Political Parties and the Tax Level in the American States: A Regression Discontinuity Design

With a regression discontinuity design I show that the partisan identity of the majority in the state House of Representatives has no causal effect on the tax level. This result goes against recent findings in the political economy literature. In the state Senate I find a significant discontinuity in the tax level, but I also find a discontinuity in the density of the forcing variable - which implies that we can not interpret the discontinuity in the Senate as a causal relation. Another contribution of the paper is to investigate under which conditions slim majorities in the American states (as opposed to close election) are appropriate for a regression discontinuity design.Regression discontinuity design, Democrats, Republicans, divided government, line item veto, tax level.

Political Parties and the Tax Level in the American states: Two Regression Discontinuity Designs

Do parties matter? Yes, but not in the usual way we tend to think of them: big government Democrats and small government Republicans. Our first regression discontinuity design shows that whether the majority in the House of Representatives is Republican or Democratic does not affect the tax level. This surprising result goes against the recent literature in political economy. We then perform another regression discontinuity design in which we find that whether a government is aligned (both the Governor and the majority in the state House belong to the same party) or divided (they belong to different parties) does have an effect on the tax level. Taxes are higher when the government is aligned.Regression discontinuity design, Democrats, Republicans, divided government, line item veto, tax level.

Separation of Powers, Line Item Veto and the Tax Level: Evidence from the American States Draft 1

Line item veto, a feature present in most American States, gives the governor the power to veto single appropriation items from the budget. Its effects on the tax level, however, are still controversial in the empirical and theoretical literature (cf. Holtz-Eakins (1988) and Besley and Case (2003)). Line item veto is mostly a time invariant feature and to asses its effects previous studies have interacted it with political control variables such as a divided government. The endogenity problems that arise from using a political variable to explain a policy variable, however, have not been dealt with in these studies. We use three empirical approaches to tackle the problem and show that line item veto does have a significant negative effect on the tax rate in the States: diffs-in-diffs estimation with instrumental variables (election results in lower offices at the state level), regression discontinuity design, and a dynamic panel. Our prior on its effects comes from adapting the separation of powers model by Persson, Roland and Tabellini (2000) to the American States setup: we add line item veto and an executive. Our model delivers a clear prediction on the tax level, on the amount of public good, and on the importance of group specific transfers.

Budgetary Separation of Powers in the American States and the Tax Level: A Regression Discontinuity Design

Should the Federal government and the remaining American states adopt the line item veto? What are its effects? We use regression discontinuity design to claim that in states with the line item veto, divided government has a causal negative effect on the tax level. By investigating a panel of 38 American states from 1960 to 2006, we estimate a significant discontinuous increase of 13% in the tax level as the party affiliated with the Governor in the state Legislature switches from being the minority party to being the majority. In the nine states that have block veto, we find no significant discontinuity in the tax level. We also find little evidence to suggest that the partisan identity of the majority party in the Legislature has a causal effect on the state tax level.Separation of powers, line item veto, tax level, regression discontinuity, nonparametric

Separation of Powers or Ideology? What Determines the Tax Level? Theory and Evidence from the US States.

We find the surprising result that the tax level is negatively correlated with the size of the Democratic majority in the interval in which the Democrats hold between 50 and 66% of the seats in the state Legislatures. This negative relationship suggests the failure of a simple ideological model that had found some support in the literature, that the main determinant of the tax level is the extent of partisan control over the Legislature. We compare this model with an alternative: a separation-of-powers model in which ideology plays no role in determining the tax level. The driving force of our model is the overlap between the supporters of the Governor and the supporters of the legislative majority. The tax level at first rises and then decreases as the size of the ruling majority increases above 50% of the seats, whether the legislative majority is of the same party as the Governor or from the opposition. This non-monotonic relationship is observed in the data and explained by our model.Separation of powers, divided government, line-item veto, tax level, semiparametric.

Numerical Study of Freezing Droplets

The present work is devoted to the numerical study of freezing processes which have become of major importance in aeronautical engineering. The most common causes of structural damage to aircrafts result from climacteric changes such as lightning strikes and icing of the wing’s leading edges or empennage, which turns the smooth airflow over the wings into turbulent. At subzero temperatures, icing spreads from the leading to the trailing edge, affecting a greater percentage of the wings. As a result there is a need to study and adapt existing physical and mathematical models to achieve a better approximation to real life situations in order to mitigate the occurrence of incidents and accidents involving aircraft for a better continuous airworthiness. The theoretical predictions are compared against experimental data and the numerical analysis is conducted to provide insight into heat and mass transfer processes under several humidity conditions.O seguinte documento centra-se no estudo físico de processos de congelamento que se tornaram de extrema importância em engenharia aeronáutica. As causas mais comuns de danos estruturais em aeronaves devem-se a mudanças climatéricas como relâmpagos e o congelamento do bordo de ataque das asas ou das empenagens. O gelo espalha-se em direção ao bordo de fuga, afetando uma maior percentagem da superfície sustentadora em causa. Como resultado, surge uma necessidade de estudar e adaptar os modelos físicos e matemáticos existentes para uma melhor aproximação a situações reais, no sentido de uma diminuição da ocorrência de acidentes e incidentes resultantes deste tipo de fenómenos, contribuindo assim para melhores condições de aeronavegabilidade. As previsões teóricas foram comparadas com dados experimentais e a análise numérica foi conduzida para a obtenção de uma melhor compreensão de processos de transmissão de calor e massa sob diferentes condições de humidade

Contribution to the Physical Understanding of Supercritical Fluid Flows: A Computational Perspective

The modeling of fluids at supercritical and transcritical regimes is addressed at conditions characteristic of liquid propelled rocket engines, whose increasing performance demands have led to conditions in the combustion chambers to exceed the critical point of both fuels and oxidizers in the pursuit of higher specific impulses. In the present document, nitrogen is used as a surrogate for the commonly encountered oxygenhydrogen mixture so that turbulence mixing can be looked into without influences from combustion and chemically reacting effects. In contrast to the widespread use of compressible formulations in the literature, a distinct hypothesis is formulated and investigated, focusing on fluids’ incompressible but variabledensity behavior at supercritical and transcritical conditions. The incompressible but variabledensity hypothesis arose from the similarity of visualization data, namely measuring mixing efficiency through jet spreading rates. This document evaluates the capabilities and limitations of a computational method (Reynoldsaveraged NavierStokes) developed based on the incompressible variabledensity hypothesis when applied to supercritical and transcritical conditions. Based on the socalled ”thermal breakup mechanism concept” proposed in the literature, the mechanical description of supercritical jets is complemented, demonstrating that the amount of heat a jet receives inside the injector determines if a change from supercritical liquidtogaslike condition takes place, highlighting the importance of including the injector flow in the computations. Axial density and temperature decay rates of supercritical and transcritical jets are predicted for a wide range of conditions and geometries of increasing complexity, ranging from single species injection at supercritical and later transcritical conditions into quiescent environments to coaxial single and multispecies configurations. The results suggest that the incompressible but variable density hypothesis can sufficiently replicate the experimental data, rivaling the predictions of more sophisticated methods relying on large eddy simulation formulations. Moreover, the need to include the injector into the computations for an accurate flow description is demonstrated. Furthermore, the errors resulting from its absence are assessed and evaluated by comparing adiabatic and isothermal boundary conditions. Finally, the proposed solver has also demonstrated its capabilities in the temperature field predictions, making it one of the few solvers currently available to have been validated in terms of density and temperature.A modelação de fluidos em regimes supercríticos e transcríticos é levada a cabo em condições características daquelas encontradas em motores foguete de propelente líquido, nos quais a demanda por rendimentos mais elevados, para que sejam atingidos impulsos específicos superiores, faz com que as condições nas câmaras de combustão excedam o ponto crítico de combustíveis e oxidantes. No presente documento, azoto é utilizado como um substituto da mistura oxigéniohidrogénio para que o comportamento turbulento das misturas possa ser estudado sem as influências de efeitos de combustão e de reações químicas. Por contraste com o uso generalizado na literatura de ferramentas computacionais com formulações compressíveis, aqui uma hipótese distinta é formulada e investigada, focada no comportamento incompressível mas de massa volúmica variável de fluidos em condições supercríticas e transcríticas. A hipótese incompressível mas de massa volúmica variável surge da semelhança de visualização, nomeadamente da medição da eficiência da mistura através do grau de abertura dos jatos. Este documento tem como objetivo avaliar as capacidades e limitações de um método computacional (Reynoldsaveraged NavierStokes) desenvolvido com base na hipótese incompressível mas de massa volúmica variável, quando aplicado em condições transcríticas e supercríticas. Baseado no conceito de breakup térmico proposto na literatura, a descrição mecânica de um jato supercrítico é complementada, demonstrando que a quantidade de calor recebida pelo jato dentro do injetor determina a possibilidade de uma transição de liquidlike para uma condição de gaslike ter lugar. O decaimento axial da massa volúmica e da temperatura de jatos supercríticos e transcríticos é previsto para um leque de condições e geometrias de complexidade crescente, desde a injeção de uma espécie química, primeiro em regime supercrítico e depois transcrítico, num ambiente em repouso, até à injeção coaxial de uma e de várias espécies. Os resultados sugerem que a hipótese incompressível mas de massa volúmica variável é capaz de prever as condições experimentais com um bom grau de precisão, indo de encontro às previsões de métodos mais complexos baseados em large eddy simulation. Ademais, a necessidade de incluir o injetor nas simulações para uma descrição mais precisa do escoamento é demonstrada e os erros associados com a sua ausência avaliados através da comparação entre condições de fronteira adiabática e isotérmica. O método proposto demonstra também a sua capacidade em prever o campo de temperatura, sendo que se trata de um dos poucos métodos atualmente disponíveis validados em termos da massa volúmica e da temperatura

O Câmpus Universitário como equipamento singular do meio urbano: ensaio em Três Rios, Brasil

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Arquitetura e UrbanismoOs Câmpus são aqui compreendidos como um equipamento de singular potencial na estrutura urbana, onde diferentes espaços e visões interagem com a sociedade de maneira única. Este trabalho compreende de que modo este equipamento pode influenciar o desenvolvimento urbano e de que forma pode contribuir para moldar o seu entorno, percebendo nele um importante promotor de desenvolvimento urbano e humano. Servindo-se do município de Três Rios, no Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, como área de ensaio dos impactos gerados pela inserção de um Câmpus Universitário no seu território, propõe-se pensar como tratar estas influências, gerir e melhor usufruir dos seus potenciais, analisando que verdadeiros proveitos tirar e como convergir este equipamento numa ligação “sócio urbana positiva”. Para este ensaio é feita uma análise prévia de três diferentes câmpus e das cidades onde se inserem. Tais câmpus e cidades estão distribuídos entre o Brasil e Portugal, de modo a beneficiar dos sucessos de cada uma delas e consequentemente dos acertos das políticas de cada cidade e país.The Campuses are understood as equipments with unique potential in the urban structure, where different spaces and views interact with society in a unique way. This paper shows how this equipment can influence urban development and how it can help to shape his surroundings, realizing it as an important promoter of urban and human development. Serving up the city of Três Rios, in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a test area of the impacts generated by the insertion of a University Campus in its territory, it proposes to think about how to treat these influences, how to better manage and enjoy their potential, considering that real income convergence and how to take this equipment on a "positive socio-urban" link. For this test, there is a prior analysis of three different campuses and the cities where they are located. Such campuses and cities are distributed between Brazil and Portugal, so that we can take from them the benefits of each and consequently the successes of the policies of each country and city