Democracy and Growth: A Relationship Revisited

A considerable theoretical and empirical literature failed to reach consensus on the relevance of the nature of political regimes for economic performance. Research on democracy's effect on growth is inconclusive. At the same time, a few studies and cases find authoritarianism to display growth-enhancing attributes. This paper revisits the issue, finding that the debate severely lacks an appropriate description of pertinent characteristics of the sociopolitical environment. Using the framework of the neoclassical growth theory, a model is augmented with a more comprehensive representation of the political economy. It assumes a nonlinear relationship between regime type and economic growth, and introduces the concept of initial democratic capital. The results suggest that democracies are more conducive to growth, particularly in the presence of a tradition of democracy. Sociopolitical stability is also shown to be a necessary complementary condition. Economic freedom and high-level human capital are found favorable for growth. Democracy and economic freedom exhibit diminishing marginal returns for growth. The results are robust to different specifications of the model.Authoritarianism; Democracy; Growth; Political

Generation of both an shRNA-resistant MEF2A over expression construct and a dominant negative construct in adenovirus for rescue and knockout experiments in muscle

The Myocyte Enhancer Factor-2, or MEF2, transcription factor family is necessary for the differentiation and regeneration of both skeletal and cardiac muscle tissue. The transcription factors in this family are responsible for the activation of many muscle specific growth factor-induced and differentiation genes. There are four individual isoforms of MEF2; MEF2A, -B, -C, and –D, and the roles of these individual transcription factors are not completely understood. Knockdowns of these individual isoforms revealed that a MEF2A knockdown mouse model displays severe myofibrillar defects in cardiac muscle. This knockdown also has shown that MEF2A is required for myogenesis in vitro, where the other 3 isoforms, -B, -C, and –D, are not necessary for this process. One method of knocking down MEF2A to study its roles further is through the use of short hairpin RNAs (shRNA). The purpose of my research was two-fold. First, in order to test the specificity of this shRNA method, an shRNA-resistant MEF2A over expression construct in an adenoviral vector was created to perform rescue experiments. Second, to compare individual MEF2 isoform knockouts to a complete knockout of the entire MEF2 family, a dominant negative construct was created in an adenoviral vector. In both cases, a pShuttle-CMV adenoviral vector was used. The results of this experiment can be used to further investigate the roles of MEF2A in both regeneration and differentiation of skeletal and cardiac muscle tissue

Do enclaves matter in immigrants’ self-employment decision?

This paper uses 2000 U.S. Census data to study the determinants of self-employment decisions among immigrants. It outlines a theoretical framework for analyzing the role of ethnic enclaves in the self-employment decision of immigrants that captures nuances involved in the interaction between ethnic enclaves and different ethnic groups. It assesses the effect of ethnic enclaves for different groups and explores explanations for differences. The results show that higher ethnic concentration in metropolitan areas is positively related to the probability of self-employment of immigrants. However, the significance of ethnic concentration for self-employment differs by the country or region of origin of immigrants. The relationship between location and self-employment probability of immigrants is reinforced by other metropolitan area-specific characteristics that include labor market factors, such as the unemployment rate, the self-employment rate, the monetary returns to self-employment relative to wage employment, and the success of self-employed co-ethnic members.Immigrants ; Self-employed

Self-employed immigrants: an analysis of recent data

This article identifies the factors that influence the self- employment decision for U.S. immigrants, including human capital, years in the U.S., geographic concentration, and labor market characteristics.Self-employed ; Immigrants

Changing Hispanic demographics: Opportunities and constraints in the financial market

Metropolitan areas - Statistics ; Demography ; Hispanic Americans - Population

The impact of Mexican immigrants on U.S. wage structure

Previous study by Card and Lewis (2005) has found (puzzling) that inflows of Mexican immigrants into “new” metropolitan areas have had no effect on the relative wages of very low-skill (high school dropouts). Rather, Mexican workers do affect relative wages for high school graduates. Whereas Card and Lewis’ study uses variations across geographies, this paper considers variations across occupations. Recognizing that Mexican immigrants are highly occupationally clustered (disproportionately work in distinctive “very low wage” occupations), we use this fact to motivate the empirical approach to analyze the relationship between the composition of Mexican immigrants across occupations/industries and average wages in the occupations/industries. To summarize our finding, we confirm that in spite of the fact that Mexican immigrants are disproportionately in “very low skill” occupations, (which we define as occupations where the average workers have no high school education), we find no significant impact of Mexican immigrants on wages in those occupations. By contrast, inflows of Mexican immigrants have some small effects on the wages of native workers in “low skill” occupations (which we define as occupations where the average worker has at least some high school education or is a high school graduate). These results suggest potential “spill over effects” as natives may be reallocating their labor supply into non-predominant Mexican occupations. An analysis of employment changes of natives into different occupation groupings in response to an inflow of Mexican immigrants, confirms that natives’ employment in occupations where the average worker has a high school education increases in response to Mexican inflows in the U.S labor force from previous periods.Immigrants ; Wages

Do ethnic enclaves and networks promote immigrant self-employment?

The author assesses how ethnic enclaves and networks affect the self-employment decisions of immigrants in the U.S. She finds that ethnic networks play a positive role in the likelihood that immigrants will choose self-employment as an alternative to wage employment. However, there is no clear impact of ethnic geographical concentrations on the self-employment decision.Immigrants ; Self-employed

Strategies for improving economic mobility of workers - a conference preview

On November 15-16, 2007, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Economic Research Department and Consumer and Community Affairs Division, along with the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, will cosponsor a conference to present research on policies, practices, and initiatives affecting low-wage workers.Labor mobility ; Labor market

More Evidence for an Oscillation Superimposed on the Hubble Flow

In a recent investigation evidence was presented for a low-level sinusoidal oscillation superimposed on top of the Hubble flow. This oscillation was in V$_{CMB}$, in a sample of type Ia Supernovae sources with accurate distances, and it was found to have a wavelength close to 40 Mpc. It became easily visible after the removal of several previously identified discrete velocity components. Its amplitude like that of the Hubble velocity showed an increase with distance, as would be expected for a constant-amplitude space oscillation. Here we report that this oscillation is also present in distance clumping in these sources, with the same wavelength, but in phase quadrature. The discrete velocity components do not play a role in detecting the distance clumping wavelength. Assuming that time proceeds from high cosmological redshift to low, the blue-shifted velocity peaks, which represent the contraction stage of the velocity oscillation, then lead the density peaks. With the discrete velocity components removed we also find evidence for at least one other, weaker velocity oscillation. It is found to have a wavelength similar to one reported in density clumping by previous investigators. In those cases the source samples were much larger.Comment: 7 pages, with 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc