Information Effects and Mass Support for EU Policy Control

The European Union, it is often noted, suffers from a democracy deficit. Most critiques of EU democracy focus on problems of institutional design, such as the distance between the European public and the EU policy-making bodies, or behavioral factors like participation in European Parliament elections. However, democracy also requires an active and informed citizenry. In this paper, we examine the impact of an informed public on support for European-level policy competencies. Is public skepticism of EU authority shaped by a lack of knowledge, or are preferences over the locus of policy control unbiased by information? Our analysis of mass preferences for policy control over 27 issue areas reveals that, in every case, a paucity of knowledge about the EU depresses popular support for European policy jurisdiction. Further analyses show that possessing of information about Europe affects supports for EU control in issue areas clearly involving cross-border or regional problems rather than areas associated with the Single Marke

Economic voting and party positions: when and how wealth matters for the vote

Does the ownership of economic assets matter for how people vote? Drawing on new research, Timothy Hellwig and Ian McAllister find the answer is yes. They argue that by changing their policy positions, parties can shape the influence of asset ownership on voter decisions, if there is sufficient party polarisation

When evaluating a president’s economic performance, voters look across their entire record – not just the recent short term.

How do voters decide? Do they take everything into account that happened over the government’s time in office? Or do they rely only on the recent past? Timothy Hellwig and Dani M. Marinova report that voters, counter to conventional understandings, are not so short-sighted. Their analysis of vote intentions in the run up to the 2012 presidential election reveals that voters are no more accurate in assessing economic performance over the short term compared to the long term. Voters, it turns out, are more misinformed than short-sighted

Responsiveness, If You Can Afford It: Policy Responsiveness in Good and Bad Economic Times

Traditional theories of representation posit that political parties have incentives to respond to public opinion which, in turn, is reflected in public policy as parties come together to form governments. Absent from this chain of representation, however, is the notion of costs. We advance the study of policy responsiveness by arguing that the government’s cost of responding to the electorate is marginal under conditions of strong economic growth but considerable during hard economic times. Cross-national analyses of voters and government welfare policies produces results that are consistent with this expectation. The findings imply that democratic performance, expressed as responsiveness, is conditional on economic growth

Responding to Voters or Responding to Markets? Political Parties and Public Opinion in an Era of Globalization

Conventional wisdom has it that political parties have incentives to respond to public opinion. It is also conventional wisdom that in open economies, policymakers must also “respond” to markets. Research on representation has provided ample evidence in support of the first claim. Research on the political economy of globalization has not, however, provided evidence for the second. This article examines the effects of globalization on how parties respond to voters. We argue that while elections motivate parties to respond to public sentiment, economic interdependence distracts political elites from their electorates and toward market actors, reducing party responsiveness to the mean voter. Evidence from a pair of distinct data sources spanning elections in twenty advanced capitalist democracies from the 1970s to 2010 shows that while parties have incentives to respond to left-right shifts in the mean voter position, they only do so when the national economy is sufficiently sheltered from the world economy. These findings have implications for party strategies, for representation, and for the broader effects of market integration

Why do banks promise to pay par on demand?

We survey the theories of why banks promise to pay par on demand and examine evidence about the conditions under which banks have promised to pay the par value of deposits and banknotes on demand when holding only fractional reserves. The theoretical literature can be broadly divided into four strands: liquidity provision, asymmetric information, legal restrictions, and a medium of exchange. We assume that it is not zero cost to make a promise to redeem a liability at par value on demand. If so, then the conditions in the theories that result in par redemption are possible explanations of why banks promise to pay par on demand. If the explanation based on customers’ demand for liquidity is correct, payment of deposits at par will be promised when banks hold assets that are illiquid in the short run. If the asymmetric-information explanation based on the difficulty of valuing assets is correct, the marketability of banks’ assets determines whether banks promise to pay par. If the legal restrictions explanation of par redemption is correct, banks will not promise to pay par if they are not required to do so. If the transaction explanation is correct, banks will promise to pay par value only if the deposits are used in transactions. After the survey of the theoretical literature, we examine the history of banking in several countries in different eras: fourth-century Athens, medieval Italy, Japan, and free banking and money market mutual funds in the United States. We find that all of the theories can explain some of the observed banking arrangements, and none explain all of them

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good