Defense spending and economic growth in Asian economies: A panel error-correction approach

Hoping to contribute to the existing pool of literature, this paper examines the relationship between military expenditure and economic growth in selected Asian countries for the period 1989 to 2004. Our panel unit root test suggests that real GDP per capita and military expenditures are )1(I processes, while the Larsson et al. (2001) panel cointegration test indicates that economic growth and military expendirues are cointegrated. Finally, applying the panel error-correction technique proposed by Pesaran et al. (1999), our empirical results show that defense spending and economic growth in the Asian countries under the period of study are not related.Military expenditure; Economic growth; Panel unit root; Panel cointegration; Panel error-correction; Asian economies

A Simple Test of the Effect of Interest Rate Defense

High interest rates to defend the exchange rate signal that a government is committed to fixed exchange rates, but may also signal weak fundamentals. We test the effectiveness of the interest rate defense by disaggregating into the effects on future interest rates differentials, expectations of future exchange rates, and risk premia. While much previous empirical work has been inconclusive due to offsetting effects, tests that "disaggregate" the effects provide significant information. Raising overnight interest rates strengthens the exchange rate over the short-term, but also leads to an expected depreciation at a horizon of a year and longer and an increase in the risk premium, consistent with the argument that it also signals weak fundamentals.

The State of the Death Penalty

The death penalty is in decline in America and most death penalty states do not regularly impose death sentences. In 2016 and 2017, states reached modern lows in imposed death sentences, with just thirty-one defendants sentenced to death in 2016 and thirty-nine in 2017, as compared with over three hundred per year in the 1990s. In 2016, only thirteen states imposed death sentences, and in 2017, fourteen did so, although thirty-one states retain the death penalty. What explains this remarkable and quite unexpected trend? In this Article, we present new analysis of state-level legislative changes that might have been expected to impact death sentences. First, life without parole (LWOP) statutes, now enacted in nearly every state, might have been expected to reduce death sentences because they give jurors a non-capital option at trial. Second, legislatures have moved, albeit at varying paces, to comply with the Supreme Court’s holding in Ring v. Arizona, which requires that the final decision in capital sentencing be made not by a judge, but by a jury. Third, states at different times have created state-wide public defender offices to represent capital defendants at trial. In addition, the decline in homicides and homicide rates could be expected to contribute to the decline in state-level death sentencing. We find that contrary to the expectations of many observers, changes in the law such as adoption of LWOP and jury sentencing, did not consistently or significantly impact death sentencing. The decline in homicides and homicide rates is correlated with changes in death sentencing at the state level. However, this Article finds that state provision of capital trial representation is far more strongly and robustly correlated with reduced death sentencing than these other factors. The findings bolster the argument that adequacy of counsel has greater implications for the administration of the death penalty than other legal factors. These findings also have implications beyond the death penalty and they underscore the importance of a structural understanding of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in our system of criminal justice

'Guns and butter'' in U.S. presidential elections

Previous models of the popular vote in U.S. Presidential elections emphasize economic growth and price stability, the role of parties and incumbency, and pre-election expectations for the future. Despite the closeness of the pre-election polls in 2004, formal models instead predict a landslide victory for President Bush. An obvious question is whether this anomaly arises, at least in part, from national security concerns – in particular, the conflict in Iraq. We explore this pre-election anomaly by introducing two opposing electoral forces capturing national security concerns, which for the 2004 election reduces President Bush's predicted vote share. In general, the impact of national security concerns on the vote share of the incumbent (or the incumbent''s party) can be substantial, whether positive, as in the 1944 election during World War II, or negative, as in the 1952 election during the Korean war and the 1968 election during the Vietnam war.

The economic policy of Ronald Reagan

“Reaganomics” is a popular term used to refer to the economic policies of Ronald W. Reagan, the 40th U.S. President (1981–1989), which called for widespread tax cuts, decreased social spending, increased military spending, and the deregulation of domestic markets. In this paper, we analyze American economic policy during the Eigh-ties. After a brief introduction, where a general economic context of that country is shown, we discuss and revise the economic literature about these issues. Afterwards, we present an augmented IS-LM model for Reagan years, estimated bay VAR techniques.Reaganomics; Supply-Side Economics; Laffer curve; tax cuts; twin deficits; IS-LM model; VAR.

Does Government Expenditure on Education Promote Economic Growth? An Econometric Analysis

Education being an important component of human capital has always attracted the interests of economists, researchers and policy makers. Governments across the globe in general and in India in particular are trying to improve the human capital by pumping more investments in education. But the issue that whether improved level of education resulting from more education spending can promote economic growth is still controversial. Some economists and researchers have supported the bi-directional relation between these two variables, while it has also been suggested that it is the economic growth that stimulates governments spend more on education, not the other way. Considering this research issue, the present paper uses linear and non-linear Granger Causality methods to determine the causal relationship between education spending and economic growth in India for the period 1951-2009. The findings of this paper indicate that economic growth affects the level of government spending on education irrespective of any lag effects, but investments in education also tend to influence economic growth after some time-lag. The results are particularly useful in theoretical and empirical research by economists, regulators and policy makers

Footballonomics: The Anatomy of American Football; Evidence from 7 years of NFL game data

Do NFL teams make rational decisions? What factors potentially affect the probability of wining a game in NFL? How can a team come back from a demoralizing interception? In this study we begin by examining the hypothesis of rational coaching, that is, coaching decisions are always rational with respect to the maximization of the expected points scored. We reject this hypothesis by analyzing the decisions made in the past 7 NFL seasons for two particular plays; (i) the Point(s) After Touchdown (PAT) and (ii) the fourth down decisions. Having rejected the rational coaching hypothesis we move on to examine how the detailed game data collected can potentially inform game-day decisions. While NFL teams personnel definitely have an intuition on which factors are crucial for winning a game, in this work we take a data-driven approach and provide quantifiable evidence using a large dataset of NFL games for the 7-year period between 2009 and 2015. In particular, we use a logistic regression model to identify the impact and the corresponding statistical significance of factors such as possession time, number of penalty yards, balance between passing and rushing offense etc. Our results clearly imply that avoiding turnovers is the best strategy for winning a game but turnovers can be overcome with letting the offense on the field for more time. Finally we combine our descriptive model with statistical bootstrap in order to provide a prediction engine for upcoming NFL games. Our evaluations indicate that even by only considering a small number of (straightforward) factors, we can achieve a very good prediction accuracy. In particular, the average accuracy during seasons 2014 and 2015 is approximately 63%. This performance is comparable to the more complicated state-of-the-art prediction systems, while it outperforms expert analysts 60% of the time.Comment: Working study - Papers has been presented at the Machine Learning and Data Mining for Sports Analytics 2016 workshop and accepted at PLOS ON

Stereotype Threat, Self-Affirmation, and Women\u27s Statistics Performance

Stereotype threat (fear of confirming a negative group stereotype that in turn can inhibit academic performance) has been implicated in the gender gap observed in the field of mathematics. Even though stereotype threat depresses women\u27s performance, there has been much research reporting various interventions that ameliorate its negative effects. The current study investigated stereotype threat specifically in statistics--an unexplored area in the research literature --and the alleviating effects of self-affirmation. Participants in three conditions (control, stereotype threat, stereotype threat + affirmation) completed a statistics test. In both stereotype threat conditions participants were given a verbal prime to induce stereotype threat, but only the stereotype threat + affirmation condition was given the affirmation task. The predictions that stereotype threat would depress women\u27s statistics performance and that self-affirmation would minimize stereotype threat were not supported. How a performance expectation relates to a successful stereotype threat prime was discussed as are study limitations and directions for future research