The Impact of Referendums on the Centralisation of Public Goods Provision: A Political Economy Approach

The paper compares decision-making on the centralisation of public goods provision in the presence of regional externalities under representative and direct democratic institutions. A model with two regions, two public goods and regional spillovers is developed in which uncertainty over the true preferences of candidates makes strategic delegation impossible. Instead, it is shown that the existence of rent extraction by delegates alone suffices to make cooperative centralisation more likely through representative democracy. In the non-cooperative case, the more extensive possibilities for institutional design under representative democracy increase the likelihood of centralisation. Direct democracy may thus be interpreted as a federalism-preserving institution.centralisation; direct democracy; representative democracy; public good provision.

The Impact of Referendums on the Centralisation of Public Goods Provision: A Political Economy Approach

The paper compares decision-making on the centralisation of public goods provision in the presence of regional externalities under representative and direct democratic institutions. A model with two regions, two public goods and regional spillovers is developed in which uncertainty over the true preferences of candidates makes strategic delegation impossible. Instead, it is shown that the existence of rent extraction by delegates alone suffices to make cooperative centralisation more likely through representative democracy. In the non-cooperative case, the more extensive possibilities for institutional design under representative democracy increase the likelihood of centralisation. Direct democracy may thus be interpreted as a federalism-preserving institution.centralisation, direct democracy, representative democracy, public good provision

On Government Centralization and Fiscal Referendums: A Theoretical Model and Evidence from Switzerland

We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to occur in jurisdictions with referendum decisions on policy centralization. Citizens choose centralization of public spending and revenue in order to internalize spillovers if individual preferences in two jurisdictions are sufficiently homogeneous. Under representative democracy, centralization is inefficiently high because representatives can extract political rents by policy centralization. Referendums thus restrict representatives’ ability for rent extraction. An empirical analysis using a panel of Swiss cantons from 1980 to 1998 supports the hypothesis that centralization is less likely under referendum decision-making.Centralization, Fiscal Federalism, Fiscal Referendums

Do People Pay More Attention to Earthquakes in Western Countries?

[EN] This paper investigates whether people from Western countries pay more attention to earthquakes in Western countries than those in non-Western countries. Using Google Trends data, we examine the proportion of Google searches from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for 610 earthquakes across the world over the period of 2006-2016. Our results suggest that people in these countries pay around 44 percent more attention to earthquakes in Western countries, holding constant earthquake magnitude and number of casualties. Our results remain significant and similar in magnitude after controlling for geographical and social characteristics, but reduce in magnitude to almost zero and become insignificant after controlling for GDP per capita of the countries where the earthquake struck. Our results suggest that there is a developed country bias, rather than a Western country bias, in people’s attention. This bias might lead to a lower flow of international relief to economically less developed countries, which are less able to deal with disasters.Habibi, H.; Feld, J. (2018). Do People Pay More Attention to Earthquakes in Western Countries?. En 2nd International Conference on Advanced Reserach Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2018). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 79-86. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2018.2018.8315OCS798

The effect of peer gender on major choice in business school

Business degrees are popular and lead to high earnings. Female business graduates, however, earn less than their male counterparts. These gender differences can be traced back to university, where women shy away from majors like finance that lead to high earnings. In this paper, we investigate how the gender composition of peers in business school affects women’s and men’s major choices and labor market outcomes. We find that women who are randomly assigned to teaching sections with more female peers become less likely to choose male-dominated majors like finance and more likely to choose female-dominated majors like marketing. After graduation, these women end up in jobs where their earnings grow more slowly. Men, on the other hand, become more likely to choose male-dominated majors and less likely to choose female-dominated majors when they had more female peers in business school. However, men’s labor market outcomes are not significantly affected. Taken together, our results show that studying with more female peers in business school increases gender segregation in educational choice and affects labor market outcomes

The effect of higher-achieving peers on major choices and labor market outcomes

This paper investigates how exposure to higher-achieving male and female peers in university affects students’ major choices and labor market outcomes. For identification of causal effects, we exploit the random assignment of students to university sections in compulsory first-year courses. We present two main results. First, studying with higher-achieving peers has no statistically significant or economically meaningful effects on educational choices. Second, we find suggestive evidence that women who have been exposed to higher- achieving male peers end up in jobs in which they are more satisfied

Sleep to Upscale, Sleep to Downscale: Balancing Homeostasis and Plasticity

The synaptic homeostasis hypothesis of sleep proposes that slow wave sleep (SWS) causes downscaling of synaptic networks potentiated during information uptake in prior wakefulness. Two studies in Neuron challenge this mechanism. Chauvette et al. (2012) show that SWS mediates an up- rather than downregulation of excitatory postsynaptic potential responses. Grosmark et al. (2012) find that downscaling in hippocampal networks might be mediated through REM sleep theta rather than SWS

Endophilia or Exophobia:Beyond Discrimination

The discrimination literature treats outcomes as relative. But does a differential arise because agents discriminate against others - exophobia - or because they favour their own kind - endophilia? Using a field experiment that assigned graders randomly to students' examinations that did/did not contain names, we find favouritism but no discrimination by nationality nor by gender. We are able to identify these preferences under a wide range of behavioural scenarios regarding the graders. That endophilia dominates exophobia alters how we should measure discriminatory wage differentials and should inform the formulation of anti-discrimination policy

Das Finanzierungssystem der EU und die Nettozahlerdebatte

Die deutsche Nettozahlerposition innerhalb der EU wird in der öffentlichen Meinung häufig kritisch beurteilt. Wie funktioniert das Finanzierungssystem der EU? Worauf lässt sich die Auszahlungsstruktur zurückführen? Ist der Nutzen der EU-Mitgliedschaft allein anhand der Zahlungsströme zu messen? --