 28, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70038   open full text
  • Shaken Politics: The Electoral Outcomes of Disasters and Social Capital.
    Giovanni Gualtieri, Marcella Nicolini, Fabio Sabatini, Marco Ventura.
    Economics and Politics. January 26, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWe study the electoral repercussions of the L'Aquila earthquake in 2009, one of Italy's most catastrophic post‐WWII seismic events. We construct a unique municipality‐level dataset, combining high‐resolution data on the ground acceleration recorded during the earthquake with European election results and social capital metrics. Our findings indicate that the intensity of the shock positively influenced support for the incumbent national government but provided no electoral advantage to local incumbents. Analyzing potential transmission mechanisms, we find that relief measures did not automatically translate into political rewards. Instead, turnout dynamics and what we term emergency social capital—the density of civic organizations involved in social assistance, volunteering, and disaster management—played a pivotal role in shaping post‐disaster electoral outcomes. In left‐leaning municipalities, greater exposure to the shock was associated with both a decline in turnout and an improved performance of the incumbent government. Moreover, the incumbent's electoral gains increased with the ground acceleration only in municipalities with low emergency social capital, where citizens relied primarily on political institutions for assistance. Individual‐level evidence from survey data further supports our findings. Nonetheless, the impact of the earthquake was not enduring. In the subsequent elections, the incumbent government experienced a decline in support in the very municipalities where it had initially gained favor following the disaster. Overall, our evidence paints a picture of disillusionment with the incumbent's response and promises.\n"]
    January 26, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70036   open full text
  • Dividend Payment Frequency and Firm Value: Evidence From China.
    Chuanlu Ge, Qiyue Cui, Yuhan Bi, Linjuan Mu.
    Economics and Politics. January 22, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nOur study investigates the effect of dividend payment frequency on firm value in China's A‐share market. We hypothesize that firms with multiple dividend payments exhibit higher valuations, as more frequent payouts may mitigate agency costs, improve operating efficiency, and convey positive signals to the market. Consistent with our prediction, we find that multiple dividend payments correlate with higher firm valuation than a single payment. These results remain robust after a series of robustness tests. Additional analyses provide evidence consistent with the proposed channels. Finally, our cross‐sectional analyses show that this positive effect is more pronounced in non‐family firms, state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), and firms with lower dividend payout ratios. Collectively, our evidence suggests that dividend payment frequency is closely related to firm valuation in emerging markets characterized by a policy‐driven regulatory environment.\n"]
    January 22, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70035   open full text
  • Green Credit and ESG Performance in Construction Enterprises.
    Yongmin Zhang, Keyu Chen, Yingxue Zhao, Wenjun Tu.
    Economics and Politics. January 16, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nAgainst the backdrop of escalating global environmental challenges, green finance has gained prominence as a critical instrument for advancing sustainability. This study investigates the impact and mechanisms of green credit policies on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of construction companies. Using a sample of Chinese A‐share listed firms from 2009 to 2023 and employing a Propensity Score Matching–Difference‐in‐Differences approach, the findings reveal that green credit significantly enhances the overall ESG scores of construction enterprises, primarily through green technology innovation and charitable activities. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the policy effect is stronger in civil engineering and building construction, but limited in decoration and installation sectors. Firms in eastern China respond more strongly than those in central and western regions. The study recommends that enterprises optimize green innovation and social responsibility investments, while policymakers should strengthen regional coordination and adopt sector‐specific incentive measures.\n"]
    January 16, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70034   open full text
  • Partial Verifiability Induced Contests and Inefficient Policy‐Making.
    Octavian Strîmbu.
    Economics and Politics. January 13, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nFirst‐price menu auctions (i.e., common agency) and all‐pay auctions are two of the main tools used to formalize and understand political behavior. In this paper, I propose a common agency model in which the interest groups are only able to partially verify and condition the transfers. This model turns out to be a form of all‐pay contest, since the interest groups play using mixed strategies. Surprisingly, an interest group equipped with better verification technology may actually bid less. Since the probability of winning is not always monotonic with respect to a verification technology, social welfare may decrease even as verification technologies improve. I argue that this is due both to the official's incentive constraint and to the flexibility of the interest groups' incentive schemes.\n"]
    January 13, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70031   open full text
  • Voting in Ruins: Examining the Effect of a Tornado on Voting Behavior Toward Coalition Government Parties.
    Jakub Jusko, Peter Spáč.
    Economics and Politics. January 13, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThe electoral effects of natural disasters have gained increasing importance in recent research. This paper analyzes the impact of an unprecedentedly strong tornado on the electoral results of coalition government parties in the 2021 Czech general election. We find a positive effect on support for the main governing party, ANO, which played a leading role in the disaster relief program. However, the smaller incumbent party, ČSSD, which had less involvement in relief policies, did not experience a similar electoral advantage. Our study suggests that the electoral impact of disasters varies among coalition parties.\n"]
    January 13, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70032   open full text
  • How the Quota of Judges Reform Enhances Corporate Information Transparency: Evidence From China's Listed Firms.
    Zhenkun Su, Jingbo Ning.
    Economics and Politics. January 11, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nExploiting the quasi‐natural experiment of China's Quota of Judges Reform, we find that enhanced judicial quality and independence significantly improve corporate information transparency. Using panel data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A‐share listed companies from 2011 to 2022 and employing a multi‐period difference‐in‐differences approach, we document that the quota of judges reform increases corporate transparency by approximately 2.05 percentage points. This conclusion remains robust after a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. The improvement is driven by three key mechanisms: enriching judicial knowledge quantity, improving judicial knowledge quality, and enhancing judicial knowledge authority, all of which strengthen the credibility and enforceability of information disclosure regulations. The impact is more pronounced for firms that are non‐state‐owned, have low litigation risk, face high financing constraints, and exhibit high ownership concentration. This research enriches the discourse on judicial institutions and corporate behavior by demonstrating the pathways through which legal reforms enhance information transparency and market quality in emerging economies.\n"]
    January 11, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70030   open full text
  • Technology Sanctions and Firm R&D: Evidence From the U.S.–China Trade Dispute.
    Kazunobu Hayakawa, Chih‐Hai Yang.
    Economics and Politics. January 10, 2026
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThe United States has implemented export control regulations targeting China. Specifically, it has included numerous Chinese companies on the Entity List, which is a list of parties of concern. Exporters of regulated items or technologies to these listed firms must obtain permission from the U.S. government. This study investigated how this technology sanction hinders the R&D activities of sanctioned Chinese firms. Specifically, we applied the matching method to firm‐level data from 2015 to 2022. Our findings indicated that technology sanctions did not increase R&D investment and R&D intensity despite the decline in the total assets of sanctioned firms. When we separated the listed firms by license review policy (i.e., strictness of license review), we again observed insignificant effects on R&D investment in both categories of sanctioned firms. Notably, less strictly sanctioned firms accumulated more inventories, whereas more strictly sanctioned firms received increased financial support from the government in response to the technology sanctions.\n"]
    January 10, 2026   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70033   open full text
  • Polygyny, Western Egalitarianism, and the Relative Status of Women in Society.
    Satoshi Kanazawa.
    Economics and Politics. December 28, 2025
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nIt is commonly believed that women experience lower relative status in polygynous societies, whereas it is mathematically the case that the average woman benefits materially (and the average man suffers reproductively) from the polygynous institution of marriage. In 1999, Kanazawa and Still hypothesized that the apparent negative correlation between polygyny and women's status was spurious and can be explained by “Western egalitarianism,” which simultaneously decreases inequality among men and thereby polygyny (according to the female choice theory of marriage institution) and decreases inequality between the sexes, thereby elevating women's status. However, their hypothesis was never empirically tested. I put Kanazawa and Still's hypothesis to an empirical test. Analyses of three widely varied international measures of gender inequality show that polygyny was not associated with women's relative status in society net of Western egalitarianism. Robustness checks confirm that the results are not unique to a specific measure of Western egalitarianism. The international data leave very little doubt that women experience lower relative status in polygynous societies, not because they are polygynous, but because they are inegalitarian and citizens (both women and men) lack civil liberties.\n"]
    December 28, 2025   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70028   open full text
  • Ideological Diversity of Legislatures and Institutional Change.
    Danko Tarabar.
    Economics and Politics. December 21, 2025
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper presents data on ideology‐adjusted fractionalization of legislatures for an unbalanced panel of 76 countries over 1970–2019. Drawing from the V‐Party database, I combine a wide variety of positions and stances of political parties with their seat shares to construct a new index of lower‐chamber ideological diversity by country‐year. I then employ this index to empirically explore its effect on good‐for‐growth regulatory reform in up to 65 countries over 2000–2019. I provide evidence of an inverse‐U relationship between the magnitude of policy change and ideological fractionalization, and show that policy coherence declines as fractionalization increases. Implications for growth are discussed.\n"]
    December 21, 2025   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70029   open full text
  • Does the Popularity of the Incumbent Mayor Matter for Investment Activity? Evidence From Polish Municipalities.
    Monika Banaszewska.
    Economics and Politics. December 21, 2025
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper investigates whether the intensity of the political budget cycle in investment expenditures depends on the incumbent mayor's popularity in the preceding elections. Using a panel of 2479 Polish municipalities over the period 2004–2020 and data from six municipal elections, the analysis employs fixed‐effects estimations to identify the relationship between electoral incentives and budget behavior. The results show that increases in overall investment expenditures during pre‐election and election years are negatively associated with the incumbent mayor's previous vote share. This effect also holds for specific categories of investment expenditures, particularly transport and communication as well as public utilities. The findings are robust across a range of sensitivity checks and suggest that incumbents with weaker prior electoral mandates engage more actively in pre‐electoral investment cycles.\n"]
    December 21, 2025   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70027   open full text
  • Bond Market Liberalization and Corporate ESG Performance: Evidence From Bond Connect.
    Yuling Wang, Yilu Zhang, Bin Miu, Yuliang Long.
    Economics and Politics. December 15, 2025
    ["Economics &Politics, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis study examines the impact of bond market liberalization on corporate ESG performance using the launch of Northbound Trading under the Bond Connect program as a quasi‐natural experiment. Employing a difference‐in‐differences (DID) approach, the analysis reveals that bond market opening significantly enhances firms'ESG performance. Further evidence suggests that the improvement is mainly driven by better internal control quality and increased green innovation. The positive effects are more pronounced among firms in eastern regions and those with higher financing constraints and stronger market competition. These findings provide new insights into the real effects of financial market liberalization and offer policy implications for promoting sustainable and high‐quality economic development.\n"]
    December 15, 2025   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.70026   open full text
  • Reform, informal sector, and extortion.
    Biswajit Mandal, Sugata Marjit, Hamid Beladi.
    Economics and Politics. October 06, 2017
    Informal economy involving unrecorded, unregistered, extra‐legal activities employs majority of the work force in the developing world. Such extra‐legal existence of informal production is facilitated through extortion by agents of political forces in power. Also, extortion activities themselves constitute an informal segment. Full‐scale general equilibrium consequences of such institutions are rarely discussed in the literature. We develop a well‐specified general equilibrium model to explore the possible consequences of reform. Economic reform may have an expansionary effect on the number of extortionists. Depending on capital mobility and factor intensity assumptions informal output and informal wage may increase.
    October 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12099   open full text
  • Foreign direct investment and inequality in developing countries: Does sector matter?
    Juan A. Bogliaccini, Patrick J. W. Egan.
    Economics and Politics. October 03, 2017
    Scholars have studied the relationship between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and within‐country income inequality in cross‐national contexts, but have not empirically investigated how FDI in different sectors might affect inequality in different ways. We use error correction models to analyze sectoral FDI data compiled from UNCTAD investment reports in 60 middle‐income countries from 1989 to 2010, arguing that FDI in services is more likely to be associated with inequality than FDI in other sectors. We argue that skill biases and changes in employment patterns associated with service sector investments can help explain these findings.
    October 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12098   open full text
  • Tipping the (Im)balance: Capital inflows, financial market structure, and banking crises.
    Mark Copelovitch, David A. Singer.
    Economics and Politics. September 19, 2017
    An emerging consensus among scholars and policy‐makers identifies foreign capital inflows as one of the primary determinants of banking crises in developed countries. We challenge this view by arguing that external imbalances are destabilizing only when banks face substantial competition from securities markets in the process of financial intermediation. We assemble a dataset of banking crises covering the advanced industrialized countries from 1976 to 2011 and find evidence of a conditional relationship between capital inflows, a well‐developed securities market, and the incidence of banking crises. We further explore the impact of capital inflows on banks’ actual risk taking as indicated by their capital adequacy levels and measures of insolvency risk. Our results demonstrate that prudential capital cushions tend to decline with the combination of capital inflows and prominent securities markets. We highlight the political decisions—often made during the early days of a country's financial development—that determine the relative prominence of banks vs. non‐bank financial institutions and conclude with policy recommendations.
    September 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12097   open full text
  • Monetary integration, soft budget constraints, and the EMU sovereign debt crises.
    Thushyanthan Baskaran, Zohal Hessami.
    Economics and Politics. August 22, 2017
    One possible explanation for the European sovereign debt crises is that the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) gave rise to consolidation fatigue or even deliberate over‐borrowing. This paper explores the validity of this explanation by studying how three decisive stages in the history of the EMU affected public borrowing in EU member states: the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the introduction of the Euro, and the suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The methodology relies on difference‐in‐difference regressions for 26 OECD countries over the 1975–2009 period. The findings indicate that the Maastricht treaty reduced deficits especially in traditionally high‐deficit countries. In contrast, the introduction of the Euro and the watering down of the original SGP led on average to higher borrowing. These results indicate that the introduction of the Euro and the suspension of the SGP led to soft budget constraints in the EMU.
    August 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12093   open full text
  • Strategic delegation in asymmetric tax competition.
    Hikaru Ogawa, Taiki Susa.
    Economics and Politics. July 06, 2017
    This study examines asymmetric tax competition under representative democracy systems. The findings show that the degree of asymmetry between countries affects the result of elections in each country, where the citizens select a policy‐maker to set a tax rate for the country. In particular, under certain conditions, a decisive voter in the election can select a citizen whose share of the country's capital is higher than the decisive voter's own share.
    July 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12092   open full text
  • Political budget cycles: Evidence from Italian cities.
    Alberto Alesina, Matteo Paradisi.
    Economics and Politics. April 26, 2017
    The introduction of a new real estate taxes in Italy in 2011 provides a natural experiment, which is useful to test for political budget cycles. The new real estate tax allowed discretion to local governments. This generates a random variation in the distance of municipalities from the following elections when they choose the level of the tax rate. We do find substantial evidence of political budget cycles, with municipalities choosing lower tax rates when close to elections. We observe this budget cycle for smaller municipalities where the tax was more likely to be the single most important issue for the local government. Cities close to elections with large deficits did not set lower rates and so did municipalities with a lower average value of properties. Finally, the political budget cycle is stronger in the South.
    April 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12091   open full text
  • Allies or commitment devices? A model of appointments to the Federal Reserve.
    Keith E. Schnakenberg, Ian R. Turner, Alicia Uribe‐McGuire.
    Economics and Politics. April 25, 2017
    We present a model of executive‐legislative bargaining over appointments to independent central banks in the face of an uncertain economy with strategic economic actors. The model highlights the contrast between two idealized views of Federal Reserve appointments. In one view, politicians prefer to appoint conservatively biased central bankers to overcome credible commitment problems that arise in monetary policy. In the other, politicians prefer to appoint allies, and appointments are well described by the spatial model used to describe appointments to other agencies. Both ideals are limiting cases of our model, which depend on the level of economic uncertainty. When economic uncertainty is extremely low, politicians prefer very conservative appointments. When economic uncertainty increases, politicians’ prefer central bank appointees closer to their own ideal points. In the typical case, the results are somewhere in between: equilibrium appointments move in the direction of politician's preferences but with a moderate conservative bias.
    April 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12089   open full text
  • State capacity and the quality of policies. Revisiting the relationship between openness and government size.
    María Franco Chuaire, Carlos Scartascini, Mariano Tommasi.
    Economics and Politics. April 20, 2017
    Countries with different levels of state capacity have access to different sets of policies. In particular, countries with strong state capabilities are able to draw from a broader menu of policies than countries with lower capabilities. We apply and test this insight to the case of exposure to trade‐related risk. So far, most of the literature has considered that only one type of policy—the one that increases government size—can help to overcome the challenge imposed by openness. However, there are a number of policies that can mitigate trade‐induced risks, many of which do not have the necessary implication of increasing public spending. Yet, many such policies require governmental capabilities not available to any country. For that reason, while the choice of a particular policy within a menu depends on political conditions, the relationship between openness and the size of government might be mediated by the capabilities of states. This paper provides reduced form evidence confirming that the empirical relationship between openness and government size is conditional on state capabilities. Therefore, public policies cannot be assessed independently of the capacity of the State that would have to implement them.
    April 20, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12090   open full text
  • Risky business: Institutions vs. social networks in FDI.
    Sonal Pandya, David Leblang.
    Economics and Politics. March 23, 2017
    Political economy scholarship on foreign direct investment (FDI) emphasizes variation in host country political risk but overlooks variation in investors' sensitivity to political risk. We show that relational contracting, relationship‐based contract enforcement, is more efficient for high‐risk, human capital‐intensive activities for which the costs of writing legally enforceable contracts are prohibitive. We disaggregate FDI into two distinct varieties: mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and venture capital (VC). We propose that VC flows are less sensitive to host institutions but correlate strongly with skilled migrant networks that monitor compliance and impose reputational costs. Our empirical analysis of dyadic VC and M&A flows covers over 100 countries during 1980–2009. We address other mechanisms through which migrant networks facilitate FDI and verify our results hold at the country‐industry level. These findings suggest that relational contracting facilitates global integration of dynamic, knowledge‐intensive industries even when formal institutions are weak.
    March 23, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12088   open full text
  • The twilight of the setter? Public school budgets in a time of institutional change.
    Sean Corcoran, Thomas Romer, Howard Rosenthal.
    Economics and Politics. February 14, 2017
    We use a policy change that occurred in Oregon in the late 1980s to re‐visit the budget‐maximizing agenda setter theory of local public expenditure. Prior to 1987, Oregon school districts held operating levy elections with an exogenous, often zero or very low, spending reversion. From 1987 through 1990, districts experienced a “safety net” regime where the reversion was at least the previous year's nominal spending. We find that the “safety net” sharply limited the agenda setter's ability to use the reversion as a threat to obtain voter approval of relatively large expenditures.
    February 14, 2017   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12087   open full text
  • Remittances and incumbency: Theory and evidence.
    Faisal Z. Ahmed.
    Economics and Politics. December 26, 2016
    By raising household income, remittances lower the marginal utility of targeted electoral transfers, thus weakening the efficacy of vote buying. Yet, remittances make individuals wealthier and believe the national economy is performing well, which is positively attributed to the incumbent. Building on these insights, I show that the confluence of these divergent channels generate a surprising result that at increasingly higher levels of dissatisfaction with the incumbent, a remittance recipient is more likely to vote for the incumbent than a non‐remittance recipient. These predictions and their underlying mechanisms are substantiated across 18 Latin American countries.
    December 26, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12086   open full text
  • Trade and the Recognition of Commercial Lingua Francas: Russian Language Laws in Post‐Soviet Countries.
    Amy H. Liu, Megan Roosevelt, Sarah Wilson Sokhey.
    Economics and Politics. October 21, 2016
    Trade has the potential to influence a wide range of political and social outcomes. Using the post‐Soviet context, we examine how language policies – vital components for how minorities are treated with far‐reaching economic consequences – are influenced by trade. We argue that while ethnic politics and colonial legacies are both important in shaping language laws, it is important to recognize that the Russian language remains a significant commercial lingua franca in the region. When economic exchanges between Russia and other post‐Soviet republics are frequent, governments are more likely to adopt pro‐Russian language laws as a practicality and to maintain favor with the Russian government and Russian‐speaking businesses. Using an original dataset covering all Russian language‐related laws in the former Soviet states from 1992 to 2009, we find a significant and positive relationship between trade and pro‐Russian language laws. These results are robust even when we (1) instrument for Russian import levels and (2) consider the Baltic effect, spillovers from cultural affinity, and the uniqueness of fuel exports.
    October 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12084   open full text
  • Financing Education in Europe: The Globalization Perspective.
    Zeynep Ozkok.
    Economics and Politics. October 13, 2016
    This paper examines the role of globalization on public spending on education in Europe. With the implementation of the Bologna process, the changes taking place in the educational structure in Europe have highlighted the importance of public education expenditures. Taking into account the effects of trade, income, and socio‐demographic factors, we study the impact of globalization on public education expenditure at preprimary, primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions using a panel data model for 25 EU countries for the 1998–2010 period. Our findings with different indices of globalization depict a positive effect on education financing. The use of legal and institutional variables, the inclusion of the crisis and euro dummies, and further control variables do not alter our main findings. The Bologna dummy variable is not found to have a significant effect on public education financing, indicating that the integration goals under this process have not translated into increasing levels of public expenditure for education.
    October 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12085   open full text
  • Borrowed Time: Sovereign Finance, Regime Type, and Leader Survival.
    Matthew DiGiuseppe, Patrick E. Shea.
    Economics and Politics. September 28, 2016
    This study explores the conditional influence of sovereign credit on leader survival. We specifically focus on credit's heterogeneous effect on leadership survival across regimes. We argue that non‐democratic leaders are more sensitive to credit access and cost than democratic leadership. We use event history analysis to test the conditional relationship between sovereign credit and leader tenure from 1981 to 2004. Examining both domestic and global determinants of credit access and costs, our findings are consistent with the assertion that non‐democratic leadership survival is linked to credit even when addressing issues of endogeneity.
    September 28, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12081   open full text
  • Preferential Liberalization, Antidumping, and Safeguards: Stumbling Block Evidence from MERCOSUR.
    Chad P. Bown, Patricia Tovar.
    Economics and Politics. September 13, 2016
    There is not yet consensus in the trade agreements literature as to whether preferential liberalization leads to more or less multilateral liberalization. However, research thus far has focused mostly on tariff measures of import protection. We develop more comprehensive measures of trade policy that include the temporary trade barrier (TTB) policies of antidumping and safeguards; studies in other contexts have also shown how these policies can erode some of the trade liberalization gains that arise when examining tariffs alone. We examine the experiences of Argentina and Brazil during the formation of the MERCOSUR over 1990–2001, and we find that an exclusive focus on applied tariffs may lead to a mischaracterization of the relationship between preferential liberalization and liberalization toward non‐member countries. First, any “building block” evidence that arises by focusing on tariffs during the period in which MERCOSUR was only a free trade area can disappear once we also include changes in import protection that arise through TTBs. Furthermore, there is also evidence of a “stumbling block” effect of preferential tariff liberalization for the period in which MERCOSUR became a customs union, and this result tends to strengthen upon inclusion of TTBs. Finally, we also provide a first empirical examination of whether market power motives can help explain the patterns of changes to import protection that are observed in these settings.
    September 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12083   open full text
  • Tullock's Puzzle in Pay‐and‐Play Lobbying.
    Martin Gregor.
    Economics and Politics. September 12, 2016
    We explain Tullock's puzzle of small payments from special interests to policy‐makers by the hold‐up problem between the two parties. We construct a simple lobbying environment where an uninformed policy‐maker is a price‐setter who sells access to two opposed and privately informed lobbyists. The key equilibrium property is “the curse of the ex ante favored lobbyist”; the lobbyist proposing a project with the higher expected public value ends up worse off than the lobbyist proposing a project with the lower expected public value. In the absence of contribution caps, the ex ante favored lobbyist strategically devalues her project, and the resulting competitive devaluations destroy private values, revenues, as well as correlated public values. Ex ante, the policy‐maker benefits from a binding contribution cap protects the ex ante favored lobbyist, eliminates competitive devaluations, and thus remedies the hold‐up problem.
    September 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12082   open full text
  • Fiscal Transparency, Elections and Public Employment: Evidence from the OECD.
    Lasse Aaskoven.
    Economics and Politics. August 02, 2016
    There is considerable variation in levels and changes in public employment within and between developed democracies. This article highlights the importance of fiscal transparency in determining changes in public employment. It argues that economic growth increases public employment under low fiscal transparency and that this effect is strongest in years of election. These hypotheses are tested on a panel of 20 OECD countries from 1995 to 2010. The analyses show substantial evidence in favor of the arguments. Fiscal transparency lowers the positive effect of growth on public employment, a relationship, which is most robust in election years.
    August 02, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12080   open full text
  • Partisan Cycles in Offshore Outsourcing: Evidence from U.S. Imports.
    Pablo M. Pinto, Stephen Weymouth.
    Economics and Politics. July 12, 2016
    The wage and employment effects of offshoring roil politics in the United States and around the world. Firms that offshore either outsource their activities to unaffiliated businesses, or internalize production by establishing subsidiaries from which they import intrafirm. We argue that the political environment in trade partner countries influences U.S. offshoring patterns in ways that have been ignored in the extant literature. Drawing on the political business cycle literature, we expect higher production costs and lower profits for firms in capital (labor) intensive sectors when the Left (Right) is in power. These partisan cycles, in turn, shape the sectoral composition of exports from the partner to the United States, and the degree to which trade is conducted intrafirm. Under a Left‐ (Right‐) leaning government in a partner country, U.S. intrafirm imports of capital‐ (labor‐) goods increase relative to total imports in these industries. Examining highly disaggregated U.S. import data, we find strong support for our argument. Our results indicate that the effect of partisan governments on offshore outsourcing depends on factor intensities of production, which vary across industries. The degree of internalization in global sourcing is shaped in part by the distributional objectives of partisan governments, and not by economic factors alone.
    July 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12078   open full text
  • A Theory of Why the Ruthless Revolt.
    Joshua R. Hendrickson, Alexander William Salter.
    Economics and Politics. July 06, 2016
    We examine whether ruthless members of society are more likely to revolt against an existing government. The decision of whether to participate can be analyzed in the same way as the decision to exercise an option. We consider this decision when there are two groups in society: the ruthless and average citizens. We assume that the ruthless differ from the average citizens because they invest in fighting technology and therefore face a lower cost of participation. The participation decision then captures two important (and conflicting) incentives. The first is that, since participation is costly, there is value in waiting to participate. The second is that there is value in being the first mover and capturing a greater share of the “spoils of war” if the revolution is successful. Our model generates the following implications. First, since participation is costly, there is some positive threshold for the net benefit that must be met before any individual decides to participate. Second, if the ruthless do not have a significant cost advantage, then one cannot predict, a priori, that the ruthless lead the revolt. Third, when the ruthless have a significant cost advantage, they have a lower threshold and always enter the conflict first. Finally, existing regimes can delay revolution among one or both groups by increasing the cost of participation.
    July 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12079   open full text
  • Information Manipulation in Election Campaigns.
    Kemal Kivanç Aköz, Cemal Eren Arbatli.
    Economics and Politics. June 01, 2016
    We provide a game‐theoretical model of manipulative election campaigns with two political candidates and a Bayesian voter. The latter is uncertain about how good the candidates are. Candidates take unobservable, costly actions to manipulate voter's opinion about their positions. We show that if the candidates differ in campaigning efficiency, and the voter receives the biased campaign messages with some noise, then the cost‐efficient candidate can win the election with higher probability than her opponent even when she is ex‐post an inferior choice for the voter. Our paper offers a novel informational justification for imposing limits on campaign spending and encouraging diversity in the supply of political information.
    June 01, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12076   open full text
  • Like Me, Buy Me: The Effect of Soft Power on Exports.
    Andrew K. Rose.
    Economics and Politics. April 24, 2016
    In this paper, I quantify a gain that a country receives when its global influence is considered to be admirable by others. I use a standard gravity model of bilateral exports, a panel of data from 2006 through 2013, and an annual survey conducted for the BBC by GlobeScan which asks people in up to 46 countries about whether each of up to 17 countries were perceived to have “a mainly positive or negative influence in the world.” Holding other things constant, a country's exports are higher if it is perceived by the importer to be exerting a more positive global influence. This effect is statistically and economically significant; a 1% net increase in perceived positive influence raises exports by around .8 percent. Succinctly, countries receive a commercial return on their soft power.
    April 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12077   open full text
  • Differentiated Products, Divided Industries: Firm Preferences over Trade Liberalization.
    Iain Osgood.
    Economics and Politics. March 31, 2016
    The recent focus on firms in international trade suggests two conjectures about preferences over trade policy – only the most productive firms should support freer trade, and industries can be internally divided over reciprocal liberalization. This paper clarifies the content and scope of these claims. The most productive firms are generally not the greatest beneficiaries from trade liberalization and may oppose further liberalization due to increased competition in export markets from compatriot firms. Exporting industries will feature no support for trade if foreign competition is too strong or barriers too unequal. The key analytic factor generating intra‐industry division is product differentiation, both directly, by increasing export opportunities for less efficient firms, and by inducing home market effects wherein larger countries are more competitive. The implications of these findings for the distributional effects of liberalization and the study of trade politics are discussed.
    March 31, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12075   open full text
  • Exchange Rate Populism.
    Sainan Huang, Cristina Terra.
    Economics and Politics. March 04, 2016
    East Asian and Latin American economies present opposite exchange rate electoral cycles: exchange rates tend to be more depreciated before and appreciated after elections among East Asian economies, while the opposite is true in Latin America. We propose an explanation for these empirical findings where the driving force of the opposite exchange rate populism in these two regions is their difference in the relative size of tradable and non‐tradable sectors, coupled with the distributive effect of exchange rates. In a setup where policy‐makers differ in their preference bias toward non‐tradable and tradable sectors, the exchange rate is used a noisy signal of the incumbent's type in an uncertain economic environment. The mechanism behind the cycle is engendered by the incumbent trying to signal he is median voter's type, biasing his policy in favor of the majority of the population before elections.
    March 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12073   open full text
  • Substituting Distribution for Growth: The Political Logic of Intergovernmental Transfers in the Russian Federation.
    Israel Marques II, Eugenia Nazrullaeva, Andrei Yakovlev.
    Economics and Politics. March 02, 2016
    Given limited resources and economic realities, how do politicians distribute monetary transfers in order to retain office? Previous work has largely focused on two models – a core model of rewarding loyal supporters and a swing model of purchasing the support of easily swayed voters. Empirical results have proven mixed, however. In this article, we argue that these mixed results are due to economic factors, which condition politicians' distributive strategies. In our model, we consider that politician and voters are involved in a repeated game, where past expectations condition future strategy. Current (core) supporters who receive few benefits and perceive themselves worse off than other, less loyal, groups are likely to be less loyal themselves tomorrow. In our model, politicians avoid this by providing their supporters consumption benefits directly, in the form of transfers, or indirectly, via strong economic growth. Where economic growth is good, politicians can distribute less to core supporters, who benefit from the rising economy. Where economic growth is weak, however, politicians make transfers to their core supporters to ensure future loyalty. We test our theory using data on federal transfers from the Russian Federal government to 78 Russian Regions from 2000–2008.
    March 02, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12070   open full text
  • Fiscal Federalism and Legislative Malapportionment: Causal Evidence from Independent but Related Natural Experiments.
    Sebastian Galiani, Iván Torre, Gustavo Torrens.
    Economics and Politics. February 25, 2016
    We exploit three natural experiments in Argentina in order to study the role of legislative malapportionment on the biased federal tax sharing scheme prevalent in the country. We do not find support to attribute it to legislative malapportionment during periods when democratic governments were in place; nor did we find any evidence that the tax sharing distribution pattern became less biased under centralized military governments. We argue that these results are at least partly attributable to two of Argentina's institutional characteristics: first, the predominance of the executive branch over the legislature (main fiscal decisions are the outcome of a bargaining process among executive authorities); and, second, the lack of any significant difference in the pattern of geographic representation in the executive branch under democratic and autocratic governments. Thus, the observed biases in the distribution of tax revenues among the Argentine provinces are not caused by legislative malapportionment, but are probably the result of a more structural equilibrium that transcends the geographic distribution of legislative representation and even the nature of the political regime. Our findings illustrate the importance of informal institutions and de facto mechanisms to study fiscal federalism in developing countries.
    February 25, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12074   open full text
  • What does IT Take for Congress to Enact Good Policies? an Analysis of Roll Call Voting in the US Congress.
    Matias Iaryczower, Gabriel Katz.
    Economics and Politics. February 19, 2016
    We study the conditions under which members of Congress incorporate policy‐specific considerations in their decisions. To do this, we estimate a model that accounts for the influence of private information about legislation quality on voting patterns in the House and Senate. We find that minority party members are more likely to evaluate proposals on their merits than majority members, but institutional and electoral considerations significantly attenuate these partisan differences. In particular, seniority, electoral safety, and constituents' political knowledge have a balancing effect on partisan predispositions to rely on policy‐relevant information, making minority (majority) members less (more) likely to vote informatively.
    February 19, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12072   open full text
  • Political Leaders' Socioeconomic Background and Public Budget Deficits: Evidence from OECD Countries.
    Bernd Hayo, Florian Neumeier.
    Economics and Politics. February 09, 2016
    This paper empirically analyzes the relationship between political leaders' socioeconomic backgrounds and public budget deficits utilizing panel data on 21 OECD countries from 1980 to 2008. Building on sociological, as well as economic research, we argue that the socioeconomic status of political decision‐makers, i.e., presidents or prime ministers, is an important determinant of fiscal budget decisions. Our theory‐consistent findings show that the tenures of lower‐class leaders – i.e., leaders of low socioeconomic status – are associated with a deficit‐to‐GDP ratio which is 1.6 percentage points higher than that during tenures of upper‐class leaders.
    February 09, 2016   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12071   open full text
  • International Trade, Migration and Unemployment – The Role of Informal Sector.
    Sugata Marjit, Biswajit Mandal.
    Economics and Politics. November 13, 2015
    This paper provides an elaborate general equilibrium framework by including informal economic activities in a model of trade, migration and unemployment. Existence of informal activities is critical in generating positive employment effects of liberal trade policies. Following a tariff cut informal wage increases and rate of unemployment goes down under reasonable conditions. Next we generalize the benchmark model to capture the phenomenon of sequential migration: from agriculture to urban informal sector, and then to urban formal sector. Positive employment effect of reformatory trade policy partly owes to the fact that the presence of informal sector directly reduces the cost of migration and, hence, further induces the process of outmigration from agricultural sector. The paper also extends the benchmark model to include both informal intermediate and final good.
    November 13, 2015   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12069   open full text
  • Competitive General Equilibrium with Finite Change and Theory of Policy Making.
    Hamid Beladi, Avik Chakrabarti, Sugata Marjit.
    Economics and Politics. October 19, 2015
    We visit the non‐equivalence of tariff and quota in higher dimensional finite change trade models when goods outnumber factors of production. Under competitive conditions, exogenous shocks (e.g., exposure to international trade) support the production of only a subset of commodities. If we try to protect some of the vanishing goods, tariff and quota will have different results when a tariff turns out to be a more restrictive policy than a quota, contrary to the conventional wisdom.
    October 19, 2015   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12068   open full text
  • Politicians and Preferences of the Voter Majority: Does Gender Matter?
    David Stadelmann, Marco Portmann, Reiner Eichenberger.
    Economics and Politics. April 15, 2014
    Does the gender of political representatives affect the extent to which they adhere to the voter majority's preferences? By matching individual male and female representatives' votes on legislative proposals with real referendum outcomes on the same issues, we obtain a direct measure of divergence. We find that female and male representatives adhere equally close to the majority's preferences if party affiliations are taken into account. This suggests that observed gender differences with respect to the national majority of voters may be reduced to an ideological left–right dimension.
    April 15, 2014   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12039   open full text
  • Growth and Election Outcomes in a Developing Country.
    Poonam Gupta, Arvind Panagariya.
    Economics and Politics. March 25, 2014
    We offer the first test of the hypothesis that rapid growth helps incumbents win elections for a developing country, India. We generalize the Fair (1978) model to allow for multiple candidates and test it using cross‐state data on 422 candidates in the 2009 parliamentary elections. We find quantitatively large and statistically robust effect of growth on the prospects of the candidates of the state incumbent parties to win elections.
    March 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12038   open full text
  • Democracy and Education in twentieth‐century Latin America.
    Dalibor S. Eterovic, Cassandra M. Sweet.
    Economics and Politics. March 08, 2014
    Do democratic electoral systems strengthen a country's outcomes in education? Does the degree of inclusiveness of a democratic system matter? This article offers evidence that political competition and the inclusion of marginalized populations in electoral systems transformed education over an 80‐year period in Latin America. It finds that democracy has a positive effect on education enrollment and illustrates how current work on democracy and development has overlooked important democratic subcomponents, specifically, who votes and how. Our results deepen current work on democracy, operationalizing the impact of electoral expansion in comparative analysis and showing how democracies respond to specific education demands.
    March 08, 2014   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12033   open full text
  • What Do Corruption Indices Measure?
    Dilyan Donchev, Gergely Ujhelyi.
    Economics and Politics. March 04, 2014
    Evidence from the International Crime Victimization Survey and the World Business Environment Survey suggests that actual corruption experience is a weak predictor of reported corruption perception, and that some of the factors commonly found to “reduce” corruption, such as economic development, democratic institutions or Protestant traditions, systematically bias corruption perception indices downward from corruption experience. In addition, perception indices are influenced by absolute (as opposed to relative) levels of corruption, which tends to penalize large countries, and they exhibit diminishing sensitivity to both absolute and relative corruption, indicating that they may better capture differences among countries with low levels of corruption than among highly corrupt ones. Individual characteristics such as education, age, or employment status, and firm‐level characteristics such as the number of competitors are also found to influence corruption perceptions holding experience constant.
    March 04, 2014   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12037   open full text
  • Inequality, Community Participation, and the Allocation of Collective Profits.
    Jennifer Alix‐Garcia, Benjamin Cerf Harris.
    Economics and Politics. February 24, 2014
    This study analyzes the relationship between inequality in land holdings and participation in community assemblies in Mexican villages. Our identification strategy is unique in that it exploits contemporaneously exogenous variation in inequality due to historic and legal restrictions on the subdivision and sale of parcels in the communities we study. The data show that at an aggregate level, villages with more inequality in land holdings have lower participation rates. Individuals with greater land holdings relative to other community members are more likely to participate. This relationship intensifies with increasing inequality. We also consider how participation influences the allocation of public funds. We find greater investment in public goods where inequality is lower and participation higher. Finally, we demonstrate that those who are less likely to attend meetings are also less likely to receive government subsidies and benefits.
    February 24, 2014   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12035   open full text
  • Democratic Accountability, Regulation and Inward Investment Policy.
    Michael T. Dorsch, Fergal McCann, Eoin F. McGuirk.
    Economics and Politics. February 15, 2014
    We examine the effect of domestic political accountability on leaders' strategies for attracting foreign direct investment to less developed countries. We consider two policy areas: the tax burden imposed on firms and the regulatory environment in which they operate. We find that democratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lower tax rates to foreign investors, whereas autocratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lax regulation. This result is driven by the greater elasticity of the political survival function to environmental and labor regulations in more democratic countries. Analyses of firm‐level survey data confirm our main theoretical conclusions.
    February 15, 2014   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12034   open full text
  • The Importance of Bureaucratic Hierarchy: Conflicting Preferences, Incomplete Control, and Policy Outcomes.
    Jinhee Jo, Lawrence S. Rothenberg.
    Economics and Politics. January 11, 2014
    Existing theories of legislative delegation feature spatial models in which a principal chooses a single agent to whom to delegate authority. In the canonical model, the ally principle holds – the principal picks the ideologically closest agent. However, elected politicians typically decide whether to delegate not to an individual but to an institution, which consists of many individuals with differing preferences. To improve on existing work, we model delegation with bureaucratic hierarchy. Our results show that hierarchy is sufficient to undercut the ally principle. Indeed, capturing the logic of delegation and its results requires incorporating agency structure, especially the costs of an agency head controlling her subordinates resulting in incomplete control, as different structures are associated with different policy outcomes even when the same people constitute a bureaucracy. We also demonstrate that integrating hierarchy has important implications for a wide range of considerations, such as agency structural choice and the measurement of agency ideal points.
    January 11, 2014   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12032   open full text
  • Does Saying ‘Yes’ to Capital Inflows Necessarily Mean Good Business? the Effect of Antimoney Laundering Regulations in the Latin American and the Caribbean Economies.
    María Elisa Farías, Monica Arruda Almeida.
    Economics and Politics. November 30, 2013
    This study explores the level of compliance and the subsequent economic performance of states in the context of anti‐money laundering (AML) regulations. Following Holmstrom and Tirole (1997) and Obstfeld and Rogoff (1998), we examine why countries admit illicit flows of money and the economic costs of these transactions. Analyzing 36 Latin American and Caribbean jurisdictions between 1960 and 2010, we find that poor institutional performance by a jurisdiction (AML ratings, blacklists with non‐cooperator countries, and corruption indicators) affects negatively the investment ratio to GDP, the FDI ratio to GDP, and financial development (ratio of credit markets to GDP). These findings are novel in the literature, offering an important contribution to the debate on financial regulatory convergence.
    November 30, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12028   open full text
  • Fixed exchange rates, independent central banks and price stability in postcommunist countries: Conservatism and credibility.
    Cristina Bodea.
    Economics and Politics. November 27, 2013
    Central bank independence (CBI) and fixed exchange rates are used by governments to achieve stable prices. This article analyzes the mechanisms through which the two monetary institutions could work: Indirectly via a disciplinary effect on money growth rates or via an additional credibility effect on inflation expectations and the cost of capital. I further explain how both discipline and credibility are affected by the distinct flaws of independent central banks and fixed exchange rates: central banks lack transparency and fixed exchange rates take many shapes and are routinely devalued. The argument is tested with quarterly data from postcommunist countries for years 1991 to 2007. The findings show a strong disciplinary effect of monetary institutions on rates of M2 change and an effect on inflation controlling for money growth, but credibility does not extend to lower real short‐term market interest rates. Political institutions do condition the effect of central bank independence, while the types of fixed exchange rates affect money growth rates and inflation to different degrees.
    November 27, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12030   open full text
  • Education, Rent seeking and the Curse of Natural Resources.
    Waqar Ahmed Wadho.
    Economics and Politics. November 27, 2013
    Empirical evidence suggests that natural resources breed corruption and reduce educational attainments, dampening economic growth. The theoretical literature has treated these two channels separately, with natural resources affecting growth either through human capital or corruption. In this article, we argue that education and corruption are jointly determined and depend on the endowment of natural resources. Natural resources affect the incentives to invest in education and rent seeking that in turn affect growth. Whether natural resources stimulate growth or induce a poverty‐trap crucially depends on inequality in access to education and political participation, as well as on the cost of political participation. For lower inequality and higher cost of political participation, a high‐growth and a poverty‐trap equilibrium coexist even with abundant natural resources.
    November 27, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12029   open full text
  • The Political Economy of Domestic Labor Mobility: Specific Factors, Landowners, and Education.
    Andrew Pennock.
    Economics and Politics. November 26, 2013
    Political actors today seek to influence labor mobility via education just as they have for centuries. Landowners in countries with large industrial sectors attempt to suppress education levels to maintain their labor supply, as educated workers are able to move into industrial work more easily than uneducated workers. However, the relationship between large landowners and education is more complex than has been previously theorized. Using a specific‐factors model, I show that large landowners in countries with little economic development actually have an incentive to increase education levels. They realize the returns of an educated workforce without fearing their mobility because competing industrial opportunities for the workers do not exist. In either case, the ability of landowners to achieve their political goals is a function of their ability to overcome the collective action problem and effectively influence the state's provision of education. Powerful landowners successfully deny education in industrialized countries and provide it in agricultural countries. An analysis of panel data covering 77 countries from 1975 to 2000 confirms the conditional nature of the relationship.
    November 26, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12025   open full text
  • Lobbying for Education in a Two‐Sector Model.
    Debora Di Gioacchino, Paola Profeta.
    Economics and Politics. November 20, 2013
    Firms specialized in two different sectors lobby to induce the government to subsidize the type of education complementary to their production. Lobbying is endogenous. We show that, if lobbying is not costly, both sectors will lobby in equilibrium and the education policy will induce the same skill composition that would be chosen by the social planner. However, if lobbying is costly and there is sufficient asymmetry between the sectors, only one sector will exert pressure on the policy‐maker in the attempt to direct resources toward the type of education required by its production. Which sector will engage in lobbying depends on relative size, productivity, and price. We also provide some preliminary evidence that lobbying activity by firms may influence the production of skills needed by those firms.
    November 20, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12031   open full text
  • Women, Muslim Immigrants, and Economic Integration in France.
    Claire L. Adida, David D. Laitin, Marie‐Anne Valfort.
    Economics and Politics. October 28, 2013
    Muslim immigrants to Europe display distinctive attitudes toward women in a wide range of survey data. This study investigates whether this translates into distinctive behavior. Relying on a dictator game in France and an identification strategy that isolates the effect of religion from typical confounds such as race, we compare the donations of matched Christian and Muslim immigrants and rooted French to in‐group and out‐group men vs. women. Our results indicate that Muslim immigrant participants deviate from Christian immigrant and rooted French participants in their behavior toward women: while the latter favor women over men, Muslim immigrants favor men over women.
    October 28, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12027   open full text
  • More Than You Can Handle: Decentralization and Spending Ability of Peruvian Municipalities.
    Norman V. Loayza, Jamele Rigolini, Oscar Calvo‐González.
    Economics and Politics. October 23, 2013
    This article builds on a comprehensive dataset for Peru that merges municipal fiscal accounts with information about municipalities’ characteristics such as population, poverty, education, and local politics to analyze the leading factors affecting the ability of municipalities to execute the allocated budget. According to the existing literature and the Peruvian context, we divide these factors into four categories: the budget size and allocation process; local capacity; local needs; and political economy constraints. While we do find that all four factors affect decentralization, the largest determinant of spending ability is the adequacy of the budget with respect to local capacity. The results confirm the need for decentralization to be implemented gradually over time in parallel with strong capacity building efforts.
    October 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12026   open full text
  • A Strategic Approach to Offshoring.
    Reza Oladi, Hamid Beladi, John Gilbert.
    Economics and Politics. October 01, 2013
    In the context of a simple model of strategic offshoring, we investigate the reasons why firms may simultaneously source fragments domestically and internationally. We explore the impacts of offshoring on the production pattern of finished goods, tradable fragment prices, and welfare in a partial equilibrium context. The policy implications of attempts to restrict offshoring are also considered. The analysis shows that an offshoring equilibrium may exist in the absence of comparative advantage in fragments, that offshoring is welfare improving if the costs are sufficiently small, and that attempts (by both countries) to prevent offshoring may paradoxically lower both fragment use and price.
    October 01, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12023   open full text
  • Seniority and Incumbency in Legislatures.
    Abhinay Muthoo, Kenneth A. Shepsle.
    Economics and Politics. October 01, 2013
    In this article, we elaborate on a strategic view of institutional features. Our focus is on seniority, though we note that this general approach may also be deployed to understand other aspects of institutional arrangements. We have taken the initial game‐theoretic model of seniority of McKelvey and Riezman (), simplified it in order to characterize its fundamental implications, generalized these results in several ways, and extended the model by deriving additional implications. The broad messages of our article, articulated by McKelvey and Riezman as well, are two. First, the endogenous choice of institutional features like seniority by self‐governing groups is strategic. While the fine‐grained ways of doing things in an institutional context surely serve internal functional objectives, these are not the only objectives. Agents making choices on how to govern themselves have private motivations – in the case of elected politicians they often revolve around re‐election. This leads to our second broad message. The institutions through which self‐governing groups conduct their business do not exist in a vacuum. They are embedded in a broader context. Those offering functional explanations for various institutional features overlook this. Particular institutional arrangements have effects outside the governance institution itself. These effects, in principle, could be accidental by‐products. Our strategic approach, however, argues that they may well be the primary reasons for a practice being instituted.
    October 01, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12024   open full text
  • The Endurance and Eclipse of the Controlled Vote: A Formal Model of Vote Brokerage Under the Secret Ballot.
    Daniel W. Gingerich, Luis Fernando Medina.
    Economics and Politics. July 23, 2013
    Throughout much of mankind's experience with elections, vote brokers – local elites who direct the voting decisions of a subset of the electorate – have been able to make or break political careers. In various polities, brokers have thrived in spite of the secret ballot, a surprising outcome given that vote secrecy would ostensibly allow citizens to pocket the inducements offered by such individuals and vote their consciences anyway. To address this puzzle, we develop a framework for understanding the persistence and demise of vote brokerage under the secret ballot. In our model, a broker contracts with voters using an outcome contingent contract: some fixed benefit is promised to all voters sharing one of several observable profiles should the broker's candidate win the election. Using this framework, we demonstrate that the existence of brokerage depends on the size of the electorate contained within the jurisdiction controlled by the broker, with large jurisdiction sizes tending to drive brokerage out of existence. Moreover, we detail the manner in which the strategies employed by brokers depend on their economic power, the size of social groups, and ideological polarization. Empirical evidence from Minas Gerais, Brazil is used to evaluate the performance of the model.
    July 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12020   open full text
  • State‐owned Enterprises, Inequality, and Political Ideology.
    Veysel Avsar, Cem Karayalcin, Mehmet Ali Ulubasoglu.
    Economics and Politics. July 03, 2013
    State‐owned enterprises continue to play a considerable role in many economies. In this study we empirically investigate the connections between these enterprises and inequality as mediated through political ideology. Using cross‐country data on the relative size of the state‐owned enterprise sector, we find strong empirical support for an inverted U‐shaped relationship between its size and income inequality. We also find strong evidence that left‐wing (vis‐a‐vis right‐wing) governments are associated with a larger state‐owned enterprise sector in countries with higher inequality. This result is robust to using cross‐sectional vs. panel data, different identification strategies, and various controls.
    July 03, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12017   open full text
  • The Impact of Private Interest Contributions on RPS Adoption.
    Steffen Jenner, Lotte Ovaere, Stephan Schindele.
    Economics and Politics. June 27, 2013
    In the last two decades, many U.S. states introduced policies to promote electricity generation from renewable energy sources (RES‐E). Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) are considered to be the key RES‐E policy tool to date. This article tackles the question on why some state legislators were front‐running the trend of RPS implementation whereas others adopted policies just recently, and why others have not adopted them at all. We compile data on financial contributions of conventional energy interest groups (CEI) and renewable energy interest groups (REI) to state‐level policy‐makers between 1998 and 2010. By means of hazard and tobit regressions, we test the effect of these financial contributions on the probability of RPS adoption and on RPS stringency. The article provides evidence in favor of interest group theory. First, CEI have donated more to state‐level legislators affiliated with the Republican Party than to Democrats while contributions from REI went largely to the latter. Second, there are statistically significant links between the likelihood of RPS adoption and private interest contributions. Contributions from CEI have a negative effect on the likelihood of RPS adoption whereas REI contributions have a positive effect.
    June 27, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12018   open full text
  • Financial Liberalization and Institutional Development.
    Markus Alzer, Ramin Dadasov.
    Economics and Politics. June 27, 2013
    This study empirically analyzes the effects of de jure financial openness on institutional quality as captured by indicators on investment risk, corruption level, impartiality of judiciary system, and the effectiveness of bureaucracy. We show that a higher degree of financial openness improves institutional quality mainly by reducing investment risks. We also study the effect of a single liberalization reform. Again, we find evidence for the beneficial impact of financial liberalization with the exception of corruption. We additionally show that the benign consequences of financial opening for the institutional development are even larger if financial liberalization is supported by simultaneous political liberalization, while financial deregulation in former socialist countries tends to worsen institutional quality.
    June 27, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12019   open full text
  • Institutions, Lobbying, and Economic Performance.
    Jac C. Heckelman, Bonnie Wilson.
    Economics and Politics. June 27, 2013
    We investigate whether the impact of institutions depends not just on their current state but also on how they came to be. In particular, we hypothesize that while economic freedom that emerges spontaneously may be growth promoting, economic freedom that emerges as a result of costly lobbying efforts may be less fruitful. In an extreme case, costly lobbying efforts may even negate the growth‐enhancing effect of economic freedom. To the extent that lobbying efforts constitute an opportunity cost of resources diverted away from investment and production, our hypothesis also implies that greater the opportunity cost of lobbying, the more efficient is the institutional environment. Panel data analysis reveals the expected positive relation between economic freedom and growth, and consistent with our hypothesis, the findings indicate that the impact of economic freedom on growth does indeed diminish as lobbying efforts increase. In addition, we find that lobbying is more harmful to growth at greater levels of economic freedom.
    June 27, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12016   open full text
  • Private Property Rights, Investment Patterns, and Asset Structure.
    Zhiyong An.
    Economics and Politics. June 27, 2013
    The right to private property was first written into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China in March 2004. This study takes advantage of the 2004 amendment and uses a difference‐in‐differences approach to empirically test the impact of private property rights security on investment patterns and thereby on asset structure. Employing the Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database from 2000 to 2007 to implement the analysis, we find that private property rights security has not only led enterprises to boost investment in both fixed assets and intangible assets but also induced them to allocate available resources more towards intangible assets. We address two potential concerns about our empirical design.
    June 27, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12021   open full text
  • Political Proximity and International Trade.
    C. Umana Dajud.
    Economics and Politics. June 07, 2013
    The impact of politics on international trade has often been excluded by economists both from theoretical and empirical analysis. In this study, we examine empirically the impact of politics on trade flows. Results indicate that political differences have an impact on bilateral trade that is robust to a wide range of econometric specifications. However, the impact of political differences on trade flows vanishes when the costs of reducing the latter become fairly important.
    June 07, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12013   open full text
  • Government Partisanship and Property Rights: Cross‐Country Firm‐Level Evidence.
    Stephen Weymouth, J. Lawrence Broz.
    Economics and Politics. June 06, 2013
    Property rights are essential to economic development but vary with the political environment. We develop and test the claim that government partisanship influences the security of business firms' property rights: the perceived security of property rights increases when right‐wing parties take power and declines with the election of left‐leaning parties. Unlike research that uses country‐level aggregates to draw inferences about the determinants of secure property rights, we analyze survey responses of over 7,400 firm owners from 73 countries using a novel difference‐in‐differences approach. We find that the political partisanship of the government in power strongly affects individual perceptions of property rights: firm owners are more likely to perceive that their property rights are secure under right‐leaning governments. Our results are robust to firm‐ and country‐level economic performance as well as controls for political institutions that might induce more stability to property rights, such as the number of checks and balances (veto players) in a system. Overall, our results indicate that business owners' beliefs about the security of property rights are highly responsive to changes in government partisanship.
    June 06, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12011   open full text
  • Sharing the Blame? Local Electoral Accountability and Centralized School Finance in California.
    Marcelin Joanis.
    Economics and Politics. June 06, 2013
    Although local electoral accountability should be stronger when responsibilities are clearly assigned to local governments, the involvement of higher tiers of government is often associated with policies specifically designed to improve local accountability. This article investigates the impact of centralization on local electoral accountability in the context of California's school finance system. Results show that voters are responsive to differences in dropout rates and pupil–teacher ratios, at least in some contexts, and that local electoral accountability is affected by a district's degree of centralization. Dropout rate regressions reveal that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 appears to have sharpened local electoral accountability.
    June 06, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12015   open full text
  • The Origin of Parties: The United States Congress in 1789–1797 as a Test Case.
    Jon X. Eguia.
    Economics and Politics. June 05, 2013
    Why do political parties form? I test a theory of party formation in which legislators coalesce into voting blocs to coordinate their votes and influence policy outcomes. I use historical roll‐call data from the United States Congress. During the First and Second Congresses (1789–1793), there were no organized political parties. By the Fourth Congress (1795–1797), the Federalist and Republican parties shaped Congress. The analysis uses the Roll‐call data from the first two Congresses to predict which legislators will coalesce into parties in future Congresses. I compare this prediction with the parties that eventually emerged in the House and in the Senate. I find strong support for the theory in the Senate, and favorable but less significant results in the House.
    June 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12014   open full text
  • Why Do Small States Receive More Federal Money? U.S. Senate Representation and the Allocation of Federal Budget.
    Valentino Larcinese, Leonzio Rizzo, Cecilia Testa.
    Economics and Politics. June 03, 2013
    Empirical research on the geographic distribution of U.S. federal spending shows that small states receive disproportionately more dollars per capita. This evidence, often regarded as the consequence of Senate malapportionment, in reality conflates the effects of state population size with that of state population growth. Analyzing outlays for the period 1978–2002, this study shows that properly controlling for population dynamics provides more reasonable estimates of small‐state advantage and solves a number of puzzling peculiarities of previous research. We also show that states with fast‐growing population loose federal spending to the advantage of slow‐growing ones independently of whether they are large or small. The two population effects vary substantially across spending programs. Small states enjoy some advantage in defense spending, whereas fast‐growing ones are penalized in the allocation of federal grants, particularly those administered by formulas limiting budgetary adjustments. Hence, a large part of the inverse relationship between spending and population appears to be driven by mechanisms of budgetary inertia, which are compatible with incrementalist theories of budget allocation.
    June 03, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12012   open full text
  • The Political Economy of State Government Subsidy Adoption: The Case of Ethanol.
    Mark Skidmore, Chad Cotti, James Alm.
    Economics and Politics. March 04, 2013
    In this study, we examine the factors that determine the adoption of state economic development incentives in the ethanol industry. We compile data on the implementation dates for subsidies/tax credits for all states for the years 1984–2007, a period that covers the complete emergence of the biofuel industry in the United States and that was characterized by the passage of numerous state‐level subsidies and tax breaks aimed at increasing ethanol production. Using Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, we find that states are more likely to adopt ethanol subsidies when corn production is high, when corn prices are low and gasoline prices are high, when a state is affiliated with the National Corn Growers Association, when a check‐off is present, when a state has a high environmental score, and when state government is under the control of Democrats.
    March 04, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12008   open full text
  • Fragmented Legislatures and the Budget: Analyzing Presidential Democracies.
    Charles R. Hankla.
    Economics and Politics. February 26, 2013
    What impact does party fragmentation have on the likelihood of democracies to run a fiscal deficit? Past research is almost unanimous in finding that as the number of parties in a country's legislature or government grows, so does its probability of overspending. However, this finding is based largely on parliamentary systems, and there is no reason to believe that it should hold when executives are independent. In this article, I develop a theory for the impact of legislative fragmentation on budgetary politics in presidential democracies. I argue that unified presidential systems should tend most toward fiscal solvency but that increasing fragmentation should actually facilitate budget balancing when government is divided. The logic is that presidents, who are likely to prefer balanced budgets due to their broad constituencies, will be better able to craft acceptable governing coalitions from divided legislatures than from ones controlled by a single opposing party. They will also be better able to circumvent such fragmented legislatures should a coalition prove impossible. I test these propositions quantitatively in all presidential democracies from 1976 to 2007. The results provide support for the theory and highlight the contrasting impact of legislative fragmentation on public policy in presidential vs. parliamentary systems.
    February 26, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12010   open full text
  • Does the EU Financing System Contribute to Shadow Economic Activity?
    Helmut Herwartz, Bernd Theilen.
    Economics and Politics. February 21, 2013
    Financial contributions to the EU budget depend basically on official GDP. This means that countries with higher shadow economic activity contribute less than they should contribute in a system based on actual GDP and therefore could reduce their incentive to fight against such activities. In this paper we investigate if the EU financing system really has an influence on the intensity with which governments in EU member states fight against shadow economic activity. We find that the EU net contributors significantly fight more intensively against shadow economic activity while EU net receivers fight less. As a result, shadow economic activity is higher in net receiver and lower in net contributor countries than it were in comparison with a scenario of nationally balanced EU funding. Quantitatively and averaged over the time period 2001–2007, the diagnosed effect amounts to a stimulation of hidden economic activity by almost 10% for particular economies.
    February 21, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12007   open full text
  • Biofuel Subsidies and International Trade.
    Subhayu Bandyopadhyay, Sumon Bhaumik, Howard J. Wall.
    Economics and Politics. February 21, 2013
    This paper explores optimal biofuel subsidies in a general equilibrium trade model. The focus is on the production of biofuels such as corn‐based ethanol, which diverts corn from use as food. In the small‐country case, when the tax on crude is not available as a policy option, a second‐best biofuel subsidy may or may not be positive. In the large‐country case, the twin objectives of pollution reduction and terms‐of‐trade improvement justify a combination of crude tax and biofuel subsidy for the food exporter. Finally, we show that when both nations engage in biofuel policies, the terms‐of‐trade effects encourage the Nash equilibrium subsidy to be positive (negative) for the food exporting (importing) nation.
    February 21, 2013   doi: 10.1111/ecpo.12009   open full text