Government fragmentation and fiscal deficits: a regression discontinuity approach

Some electoral systems favor strong single-party majority governments, while others the formation of coalitions. Having one or the other is likely to afect economic outcomes in ways that are unintended when the electoral rules are approved. In this paper, we show that government fragmentation has large fscal implications. We also provide results that have a causal interpretation. Using a panel of Spanish municipalities, along with a close-elections regression discontinuity design, we fnd that single-party majorities run budgets with a 1.5% point larger primary surplus than that of coalitions. In addition, we show that lower defcits are driven mainly by single-party majority governments’ capacity to raise more revenues. These fndings are robust to several model specifcations

Los efectos del desajuste educativo sobre el bienestar subjetivo

This paper analyzes the effects of educational mismatch on subjective wellbeing. We study whether a discrepancy exists between the aspirations associated with the level of education acquired by the individuals and the opportunities found in the labor market and, consequently, whether educational mismatch affects their overall levels of subjective wellbeing. Consistent with education generating certain aspirations, we find that educational mismatch has a sizable significant negative impact on life satisfaction for over-educated individuals while the effect is positive for under-educated individuals. We also study whether individuals showing educational mismatch are less satisfied than other workers being adequately educated, within a similar job, since this dissatisfaction could translate into lower performance and productivity. In this case we only find under-education to negatively affect life satisfaction levels

Do actions speak louder than words? Evidence on voter behavior from Madrid Rio Park

In this paper we estimate the electoral gains and the timing of the gains, from the promise to build and the subsequent construction of a large infrastructure project, Madrid Rio Park, which was promised in the 2003 Madrid Mayoral election. We use as a case study the construction of the Madrid Rio Park because its unique circumstances provide us with a quasi experiment that allows us to causally separate the prospective and retrospective behavior of voters regarding electoral pledges. We find that voters behave mostly retrospectively. The retrospective effects are sizable in magnitude: we find that after the Madrid Rio Park was completed voters rewarded the incumbent with an additional three percentage points. Unexpectedly, but interestingly, we find only weak evidence of prospective behavior: voters do not strongly react to the promise to build the infrastructure

Propuestas para un grado de excelencia en derecho en lengua inglesa con orientación comparativa internacional

Se trata de un proyecto de innovación docente interdepartamental promovido por profesores implicados en la enseñanza de asignaturas de Derecho en inglés en la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad Complutense. Supone una reflexión en búsqueda de un posible modelo de excelencia académica para la enseñanza de un Grado de Excelencia en Derecho en lengua inglesa. Se propone la creación de un Grupo de Alto Rendimiento Académico como paso previo para la formación de un Grado Bilingüe con itinerario de especialización en Derecho comparado. Se señala algunas características que podría tener aquel modelo y sus distintas posibilidades

Política económica y mayorías parlamentarias

Esta Tesis pretende averiguar si las propuestas de los partidos políticos españoles en materia económica son racionales y consistentes con su ideología y en segundo lugar si se llevan a cabo una vez en el poder. Y relacionado con lo anterior, cómo afecta el hecho de formar un gobierno minoritario o un gobierno de mayoría absoluta a la capacidad de los partidos de llevar a cabo sus propuestas económicas. Para lograr esos objetivos se ha utilizado como método el estudio estadístico del contenido económico de los programas electorales. Se han seleccionado las promesas electorales de contenido económico de los programas electorales de los partidos españoles. Cada promesa se ha codificado en función de una serie de variables que permiten conocer el perfil ideológico de la promesa, los medios de actuación requeridos para su cumplimiento y si éste se produjo o no. Posteriormente se han aplicado diversas técnicas estadísticas complementarias para extraer la mayor información posible de la base de datos de promesas electorales. En concreto se han utilizado dos técnicas de análisis multivariante complementarias: el análisis de correspondencias múltiples y el análisis cluster. Estas técnicas permiten identificar los principales objetivos e instrumentos de política económica con que cuentan los partidos políticos españoles y evaluar el grado de eficacia en el logro de esos objetivos. La metodología seguida permite también contrastar diversas hipótesis de alcance general sobre el comportamiento de los partidos basadas en la racionalidad de su actuación, y en concreto en tres ámbitos relacionados: Teoría de Coaliciones Políticas, Teoría Espacial del Comportamiento Político y Teoría del Mandato Electoral

Do coalitions lead to higher fiscal deficits? A regression discontinuity approach

This paper studies the causal effect of the type of government on fiscal deficits in a panel of Spanish Municipalities. We follow a regression discontinuity design using the variation provided by the fact that the probability of a local government to be a single party-majority changes discontinuously when a party obtains the last seat that allows them to have more than fifty per cent of the seats of the municipality council. We find that majority governments run budgets with a surplus two percentage points greater than that of coalition governments

Entry Barriers to Political Markets and Strategic Voting

Strategic voting has been extensively studied in mass elections. Many empirical papers that estimate strategic voting capture voter�s incentives to behave strategically with variables that describe constituency characteristics in the previous election. The use of lagged variables is potentially problematic as they do not reflect constituency incentives at the time voting decisions are made and also are likely to be correlated with current error terms, biasing the estimates. In this paper we suggest a new measure of strategic incentives suitable for proportional representation systems that avoids some of the problems associated with lagged variables. We employ the new measure to examine the extent of strategic behavior in the 2008 Spanish general election and find that it was around 2.4 per cent of the votes cast. We argue that this estimate is a conservative one as we control for elite mobilization in the constituencies, which is unusual in the literature on strategic voting that uses regression based methods