La confiança en les institucions estatals i europees, a prova

La confiança en les institucions estatals i europees, a provaUn estudio con participación desde la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona ha puesto a prueba la confianza que los ciudadanos depositan en los políticos que los representan, tanto a nivel estatal como europeo. Dentro de cada país, los ciudadanos que confían más en las instituciones estatales también confían en el Parlamento Europeo. Comparando entre países, en cambio, los ciudadanos que viven en lugares donde las instituciones estatales están menos valoradas, las instituciones europeas tienden disponer de más confianza entre los ciudadanos. Al revés ocurre cuando la confianza es buena respecto las instituciones estatales, se tiende a confiar menos en Europa

Backlash Against International Courts in West, East and Southern Africa: Causes and Consequences

This paper discusses three credible attempts by African governments to restrict the jurisdiction of three similarly-situated sub-regional courts in response to politically controversial rulings. In West Africa, when the ECOWAS Court upheld allegations of torture by opposition journalists in the Gambia, that country’s political leaders sought to restrict the Court’s power to review human rights complaints. The other member states ultimately defeated the Gambia’s proposal. In East Africa, Kenya failed in its efforts to eliminate the EACJ and to remove some of its judges after a decision challenging an election to a sub-regional legislature. However, the member states agreed to restructure the EACJ in ways that have significantly affected the court’s subsequent trajectory. In Southern Africa, after the SADC Tribunal ruled in favor of white farmers in disputes over land seizure, Zimbabwe prevailed upon SADC member states to suspend the Tribunal and strip its power to review complaints from private litigants. Variations in the mobilization efforts of Community secretariats, civil society groups and sub-regional Parliaments explain why efforts to eliminate the three courts or narrow their jurisdiction were defeated in ECOWAS, scaled back in the EAC, and largely succeeded in SADC

Economic Growth and Regional Integration in Mexico

In this paper we examine the regional structure of output growth, volatility and prosperity in Mexico, focusing in particular on the degree of integration between both the regions and the individual states of the country. The results suggest that there is a high degree of similarity across the regions in the responses to domestic and international shocks affecting the economy, but there are also significant differences across the individual states within each region. We identify a positive relationship between output growth and volatility, but the relationship between growth and regional disparities appears to be negative, suggesting that higher (lower) growth is generally associated with lower (higher) regional dispersion in per capita GDP levels

Effects of Corporate Policies and Governance Practices on Ownership Structure: Evidence from Chilean Firms

We analyze the effects of financing policies, dividends, and corporate governance on ownership structure in Chilean companies. We used a sample of 185 companies listed on the Santiago Stock Exchange that answered the NCG 341 survey on Corporate Governance Practices in 2013. The two-limit Tobit regression (TLTR) results show that debt and dividend policies exert a negative effect on controlling shareholder ownership and a positive effect on minority shareholder ownership. The results show that these policies facilitate control over corporate management determined by the interests of controlling shareholders, as well as protect minority shareholders’ rights by complementing their monitoring role. Corporate governance practices have significant effects on the ownership structure of Chilean companies.Este artículo se propone analizar el impacto de las políticas de financiamiento, dividendos y gobierno corporativo sobre la estructura de propiedad en compañías chilenas. Se usó una muestra de 185 compañías listadas en la Bolsa de Comercio de Santiago, que contestaron la encuesta NCG 341 sobre Prácticas de Gobierno Corporativo en 2013. Los resultados de las regresiones Tobit de dos límites (TLTR) demuestran que las políticas de endeudamiento y de dividendos negativamente afectan la propiedad de los accionistas controladores y protegen los derechos de los accionistas minoritarios al complementar su rol de monitoreo. Las prácticas de gobierno corporativo tienen efectos significativos sobre la estructura de propiedad de las compañías chilenas

Los comercios de inmigrantes extranjeros: fuentes de información y pautas de localización: el caso del Distrito Macarena (Sevilla)

Los comercios étnicos constituyen elementos de referencia urbana que parecen evidenciar claramente la presencia de población inmigrante. Entendemos como tales, aquellos locales dedicados a actividades comerciales que cubren mayormente las necesidades de una población extranjera. Su aparición en las ciudades españolas está asociada a la llegada de población inmigrante, aunque no todas las nacionalidades y actividades responden a un mismo patrón de asentamiento. En este trabajo se analizan las pautas de localización de los comercios étnicos en el Distrito Macarena (Sevilla) en relación a las de residencia de las nacionalidades de mayor presencia. Asimismo, se analizan los distintos tipos de actividades en relación con las nacionalidades de los empresarios. Al mismo tiempo, el trabajo se ha planteado contrastar la calidad y utilidad de distintas fuentes de información para el estudio de las pautas de localización de los comercios étnicos. Especial atención han recibido los nuevos formatos y fuentes de datos disponibles en Internet. Dado que se trata de una información muy dinámica y cambiante, el contraste de la calidad se ha llevado a cabo mediante el trabajo de campo y el uso de las herramientas de georreferenciación disponibles en los smartphone. Como resultado, se extraen conclusiones sobre la validez de las fuentes utilizadas, sobre las preferencias empresariales según nacionalidad; sobre los patrones de localización de los distintos comercios y nacionalidades y, finalmente, sobre la relación que existe entre los comercios étnicos y la población residente extranjera en el Distrito Macarena

Nordic Built Cities Challenge Awards

FinalistaPostprint (published version

Show me your friends: a survey experiment on the effect of coalition signals

Recent studies of coalition-directed voting suggest that what political parties say during a campaign can influence voter perceptions of the likelihood of certain coalitions and that this, in turn, may foster strategic voting in multiparty systems. Here, we expand this argument, and show that pre-election coalition signals also have the potential to influence voter perceptions of the parties themselves. By revealing their coalition preferences, parties provide information on where they stand on the political continuum. We test our argument using a survey experiment run during a regional election campaign in Spain in which we manipulated the coalition signals emitted by two parties: one, a traditional, social-democratic party and, the second, a new, liberal party. Results show how coalition signals can significantly influence the party's position and, ultimately, affect voters' stated probability of voting, especially in the case of the recently founded party

Inferring party positions across issue dimensions

In this article, we argue that voters use party positions on an issue dimension as a heuristic device to locate parties on other dimensions on which they have less information about. We confirm our argument by fielding two survey experiments in a context with two distinct issue dimensions: the left-right and national dimensions in Catalonia. We find that the position of a hypothetical (but plausible) candidate on a national dimension exerts a great deal of influence on where respondents locate him on the left-right dimension, as well as on a more narrowly-defined socioeconomic dimension, but that the left-right position does not affect the perceived placement on the national divide. This asymmetry can be partly explained by the different nature of these issue domains, and specifically by the distinct ability of the national dimension to activate social group cues that give rise to projection biases. These findings have important implications for our understanding of issue misperceptions and of the strategic choices available to parties in multidimensional policy spaces