Pressures to increase public expenditure and patterns of procyclical expenditure

This paper draws on the literature that explains why governments spend procyclically, to predict the pattern of cyclical expenditure across government budgets. Procyclical expenditure increases at a faster rate than income in economic upturns and falls at a faster rate in recessions. The more politicians indulge pressures to increase expenditure in an economic upturn, the more they find it difficult to sustain expenditure in a recession. In this paper, differences in politicians' willingness to increase expenditure in an economic upturn are relevant when predicting patterns of cyclical expenditure across budgets. Predictions are tested with reference to expenditures from government budgets in 23 OECD countries (over the period 1995-2006). Central government capital expenditure and sub-central government expenditure are systematically more procyclical than expenditures from other budgets

Fiscal illusion and cyclical government expenditure: State government expenditure in the United States

© 2016 Scottish Economic Society. A well-established literature argues that fiscal illusion increases the level of government expenditure. This article focuses on the proposition that fiscal illusion also influences the cyclicality of government expenditure. Predictions are formed with reference to government reliance on high income elasticities of indirect tax revenues and on intergovernmental transfers. Predictions are tested with reference to the expenditures of 36 states in the United States from 1980 to 2000. Government expenditures are more likely to be procyclical when citizens systematically underestimate the cost of taxation

Determinants of International Student Migration

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This paper considers what factors determine the migration of overseas students, when students cross borders for higher education. We utilise a gravity model for international student mobility and derive estimates for a sample of 18 countries of destination and 38 countries of origin over the period 2005-11. Our results confirm that geographical distance and the presence of a common language are powerful in explaining bilateral student flows. Our most interesting finding is that time zone differences have a statistically significant and economically large effect in determining international student flows. Copyrigh

'Leaning against an open door' : ideology and the cyclicality of public expenditure

When is government expenditure likely to be procyclical? While economists tend to anticipate counter-cyclical expenditure, recent studies report procyclical expenditure. This paper explores the impact of political ideology on the cyclicality of government expenditure. Predictions are tested with reference to government expenditure in the USA between 1950 and 2008. The likelihood of procyclical expenditure increases if groups that press for increased public expenditure are ‘... leaning against an open door’

The physical basis for Parrondo's games

Several authors have implied that the original inspiration for Parrondo's games was a physical system called a ``flashing Brownian ratchet''. The relationship seems to be intuitively clear but, surprisingly, has not yet been established with rigor. In this paper, we apply standard finite-difference methods of numerical analysis to the Fokker-Planck equation. We derive a set of finite difference equations and show that they have the same form as Parrondo's games. Parrondo's games, are in effect, a particular way of sampling a Fokker-Planck equation. Physical Brownian ratchets have been constructed and have worked. It is hoped that the finite element method presented here will be useful in the simulation and design of flashing Brownian ratchets.Comment: 10 pages and 2 figure

Optimizing genetic algorithm strategies for evolving networks

This paper explores the use of genetic algorithms for the design of networks, where the demands on the network fluctuate in time. For varying network constraints, we find the best network using the standard genetic algorithm operators such as inversion, mutation and crossover. We also examine how the choice of genetic algorithm operators affects the quality of the best network found. Such networks typically contain redundancy in servers, where several servers perform the same task and pleiotropy, where servers perform multiple tasks. We explore this trade-off between pleiotropy versus redundancy on the cost versus reliability as a measure of the quality of the network.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

On Being the Editor of AJS

Andrew Abbott, editor of the American Journal of Sociology from 2000 to 2016, explains in this interview the role of an editor, discusses criticisms against flagship journals, relativizes the influence of editors, praises colleagues participating in the peer review process and offers a look at the backstage of academic publishing