Ciclos políticos de las transferencias desde el gobierno central hacia los estados

Usando el método agrupamiento de medias (PMG), este documento intenta estimar los ciclos de las transferencias en las elecciones parlamentarias y de asambleas en India desde 1980- 81 hasta 2010-11. Encontramos que dichos ciclos son más pronunciados en el año anterior a las elecciones parlamentarias y en el año de las elecciones de asambleas en el caso de los préstamos desde el centro. Adicionalmente, a partir de un modelo Logit, se pudo establecer que las manipulaciones oportunistas de las subvenciones del centro en el año anterior a las elecciones parlamentarias y los niveles de préstamos del centro en el año de las elecciones de la asamblea pueden ayudar a mantener el poder de quien actualmente lo detenta. Se encuentra que la inflación es electoralmente perjudicial para los gobernantes, ya que aumenta la probabilidad de perder las elecciones a nivel nacional, pero no necesariamente a nivel de los estados. Del mismo modo, es más probable que un gobierno de derecha gane las elecciones, mientras que, si el centro y los estados tienen el mismo gobierno o si el gobierno del estado es un aliado, la posibilidad de retener el poder para el gobierno nacional se reduce, y aumenta en el caso de los gobiernos a nivel estatal. Asimismo, un gobierno de coalición, en general, reduce la posibilidad de ganar en las elecciones parlamentarias y estatales.Using the pooled-mean group method (PMG), this paper attempts to trace the political transfer cycles in parliamentary and assembly elections in India from 1980-81 to 2010- 11. It is found that the political transfer cycles are more pronounced in the year before parliamentary elections and in the year of assembly elections in the case of loans from the centre. Furthermore, from the binary Logit specification it is established that opportunistic manipulations of grants from the centre, in the year before parliamentary elections and the levels of loans from the centre in the year of assembly elections can help the incumbent regain its power. Inflation is found to be electorally harmful for the incumbent as it increases the likelihood of losing the election at union level, but not necessarily at state level. Similarly, a right-wing government is more likely to win the election, whereas, if the centre and the states have the same government or if the state government is an ally, the possibility of retaining power for the union government is lowered, and it is raised in the case of state-level governments. Furthermore, a coalition government, in general, reduces the possibility of winning in both parliamentary and state elections

Toward a framework for implementation of climate change treaty through self-enforcing mechanisms

Global warming caused by accumulation of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is a public bad, addressing which requires collective action by all the countries of the world. Under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), most countries have negotiated the Kyoto Protocol for GHG emissions control to stabilize climate change. Several issues about the Protocol remain unresolved -- first, most of the significant countries are required to take a decision on whether or not to sign such a protocol, which has large-scale implications for their energy and industrial sectors and economic well-being; second, climate change mitigation is a public good entailing that all the countries would stand to gain due to mitigation action taken by a sub-group of one or more countries; and third, there exists no supra-national authority to enforce such a protocol for the individual sovereign nations. Thus, commitment to cooperate on an international agreement on climate change control remains tenuous. Formally, such a cooperative model is likely to be unstable. The paper discusses the pros and cons of the already proposed international cooperative mechanisms toward climate change mitigation and highlights the problem of information revelation, particularly related to the abatement issues. In this context, it attempts to outline a structure of a self-enforcing burden sharing mechanism for climate change mitigation in an incomplete information framework. The mechanism is an adoption of the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism, widely used in mechanism design theory.Climate change negotiations; cooperative games; stable coalitions; self-enforcing mechanism

Dynamics of Political Budget Cycle

Using the method of optimal control, when an incumbent politician derives utility from voting support and dis-utility from budgetary deficit, the equilibrium time paths of both voting support and budgetary deficit are characterized in a finite time horizon under complete information. The incumbent politician may be an opportunist, in that she/ he is interested in garnering votes for herself/ himself, and manipulates budgetary deficit to achieve this, or else she/ he may be partisan, that is, characterized by heterogenous preferences, reflecting preferences for specific economic policies. The citizen-voters vote for the opportunist as well as the partisan incumbent. However, they reject the same when there is a sufficiently strong anti-incumbency in the opportunist case. The level of voting support obtained in case of both opportunist and partisan is found to be positive and rising over time, but running the budgetary deficit will be costlier for the economy in the former case than the latter. That is, per unit votes garnered by raising the budgetary deficit as compared to the benchmark deficit are lower when the incumbent is an opportunistic than when she/ he is partisan

Dynamics of Political Budget Cycle

Using the method of optimal control, when an incumbent politician derives utility from voting support and dis-utility from budgetary deficit, the equilibrium time paths of both voting support and budgetary deficit are characterized in a finite time horizon under complete information. The incumbent politician may be an opportunist, in that she/ he is interested in garnering votes for herself/ himself, and manipulates budgetary deficit to achieve this, or else she/ he may be partisan, that is, characterized by heterogenous preferences, reflecting preferences for specific economic policies. The citizen-voters vote for the opportunist as well as the partisan incumbent. However, they reject the same when there is a sufficiently strong anti-incumbency in the opportunist case. The level of voting support obtained in case of both opportunist and partisan is found to be positive and rising over time, but running the budgetary deficit will be costlier for the economy in the former case than the latter. That is, per unit votes garnered by raising the budgetary deficit as compared to the benchmark deficit are lower when the incumbent is an opportunistic than when she/ he is partisan

Quality of Schooling: Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff, Technological Progress and Economic Growth

An overlapping generations version of an R&D-based growth model `a la Diamond (1965) and Jones (1995) is built to examine how improvement in quality of schooling impact technical progress and longrun economic growth of an economy by influencing fertility and education decisions at household level. The results indicate that improvement in schooling quality triggers a child quantity-quality trade-off at household level when quality of schooling exceeds an endogenously determined threshold. At the household level, parents invest more in education of children and have lesser number of children in response to improvement in quality of schooling. This micro-level tradeoff has two opposing effects on aggregate human capital accumulation at macro level. Higher investment in education of a child stimulates the accumulation of human capital which fosters technical progress but the simultaneous decline in fertility rate reduces the total factor productivity growth and economic growth by contracting the pool of available researchers. The first effect prevails over latter only when quality of schooling is higher than the threshol

Quality of Schooling: Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff, Technological Progress and Economic Growth

An overlapping generations version of an R&D-based growth model `a la Diamond (1965) and Jones (1995) is built to examine how improvement in quality of schooling impact technical progress and longrun economic growth of an economy by influencing fertility and education decisions at household level. The results indicate that improvement in schooling quality triggers a child quantity-quality trade-off at household level when quality of schooling exceeds an endogenously determined threshold. At the household level, parents invest more in education of children and have lesser number of children in response to improvement in quality of schooling. This micro-level tradeoff has two opposing effects on aggregate human capital accumulation at macro level. Higher investment in education of a child stimulates the accumulation of human capital which fosters technical progress but the simultaneous decline in fertility rate reduces the total factor productivity growth and economic growth by contracting the pool of available researchers. The first effect prevails over latter only when quality of schooling is higher than the threshol

Quality of Schooling: Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff, Technological Progress and Economic Growth

An overlapping generations version of an R&D-based growth model `a la Diamond (1965) and Jones (1995) is built to examine how improvement in quality of schooling impact technical progress and longrun economic growth of an economy by influencing fertility and education decisions at household level. The results indicate that improvement in schooling quality triggers a child quantity-quality trade-off at household level when quality of schooling exceeds an endogenously determined threshold. At the household level, parents invest more in education of children and have lesser number of children in response to improvement in quality of schooling. This micro-level tradeoff has two opposing effects on aggregate human capital accumulation at macro level. Higher investment in education of a child stimulates the accumulation of human capital which fosters technical progress but the simultaneous decline in fertility rate reduces the total factor productivity growth and economic growth by contracting the pool of available researchers. The first effect prevails over latter only when quality of schooling is higher than the threshol

Center-State Political Transfer Cycles in India

This paper attempts to answer two basic questions -- first, whether an election affects the transfers to the states through different component heads such as - grants from the center, loan from the center, finance commission transfer and grants in aids. Secondly, whether different transfer variables and the characteristics of the incumbent government will be able to create the possibility of retaining the power? Using the Arellano-Bond dynamic panel-data estimation methods (GMM) on a balanced panel data from 1980-2010 for 16 Indian states, we find that the right wing and coalition government is less likely to transfer the resources to the states. However, the state level ruling party which is either the same party at the center or ally get more transfers from the center than a non-coalition ruling party. Unlike the political budget cycles in the most literatures, the political transfer cycle is visible in the post-election period, which supports the possibility that while the announcements and promises are made before the election, the actual realization is observed only after the election. This may also be on account of attracting votes in the legislative assembly elections at the state level. The paper is extended to the logit and probit specifications of the model. It is found that; higher voters’ turnout in the state is more likely to win the election. Further, inflation reduces the possibility of winning the election, whereas more experienced government has a higher probability of winning the election. Moreover, our result also show that, the right wing government is more likely to win the election as they also behave more opportunistically and the coalition government where states are its allies lowers the possibility of winning the election