Voting after the bombing: Can terrorist attacks change the outcome of democratic elections?

Economists have recently turned their attention to the effects of terrorism. One much debated effect of terrorist attacks is its impact on the results of democratic elections. We use the electoral consequences of the terrorist attacks of the 11-M in Madrid to analyze this issue. We consider this particular experiment since the attack took place only three days before the 2004 Congressional Election, which allows the use of credible identification criteria. In particular, we use the advance voting by Spanish residents abroad, who cast their vote before the terrorist attack, to identify the effect of the bombing. We exploit this macabre natural experiment to run a difference-in-differences estimation using data on three consecutive Congressional elections. Our empirical results indicate that a terrorist attack can have a large impact on the outcome of democratic elections.Difference-in-differences, terrorism, elections, natural experiment

Pairs of charged heavy-leptons from an SU(3) X U(1) model at CERN LHC

One of the versions of the SU(3)_L\otimesU(1)_N electroweak model predicts charged heavy-leptons which do not belong to any class of heavy-leptons proposed up to now. We investigate the production and signatures of pairs of these heavy-leptons {\it via} the Drell-Yan process and the gluon-gluon fusion at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). As an example we study the decay of the exotic leptons into another ones. We see that the lifetime of the exotic leptons can be short.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, Revtex4, Version published in Nucl. Phys.

The pattern of growth and poverty reduction in China

China has seen a huge reduction in the incidence of extreme poverty since the economic reforms that started in the late 1970s. Yet, the growth process has been highly uneven across sectors and regions. The paper tests whether the pattern of China´s growth mattered to poverty reduction using a new provincial panel data set constructed for this purpose. The econometric tests support the view that the primary sector (mainly agriculture) has been the main driving force in poverty reduction over the period since 1980. It was the sectoral unevenness in the growth process, rather than its geographic unevenness, that handicapped poverty reduction. Yes, China has had great success in reducing poverty through economic growth, but this happened despite the unevenness in its sectoral pattern of growth. The idea of a trade-off between these sectors in terms of overall progress against poverty in China turns out to be a moot point, given how little evidence there is of any poverty impact of non-primary sector growth, controlling for primary-sector growth. While the non-primary sectors were key drivers of aggregate growth, it was the primary sector that did the heavy lifting against poverty.Rural Poverty Reduction,Achieving Shared Growth,Regional Economic Development,Subnational Economic Development

Monetary policy transmission in the EMS: A VAR approach

This paper analyzes monetary policy transmission in the European Monetary System using VAR techniques. After a discussion of several V AR identification procedures for the stance of monetary policy, this paper proposes an ¡identification scheme that is essentially consistent with the basic facts and does not have significant puzzles. The strategy is based on extracting the stance of monetary policy from the German system and using that structural shock in the VAR systems of other countries of the EMS. The results show that the stronger the commitment with the EMS discipline, the stronger the effect of the German monetary policy on the monetary policy of other EMS countries and the weaker the effect on the exchange rates. El documento analiza la transmisión de la política monetaria en el Sistema Monetario Europea usando técnicas de V AR (Vectores Autorregresivos). Tras discutir sobre varios procedimientos de V AR para la identificación de la situación de la política monetaria, se propone un esquema de identificación, el cual es esencialmente consistente con los hechos económicos. La estrategia está basada en extraer la situación de la política monetaria del sistema alemán y utilizar el "shock" estructural en los sistemas V AR de otros países del SME. Los resultados demuestran que a mayor compromiso con la disciplina del SME, más fuerte es el efecto de la política monetaria alemana en la política monetaria de otros países del SME y más débil el efecto sobre los tipos de cambio.Transmisión de política monetaria, vectores autorregresivos estructurales Monetary policy transmission, structural VAR

FIGHTING AGAINST MALARIA: PREVENT WARS WHILE WAITING FOR THE "MIRACULOUS" VACCINE

The World Health Organization estimates that 300 million clinical cases of malaria occur annually and its incidence increased during the 90's. There are basically two factors behind the incidence of malaria: "geographical destiny", or ecological conditions, and social conditions, which are related with unstable populations or movements of people. In this paper we explore the influence of civil wars and refugees from wars on the incidence of malaria in the asylum countries using a large panel data. The panel structure helps to separate "geographical destiny" from other social conditions. The results of the estimation show the importance of civil wars? refugees on the increase of malaria during recent years. La Organización Mundial de la Salud estima que cada año se producen 300 millones de nuevos casos de malaria y su incidencia ha aumentado durante los años 90. Hay básicamente dos factores explicativos de la incidencia de la malaria: ¿destino geográfico¿, o condiciones ecológicas, y el contacto social, que está relacionado con movimientos de la población. En este trabajo estudiamos la influencia de las guerras civiles y los refugiados generados por dichas guerras sobre la incidencia de la malaria en los países de asilo usando datos de panel. Esta estructura ayuda a separar el ¿destino geográfico¿ de las condiciones sociales. Los resultados de la estimación muestran la importancia de los refugiados de guerras civiles sobre el incremento de la incidencia de la malaria.malaria, migraciones, condiciones ecológicas. Malaria, migrations, ecological conditions.

Child Malnutrition, Social Development and Health Services in the Andean Region

This study analyzes social, ethnic and regional determinants of child malnutrition, as well as the effects of access to health services in the Andean Region, through a comparison between Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. These three countries share a profile with high stunting prevalence and strong socio-economic, regional and ethnic disparities. The analysis is conducted using DHS (Peru 1992, 1996 and 2000, Bolivia 1997) and LSMS (Ecuador 1998) surveys and it focuses on an international comparative perspective. In the case of Ecuador a detailed analysis is provided. The main task was to identify the determinants of the z-score indicators for height and weight for age. For that matter, multiple equation models were estimated, applying instrumental variables and combining different multivariate procedures, to identify the relative importance of education, housing, ethnicity and contextual regional factors as determinants of stunting in each national case. In all cases we have found strong negative ethnic effects of indigenous ethnicity as well as contextual regional negative factors for highland regions. The results remain significant even after controlling for all relevant socio- economic determinants, such as education, housing and economic status, with few exceptions.nutrition,health,child,cronic,waste,stunting,Child anthropometric measures Principal component analysis

- A THEORY OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND ITS EFFECT ON GROWTH

This paper analyzes the role of religious conflict in the process of development of a country. We construct an index of religious polarization using data on the proportions of each religion in a country. The index of polarization is an alternative to the usual fragmentation index. We argue that for the case of religious conflict the fragmentation index is less appropriate than the polarization measure. We include the religious polarization index in a growth regression specification to determine the effect of religious conflicts on growth. The main finding is that religious conflict is an important factor in explaining economic growth and it is also an important explanation for the so called ¿Africa¿s growth tragedy¿. Moreover, religious polarization has a larger explanatory power on growth than ethnolinguistic and and religious fragmentation. Este trabajo analiza el papel de los conflictos religiosos en el desarrollo de un país. Hemos construido un índice de polarización religiosa utilizando los datos de proporción de cada religión en un país. El índice de polarización es una alternativa al habitual índice de fragmentación. Sostenemos que para el caso de conflictos religiosos, el índice de fragmentación es menos apropiado que el de polarización. Incluimos el índice de polarización religiosa en una regresión de crecimiento para determinar el efecto de los conflictos religiosos sobre el crecimiento. El resultado principal es que el conflicto religioso es un factor importante al explicar el crecimiento económico y también al explicar la llamada 'tragedia del crecimiento de África'. Además, la polarización religiosa tiene mayor poder explicativo sobre el crecimiento que la fragmentación etnolingüística y religiosa.índice de polarización religiosa, índice de fragmentación, crecimiento económico. index of religious polarization, fragmentation index, economic growth.