Competing risks analysis and deposit insurance governance convergence

Why do policies often seem to converge across countries at the same time? This question has been studied extensively in the diffusion literature. However, past research has not examined complex choice environments, especially where there are many alternatives. My paper aims to fill this gap in the literature. I show how Fine and Gray Competing Risks Event History Analysis can be used to tease apart the causes of policy convergence. I apply the method to an examination of the reasons why, from the mid-1990s to 2007, many countries created independent deposit insurers. I find an interaction between international recommendations and regional peers’ choices, particularly in the European Union. However, convergence appears to slow under the particular conditions of a banking crisis, regardless of how well independence was promoted. Possibly due to electoral incentives democracies seem to have been more likely to create independent insurers. Ultimately, I demonstrate how competing risks analysis can help enable future research on policy choices, complementing methods previously applied in political economy.international policy diffusion, competing risks analysis, delegation, banking crisis, IMF, deposit insurance

Interpreting Fiscal Accounting Rules in the European Union

In the European Union, the creation of public debt statistics starts with member state governments’ reports. The EU’s statistical agency–Eurostat–then revises. How do these actors’ incentives shape reported numbers? Governments have incentives to take a more favourable view of often ambiguous accounting rules than Eurostat. Lower debt improves governments’ performance with domestic and external audiences. Eurostat is tasked with monitoring budgets for ‘excessive’ debts. We expect governments to present debt figures that Eurostat then revises upwards. This is more likely when governments have high debts, especially when in the eurozone, and prior to elections. Financial crises heighten the number of policies needing interpretation and both actors have more incentives to shape the numbers. We examine these propositions using Eurostat’s debt revisions. We find debts are revised upwards more for eurozone countries with higher debt levels and years with unscheduled elections. Financial stress strengthens these effects

The return of the British Disease? The post-Brexit credible commitment conundrum

The outcome of Brexit is likely to be less investment because of less policy credibility – regardless of what type of relationship with Europe is agreed. What makes Britain particularly prone to economic policies that are not credible is its parliamentary system, writes Christopher Gandrud and demonstrates how UK investment worked before and after the UK joined the EU. He argues that to avoid going back to the less prosperous years, constitutional reforms will be necessar

simPH: An R package for illustrating estimates from cox proportional hazard models including for interactive and nonlinear effects

The R package simPH provides tools for effectively communicating results from Cox proportional hazard (PH) models, including models with interactive and nonlinear effects. The Cox (PH) model is a popular tool for examining event data. However, previously available computational tools have not made it easy to explore and communicate quantities of interest and associated uncertainty estimated from them. This is especially true when the effects are interactions or nonlinear transformations of continuous variables. These transformations are especially useful with Cox PH models because they can be employed to correctly specifying models that would otherwise violate the nonproportional hazards assumption. Package simPH makes it easy to simulate and then plot quantities of interest for a variety of effects estimated from Cox PH models including interactive effects, nonlinear effects, as well as standard linear effects. Package simPH employs visual weighting in order to effectively communicate estimation uncertainty. There are options to show either the standard central interval of the simulation's distribution or the shortest probability interval - which can be useful for asymmetrically distributed estimates. This paper uses hypothetical and empirical examples to illustrate package simPH’s syntax and capabilities

Knowing the unknowns: financial policymaking in uncertainty

How do policymakers make decisions during financial market uncertainty? I develop a straightforward framework of policymaking in uncertainty. To overcome uncertainty, policymakers gather information using strategies discussed across a variety of political science disciplines. Policymakers need information to be able to make goal-oriented decisions. The information strategies actors choose are conditioned on the uncertainty problems they face. In turn, the information they receive impacts their policy decisions. My three empirical papers investigate what strategies are likely to be chosen in different types of uncertainty and how these choices affect policy decisions. My first paper, co-written with Mícheál O’Keeffe, develops a signaling game that policymakers play when they perceive data uncertainty, i.e. uncertainty about economic fundamentals. The model is supported empirically with analytic narratives of recent crises in Korea and Ireland. My following two papers deal with situations of increasing causal uncertainty, i.e. uncertainty about how actions cause outcomes. In both of these papers I use Multi-state Event History Analysis. I find that when there is high causal uncertainty policymakers tend to use learning strategies that start with international-level policy recommendations. These recommendations are then updated with the experiences of regional peers who have adopted them. Beyond creating and finding evidence for a parsimonious framework of decisionmaking in uncertainty, I make a number of other contributions to political economy. I extend the empirical tools researchers can use to understand decisions in complex choice environments. I provide evidence that making financial bureaucrats “independent" does not ensure positive outcomes. Specifically, it does not guarantee that financial bureaucrats will provide accurate information needed for effective policymaking