Do Campaign Contribution Limits Curb the Influence of Money in Politics?

Over 40% of countries around the world have adopted limits on campaign contributions to curb the influence of money in politics. Yet, we have limited knowledge on whether and how these limits achieve this goal. With a regression discontinuity design that uses institutional rules on contribution limits in Colombian municipalities, we show that looser limits increase the number and value of public contracts assigned to the winning candidate’s donors. The evidence suggests that this is explained by looser limits concentrating influence over the elected candidate among top donors and not by a reduction in electoral competition or changes in who runs for office. We further show that looser limits worsen the performance of donor-managed contracts: they are more likely to run over costs and require time extensions. Overall, this paper demonstrates a direct link between campaign contribution limits, donor kickbacks, and worse government contract performance

Influence of Secondary Offerings on the Liquidity and Trading Activity of Stocks Outstanding

This paper examines the influence of secondary offerings (SOs) on the liquidity and trading activity of stocks outstanding. The results reveal that liquidity and trading activity increase after the execution of SOs. We observe that the offering discount is explained by the size of the offering and its retail composition. We have also shown that changes in liquidity and trading activity are explained by the retail composition of the offering, such that the choice of ownership structure is decisive in the level of liquidity afforded by SOs. The offering discount is one of the chosen methods of attracting small-scale investors and promoting share liquidity following these operations.secondary offerings (SOs), liquidity, trading activity, microstructure, capital structure

Solving multi-objective hub location problems by hybrid algorithms

In many logistic, telecommunications and computer networks, direct routing of commodities between any origin and destination is not viable due to economic and technolog- ical constraints. In that cases, a network with centralized units, known as hub facilities, and a small number of links is commonly used to connect any origin-destination pair. The purpose of these hub facilities is to consolidate, sort and transship e ciently any commodity in the network. Hub location problems (HLPs) consider the design of these networks by locating a set of hub facilities, establishing an interhub subnet, and routing the commodities through the network while optimizing some objective(s) based on the cost or service. Hub location has evolved into a rich research area, where a huge number of papers have been published since the seminal work of O'Kelly [1]. Early works were focused on analogue facility location problems, considering some assumptions to simplify network design. Recent works [2] have studied more complex models that relax some of these assumptions and in- corporate additional real-life features. In most HLPs considered in the literature, the input parameters are assumed to be known and deterministic. However, in practice, this assumption is unrealistic since there is a high uncertainty on relevant parameters, such as costs, demands or even distances. In this work, we will study the multi-objective hub location problems with uncertainty.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Analysis of strain localization with a nonlocal plasticity model

In the present paper a nonlocal plasticity model is described, intended to reproduce the mechanical behaviour of stiff fine-grained soils, including the objective simulation of strain localization; the phenomenon of accumulation of deformations in narrow zones in the form of shear bands or fractures. A number of analyses have been performed to assess the developed formulation. Relevant aspects have been addressed such as the thickness of the shear band, its orientation, and the onset of localization in a boundary value problem (BVP). Results provide useful insigths into relevant aspects of the numerical simulation of strain localization