Beeinträchtigen Nebeneinkünfte die politischen Aktivitäten von Landtagsabgeordneten?

Eine neue Studie untersucht, wie Nebeneinkünfte von Landtagsabgeordneten mit ihren Abwesenheitsquoten im Parlament und anderen parlamentarischen Aktivitäten zusammenhängen. Reformen in den Offenlegungsvorschriften für Nebeneinkünfte und neue Daten für Mitglieder von sieben deutschen Landesparlamenten liefern dabei neue empirische Evidenz. Die Ergebnisse deuten nicht darauf hin, dass Nebeneinkünfte insgesamt mit parlamentarischer Aktivität der Abgeordneten, wie Abwesenheitsquoten, Anzahl von Reden, Interpellationen oder Fraktionsinitiativen, korreliert sind. Jedoch reagieren die Abgeordneten unterschiedlich auf höhere Nebeneinkünfte. Abgeordnete, die über Parteilisten in das Parlament eingezogen sind, schränken bei höheren Nebeneinkünften ihre parlamentarischen Aktivitäten stärker ein als direkt gewählte Abgeordnete. Dies deutet darauf hin, dass die höhere Rechenschaftspflicht gegenüber Wählerinnen und Wählern für die Beziehung zwischen Nebeneinkünften und den parlamentarischen Aktivitäten der Abgeordneten von Bedeutung ist. Zugleich deuten die Ergebnisse für gewisse Abgeordnete auf einen Anstieg der parlamentarischen Aktivitäten hin, wenn diese höhere Nebeneinkünfte erhalten. Leistungsstarke Abgeordnete scheinen also ihre Nebenbeschäftigungen mit ihren parlamentarischen Pflichten in Einklang zu bringen

Comment on "Historical Lynchings and the Contemporary Voting Behavior of Blacks"

Williams (2022) ties the political participation of Blacks to historical lynchings that occurred in the United States. Her findings document lower Black voter registration rates in southern counties with greater number of historical lynchings. We show that this effect is driven by four outlier counties with relatively high Black lynching rates. Excluding these counties from the analysis yields a point estimate that is no longer statistically significant. Dropping the ninety-fifth percentile lynching rates and correcting the errors in voter registration rates rule out the effect size reported by Williams (2022), which now becomes close to zero and statistically insignificant. We also show that the main results are highly sensitive to the way lynching and voter registration rates are measured.June 2023 (Updated Version, June 28

Structural Reforms and Income Inequality: Who Benefits from Market-Oriented Reforms?

We examine how structural reforms relate to income inequality. We employ many indicators of structural reforms and use data for market and net income inequality. The dataset includes up to 135 countries since 1960. The results do not suggest that market-oriented structural reforms were associated with rising income inequality in the full sample. Trade and financial liberalization were positively associated with income inequality in high-income countries. An mportant question is whether structural reforms benefit individual groups. We employ macro and micro data to investigate whether the income of low-income citizens increased to a smaller extent than the income of high-income citizens. The results suggest quite the opposite: market-oriented reforms were positively correlated with income shares of low-income citizens. We also examine citizens' support for structural reforms and show that low-income citizens are less likely to support market-oriented reforms than high-income citizens. It is conceivable that low-income citizens have misperceptions about how they benefit from market-oriented reforms

The beauty premium of politicians in office

The beauty premium in politics shows that attractive politicians are more likely to get elected to office than less attractive politicians, but little is known about whether beauty also shapes the behavior of members of parliament (MPs) once in office. We use newly collected data on the attractiveness and parliamentary activity of 866 MPs in the German Bundestag over the period 2009-2017 to examine the link between beauty and parliamentary work. Our results show that attractive MPs are more likely to be absent from parliament and less active in labor-intensive background work than others. Consistent with our hypothesis of opportunities created by attractiveness, we find that more attractive MPs have higher outside earnings and appear more often on television talk shows. Our results suggest that attractive MPs re-allocate their time from parliamentary work to other activity that increases their income and popularity

Korruption und Wirtschaftswachstum

Eine neue ifo-Studie zeigt auf Basis neuer Daten des Transparency International’s Perception of Corruption Index für 175 Länder für den Zeitraum 2012–2018, dass Korruption einen negativen Effekt auf das Wirtschaftswachstum hat. Der Effekt ist besonders in Autokratien ausgeprägt und scheint vor allem durch abnehmende ausländische Direktinvestitionen und steigende Inflationsraten zustande zu kommen

Structural Reforms and Income Inequality: Who Benefits From Market-Oriented Reforms?

We examine how structural reforms relate to income inequality. We employ many indicators of structural reforms and use data for market and net income inequality. The dataset includes up to 135 countries since 1960. The results do not suggest that market-oriented structural reforms were associated with rising income inequality in the full sample. Trade and financial liberalization were positively associated with income inequality in high-income countries. An important question is whether structural reforms benefit individual groups. We employ macro and micro data to investigate whether the income of low-income citizens increased to a smaller extent than the income of high-income citizens. The results suggest quite the opposite: marketoriented reforms were positively correlated with income shares of low-income citizens. We also examine citizens' support for structural reforms and show that low-income citizens are less likely to support market-oriented reforms than high-income citizens. It is conceivable that low income citizens have misperceptions about how they benefit from market-oriented reforms

The global impact of the U.S. inflation reduction act: Evidence from an international expert survey

The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) promotes renewable energy and contributes to climate protection, but also offers generous tax credits and subsidies to incentivize production in the United States. While the planned generosity of the program has sparked an intense debate about potential negative spillover effects on the global economy, little is known about the quantity of potential adverse effects. We conduct a large-scale international survey among leading economic experts worldwide to quantify the effect of the US Inflation reduction act on the global economy. On a global scale, experts are little concerned about negative effects of the IRA on their domestic economy, estimating both the impact on national output and the risk of business outflows to be low. However, we uncover large heterogeneity in the potential impact of the IRA across countries and regions. In Europe, particularly in France and Germany, economic experts are highly concerned about the IRA and expect a significant effect of the IRA on the domestic economy. In terms of economic policy reactions, roughly 41% of the respondents support economic countermeasures. We elicit experts' views about policy measures in open-ended text questions to prevent any priming of the respondents. The respondents propose active industrial policy, including subsidies, but also advocate for increased investment in infrastructure and green sectors. The call for subsidies is particularly strong in Europe

Gambling for Re-election

This paper presents novel empirical evidence that gambling style behaviour – which has been documented in many areas of economic decision-making – is important in politics. We show that politicians 'gamble for re-election' in the context of a political leader selection. To overcome challenges arising from secret ballots, we exploit unique access to leaked information on MPs' individual decisions in a de facto vote for the 2021 leadership election of Germany's centre-right parties. MPs are more likely to vote for a riskier candidate when faced with tougher re-election races in their constituency. Quantitatively, a 10 pp. decrease in the probability to be re-elected is associated with a 2.9 pp. increase in the likelihood to vote for the riskier candidate. These results match the predictions derived from our model of rational risk-taking. Gambling for re-election provides a new explanation for intra-party dissent and rationalises why parties may choose low quality leaders when better ones are available

Inflationserwartungen von Expertinnen und Experten: Wegweiser und Stabilitätsanker

Inflationserwartungen von Wirtschaftsexpertinnen und -experten sind wichtige Orientierungshilfen für andere Marktteilnehmende wie Unternehmen und Haushalte. Der Artikel untersucht, wie sich die Inflationserwartungen von VWL-Professorinnen und VWL-Professoren an deutschen Universitäten seit Frühjahr 2022 entwickelt haben. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sowohl das Niveau der Inflationserwartungen als auch die Streuung der Inflationserwartungen im Zeitverlauf gestiegen sind. Eine größere Streuung deutet auf eine erhöhte Unsicherheit hin. Das Niveau der Inflationserwartungen wird nicht signifikant von persönlichen Merkmalen wie dem Bekanntheitsgrad oder dem Geschlecht der Expertinnen und Experten bestimmt, hängt jedoch über Peer-Effekte vom Standort der Universität ab. Für Deutschland werden geringere Inflationsraten als im weltweiten Durchschnitt erwartet, jedoch höhere Inflationsraten als in den übrigen Teilen Westeuropas und den USA. Als wichtigste Gründe der Inflation werden die Energiepreiskrise, der Krieg in der Ukraine sowie die Geldpolitik der EZB genannt