Policy Innovation in Local Jurisdictions: Testing the Neighborhood Influence Against the Free-Riding Hypothesis

Before making difficult decisions, individuals tend to collect information on decision makers in reference groups. With respect to policy innovations in a decentralized public sector, this may give rise to positive neighborhood influence on adoption decisions. On the other hand, due to learning externalities, an incentive exists to free-ride on policy experiments of others. In this paper, U.S. data on school district policies are used to show that with respect to policy experiments, decision makers indeed are heavily affected by decision makers in reference groups. The results suggest that if a given district's neighbors' expected benefits from adopting a new policy increase, this substantially increases the original district's probability of adoption. The paper thus rejects the free-riding hypothesis and supports the view that in federal systems the diffusion of policy innovations is stimulated by horizontal interactions between jurisdictions. --

Yardstick Competition and Policy Innovation

A simple model of yardstick competition between jurisdictions is presented. Governments of jurisdictions face the alternative to choose between an old and a new policy with stochastic payoffs. The new policy is superior to the old policy in one state of the world, and inferior in the other. Governments are either benevolent, serving the interest of the voter, or rent-seeking. An equilibrium with yardstick competition is shown to exist where bad governments having a good government in their neighborhood choose the new policy more often compared to an equilibrium without relative performance evaluation. Overall, the probability of policy innovations is increased by yardstick competition. The model has a testable empirical implication saying that policy innovations should show spatial correlation.

Policy Innovation in Local Jurisdictions: Testing the Neighborhood Influence Against the Free-Riding Hypothesis

Before making di±cult decisions, individuals tend to collect information on decision makers in reference groups. With respect to policy innovations in a decentralized public sector, this may give rise to positive neighborhood influence on adoption decisions. On the other hand, due to learning externalities, an incentive exists to free-ride on policy experiments of others. In this paper, U.S. data on school district policies are used to show that with respect to policy experiments, decision makers indeed are heavily affected by decision makers in reference groups. The results suggest that if a given district's neighbors' expected benefits from adopting a new policy increase, this substantially increases the original district's probability of adoption. The paper thus rejects the free-riding hypothesis and supports the view that in federal systems the discusion of policy innovations is stimulated by horizontal interactions between jurisdictions.

Yardstick Competition and Policy Innovation

A simple model of yardstick competition between jurisdictions is presented. Governments of jurisdictions face the alternative to choose between an old and a new policy with stochastic payoffs. The new policy is superior to the old policy in one state of the world, and inferior in the other. Governments are either benevolent, serving the interest of the voter, or rent-seeking. An equilibrium with yardstick competition is shown to exist where bad governments having a good government in their neighborhood choose the new policy more often compared to an equilibrium without relative performance evaluation. Overall, the probability of policy innovations is increased by yardstick competition. The model has a testable empirical implication saying that policy innovations should show spatial correlation. --

Neighborhood Influence and Political Change: Evidence from US School Districts

This paper investigates how local jurisdictions in a federal system influence each other in the adoption of policy innovations. We look at school districts in Michigan and their participation in a public school choice program launched in 1996. Districts' participation decisions are modelled as simultaneous discrete choice decisions using a spatial latent variable model. Strong effects are found saying that lagged adoptions of neighbors positively affect the current probability of participation. This finding is robust to various changes in specification. The results suggest that in federal systems the diffusion of policy innovations is stimulated by horizontal interactions between jurisdictions.

The impact of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition: Evidence from a natural experiment

Measuring the effect of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition is complicated because the stringency of ballot access regulations cannot be treated as being exogenous to candidates' entry decisions. This paper exploits the 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down Ohio's ballot access laws as a natural experiment to overcome the endogeneity problem. The evidence from difference-in-difference estimations suggests that the court decision and the accompanying sharp decrease in Ohio's petition requirements resulted in major parties facing a signifcant increase in competition from third party and independent candidates

Labor Market Effects of Economic Integration - The Impact of Re-Unification in German Border Regions

The paper argues that economic integration causes problems for the labor market of high-wage countries due to cross-border labor mobility and the accompanying increase in labor supply. Empirical evidence is provided from an analysis of regional labor market effects of German re-unification. In the aftermath of the re-unification shock, despite some gain in employment, border regions situated on the former German-German border are found to have experienced a fall in the relative wage position and an increase in unemployment relative to other West-German regions. As this points to adverse labor supply effects for resident workers due to cross-border labor mobility, this result is bad news for EU regions situated on the border with the Accession countries in Central and Eastern Europe.economic integration, border regions, EU enlargement, German re-unification, differences in differences estimation

The Design of Political Institutions: Electoral Competition and the Choice of Ballot Access Restrictions in the United States

Recent contributions to the political economics literature (Trebbi et al. 2007; Aghion et al. 2004) have challenged the view that political institutions are exogenous to the behaviour of agents in the political arena. We explicitly address the potential endogeneity of institutions by examining the link between the degree of electoral competition and the design of ballot access restrictions in the United States. Exploiting exogenous variation in electoral competition at the state level induced by the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, our main finding is that restrictions to the entry of minor party and independent candidates have been systematically adjusted to changing degrees of electoral competition.political institutions, electoral competition, ballot access

Do Countries Compensate Firms for International Wage Differentials?

We address the role of labor cost differentials for national tax policies. Using a simple theoretical framework with two countries competing for a mobile firm, we show that in a bidding race for FDI, it is optimal for governments to compensate firms for international labor cost differentials. Using panel data for western Europe, we then put the model prediction to an empirical test. Exploiting exogenous variation in labor cost differentials induced by the breakdown of communism in eastern Europe, we find strong support for the model prediction that countries with relatively high labor costs tend to set lower tax rates in order to attract mobile capital. Our key result is that an increase in the unit labor cost differential by one standard deviation decreases the statutory tax rate by 7.3 to 7.5 percentage points.foreign direct investment, corporate taxation, labor costs

The impact of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition: Evidence from a natural experiment

Measuring the effect of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition is compli- cated because the stringency of ballot access regulations cannot be treated as being exogenous to candidates' entry decisions. This paper exploits the 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down Ohio's ballot access laws as a natural experiment to overcome the endogeneity problem. The evidence from difference-in-difference esti- mations suggests that the court decision and the accompanying sharp decrease in Ohio's petition requirements resulted in major parties facing a signifficant increase in competition from third party and independent candidates.Ballot access, petition requirements, electoral competition, natural experiment