Rain, ElectionS and MOney : The impact of voter turnout on distributive policy outcomes in japan

Does voter turnout affect policy outcomes? This long-standing question has been re-visited recently with close empirical scrutiny. These studies, however, commonly suffer from a problem of omitting variables correlated with both causal and outcome variables : specifically, immeasurable political interactions between politicians, organised groups, and individual voters. We address this problem by exploiting an instrument based on new data measuring the amount of rainfall on the voting day. It is a valid instrument not only because it is correlated with voter turnout and uncorrelated with politically relevant omitted variables, but also because it is expected to satisfy the assumption of homogeneous partial effects, which has not been carefully examined in previous studies that took advantage of instrumental variables. Using a large, municipality-level data set from Japan, we show that the turnout effect on the amounts of intergovernmental fiscal transfers is indeed significant, positive, and large.Election, Money, Rain, voter turnout, Japan, distributive policy

An Alternative Lattice Field Theory Formulation Inspired by Lattice Supersymmetry

We propose an unconventional formulation of lattice field theories which is quite general, although originally motivated by the quest of exact lattice supersymmetry. Two long standing problems have a solution in this context: 1) Each degree of freedom on the lattice corresponds to $2^d$ degrees of freedom in the continuum, but all these doublers have (in the case of fermions) the same chirality and can be either identified, thus removing the degeneracy, or, in some theories with extended supersymmetry, identified with different members of the same supermultiplet. 2) The derivative operator, defined on the lattice as a suitable periodic function of the lattice momentum, is an addittive and conserved quantity, thus assuring that the Leibnitz rule is satisfied. This implies that the product of two fields on the lattice is replaced by a non-local "star product" which is however in general non-associative. Associativity of the "star product" poses strong restrictions on the form of the lattice derivative operator (which becomes the inverse gudermannian function of the lattice momentum) and has the consequence that the degrees of freedom of the lattice theory and of the continuum theory are in one-to-one correspondence, so that the two theories are eventually equivalent. Regularization of the ultraviolet divergences on the lattice is not associated to the lattice spacing, which does not act as a regulator, but may be obtained by a one parameter deformation of the lattice derivative, thus preserving the lattice structure even in the limit of infinite momentum cutoff. However this regularization breaks gauge invariance and a gauge invariant regularization within the lattice formulation is still lacking.Comment: 68 pages, 7 figure

Relativistic Spectra of Hot Black-Hole Winds

We examine hybrid thermal-nonthermal synchrotron spectra from a spherically symmetric, optically-thin wind, taking into account the relativistic effect. In the relativistic flow from the central object, due to the relativistic beaming effect, the observed spectra often shift towards high frequency and high intensity directions. In the optically thin outflows, however, we find that the intensity of the observed spectra decreases compared with that of the emitted ones, although the peak frequency shifts towards the high frequency direction. This is because in the optically thin outflows we can see the far side flows that go away from the observer. We thus carefully consider optically thin relativistic flows around a black hole such as Sgr A$^*$.Comment: 7pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in PAS

Boards of directors and bank performance in United Arab Emirates

This study presents an empirical analysis about corporate governance of financial institutions in United Arab Emirates (UAE). The purpose of this research is to analyze the influence of the structure of board of directors on the performance of these institutions. To examine the effect of control exerted by particular families on bank management, we estimated models where the dependent variable is return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), independent variables are board of directors variables, and control variables are bank management variables. Our results show that the control of corporate governance by a ruler\u27s family within a board of directors has a positive effect on bank profitability. Our results indicate that control by a ruler\u27s family through a bank\u27s board of directors compensates for the inadequacy of UAE\u27s corporate governance system