MPs for Sale? Estimating Returns to Office in Post-War British Politics

While the role of money in policymaking is a central question in political economy research, surprisingly little attention has been given to the rents politicians actually derive from politics. We use both matching and a regression discontinuity design to analyze an original dataset on the estates of recently deceased British politicians. We find that serving in Parliament roughly doubled the wealth at death of Conservative MPs but had no discernible effect on the wealth of Labour MPs. We argue that Conservative MPs profited from office in a lax regulatory environment by using their political positions to obtain outside work as directors, consultants, and lobbyists, both while in office and after retirement. Our results are consistent with anecdotal evidence on MPs' outside financial dealings but suggest that the magnitude of Conservatives' financial gains from office was larger than has been appreciated.British Politics, returns to office, rents from office, political economy, money and politics, regression discontinuity

Opium for the Masses: How Foreign Free Media Can Stabilize Authoritarian Regimes

A common claim in the democratization literature is that foreign free media undermine authoritarian rule. No reliable micro-level evidence on this topic exists, however, since independent survey research is rarely possible in authoritarian regimes and self-selection into media consumption complicates causal inferences. In this case study of the impact of West German television on political attitudes in communist East Germany, we address these problems by making use of previously secret survey data and a natural experiment. While most East Germans were able to tune in to West German broadcasts, some of them were cut off from West German television due to East Germany's topography. We exploit this plausibly exogenous variation to estimate the impact of West German television on East Germans' political attitudes using instrumental variable estimators. Contrary to conventional wisdom, East Germans who watched West German television were more satisfied with life in East Germany and the communist regime. To explain this surprising finding, we demonstrate that West German television's role in transmitting political information not available in the state-controlled communist media was insignificant and that television primarily served as a means of entertainment for East Germans. Archival material on the reaction of the East German regime to the availability of West German television corroborates our argument.instrumental variables; causal inference; local average response function; media effects; East Germany; democratization

Can Domestic Institutions Explain Exchange Rate Regime Choice? The Political Economy of Monetary Institutions Reconsidered

Recent articles in International Organization and elsewhere have explored the role of domestic institutions in shaping exchange rate regime choice. These articles use some variation on the information reported by governments to the International Monetary Fund as their dependent variable. Even more recently, new data have become available that reflect actual (de facto) rather than declaratory (de jure) policies with respect to exchange rate regimes. The findings of the domestic institutionalists are significantly weakened, and in some cases reversed, when this more appropriate measure is used to test their claims. These tests cast doubt on whether a domestic institutional focus is the most fruitful way to study exchange rate regimes.Exchange rate choiche, Political Economy of Monetary Institutions

Learning to Love Globalization? Education and Individual Attitudes Toward International Trade

Recent studies of public attitudes toward trade have converged upon one central finding: support for trade restrictions is highest among respondents with the lowest levels of education. This has been interpreted as strong support for the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, the classic economic treatment of the income effects of trade which predicts that trade openness benefits those owning factors of production with which their economy is relatively well endowed (those with skills in the advanced economies) while hurting others (low skilled workers). We re- examine the available survey data, showing that the impact of education on attitudes toward trade is almost identical among respondents in the active labor force and those who are not (even those who are retired). We also find that, while individuals with college-level educations are far more likely to favor trade openness than others, other types of education have no significant effects on attitudes, and some actually reduce the support for trade, even though they clearly contribute to skill acquisition. Combined, these results strongly suggest that the effects of education on individual trade preferences are not primarily a product of distributional concerns linked to job skills. We suggest that exposure to economic ideas and information among college-educated individuals plays a key role in shaping attitudes toward trade and globalization. This is not to say that distributional issues are not important in shaping attitudes toward trade – just that they are not clearly manifest in the simple, broad association between education levels and support for free trade.International Trade, Trade Preferences, Stolper-Samuelson, Education Effects

Incumbency Effects in German and British Elections: A Quasi- Experimental Approach

Following the recent turn towards quasi-experimental approaches in the US literature on the incumbency advantage (Lee, 2001; Lee, forthcoming), we employ a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to identify the causal effects of party incumbency in British and German post-World War II elections. The RDD framework exploits the randomized variation in incumbency status that occurs when a district race is close. Based on the assumption that parties do not exert perfect control over their observed vote shares, incumbents that barely won a race should be similar in their distribution of observed and unobserved confounders to non-incumbents that barely lost. This provides us with a naturally occurring counterfactual exploitable for causal inference under a weaker set of assumptions than conventional regression designs commonly used in the incumbency literature. In both British and German federal elections, we find that party incumbency has a signifcant positive impact on vote shares and the probability of winning in marginal districts, the sub- population of interest for which incumbency advantage is likely to make a difference. This stands in contrast to previous more ambiguous findings.incumbency advantage, quasi-experiment, Germany, Great Britain, elections, causal inference

Educated Preferences: Explaining Attitudes Toward Immigration in Europe

Recent studies of individual attitudes toward immigration emphasize concerns about labor market competition as a potent source of anti- immigrant sentiment, in particular among less-educated or less-skilled citizens who fear being forced to compete for jobs with low-skilled immigrants willing to work for much lower wages. We examine new data on attitudes toward immigration available from the 2003 European Social Survey. In contrast to predictions based upon conventional arguments about labor market competition, which anticipate that individuals will oppose immigration of workers with similar skills to their own, but support immigration of workers with different skill levels, we find that people with higher levels of education and occupational skills are more likely to favor immigration regardless of the skill attributes of the immigrants in question. Across Europe, higher education and higher skills mean more support for all types of immigrants. These relationships are almost identical among individuals in the labor force (i.e., those competing for jobs) and those not in the labor force. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, then, the connection between the education or skill levels of individuals and views about immigration appears to have very little, if anything, to do with fears about labor market competition. This finding is consistent with extensive economic research showing that the income and employment effects of immigration in European economies are actually very small. We find that a large component of the effect of education on attitudes toward immigrants can be accounted for by differences among individuals in cultural values and beliefs. More educated respondents are significantly less racist and place greater value on cultural diversity; they are also more likely to believe that immigration generates benefits for the host economy as a whole. Together, these factors account for around 65% of the estimated effect of education on support for immigration.Immigration Preferences, Immigration Attitudes, Trade Preferences, Factor-Proportion Model, Education Effects, Skill Effects

Combining Outcome-Based and Preference-Based Matching: A Constrained Priority Mechanism

We introduce a constrained priority mechanism that combines outcome-based matching from machine-learning with preference-based allocation schemes common in market design. Using real-world data, we illustrate how our mechanism could be applied to the assignment of refugee families to host country locations, and kindergarteners to schools. Our mechanism allows a planner to first specify a threshold $\bar g$ for the minimum acceptable average outcome score that should be achieved by the assignment. In the refugee matching context, this score corresponds to the predicted probability of employment, while in the student assignment context it corresponds to standardized test scores. The mechanism is a priority mechanism that considers both outcomes and preferences by assigning agents (refugee families, students) based on their preferences, but subject to meeting the planner's specified threshold. The mechanism is both strategy-proof and constrained efficient in that it always generates a matching that is not Pareto dominated by any other matching that respects the planner's threshold.Comment: This manuscript has been accepted for publication by Political Analysis and will appear in a revised form subject to peer review and/or input from the journal's editor. End-users of this manuscript may only make use of it for private research and study and may not distribute it furthe

Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control Program

Building on an idea in Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003), this article investigates the application of synthetic control methods to comparative case studies. We discuss the advantages of these methods and apply them to study the effects of Proposition 99, a large-scale tobacco control program that California implemented in 1988. We demonstrate that following Proposition 99 tobacco consumption fell markedly in California relative to a comparable synthetic control region. We estimate that by the year 2000 annual per-capita cigarette sales in California were about 26 packs lower than what they would have been in the absence of Proposition 99. Given that many policy interventions and events of interest in social sciences take place at an aggregate level (countries, regions, cities, etc.) and affect a small number of aggregate units, the potential applicability of synthetic control methods to comparative case studies is very large, especially in situations where traditional regression methods are not appropriate. The methods proposed in this article produce informative inference regardless of the number of available comparison units, the number of available time periods, and whether the data are individual (micro) or aggregate (macro). Software to compute the estimators proposed in this article is available at the authors' web-pages.

Synth: An R Package for Synthetic Control Methods in Comparative Case Studies

The R package Synth implements synthetic control methods for comparative case studies designed to estimate the causal effects of policy interventions and other events of interest (Abadie and Gardeazabal 2003; Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller 2010). These techniques are particularly well-suited to investigate events occurring at an aggregate level (i.e., countries, cities, regions, etc.) and affecting a relatively small number of units. Benefits and features of the Synth package are illustrated using data from Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003), which examined the economic impact of the terrorist conflict in the Basque Country.

Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control Program

Building on an idea in Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003), this article investigates the application of synthetic control methods to comparative case studies. We discuss the advantages of these methods and apply them to study the effects of Proposition 99, a large-scale tobacco control program that California implemented in 1988. We demonstrate that following Proposition 99 tobacco consumption fell markedly in California relative to a comparable synthetic control region. We estimate that by the year 2000 annual per-capita cigarette sales in California were about 26 packs lower than what they would have been in the absence of Proposition 99. Given that many policy interventions and events of interest in social sciences take place at an aggregate level (countries, regions, cities, etc.) and affect a small number of aggregate units, the potential applicability of synthetic control methods to comparative case studies is very large, especially in situations where traditional regression methods are not appropriate. The methods proposed in this article produce informative inference regardless of the number of available comparison units, the number of available time periods, and whether the data are individual (micro) or aggregate (macro). Software to compute the estimators proposed in this article is available at the authors' web-pages.