On US politics and IMF Lending

The political factors, which shape IMF lending to LDCs, have attracted much attention. The same goes for the role and influence of the US. However, formal modelling is scant. In this paper, we assume that the US is principal within the IMF and seeks to maximize its impact on the policy stance of debtor countries. We derive the optimal loan allocation mechanism, and test the hypothesis that the probability of an IMF loan is increasing in the amount of political concessions countries make. A political concession is defined as the distance between a country’s bliss point and its actual policy stance measured relative to the US. We propose a bliss-point proxy and test our hypothesis in a sample of 68 countries during the period 1986-94. There is support for our hypothesis in the data. Finally, we show that omitting bliss points may lead to endogeneity bias in empirical work.IMF lending; political factors

Exit Polls and Voter Turnout

We set up a model of elections or referendums with two alternatives to study how voter turnout and election outcomes are affected by the publication of exit polls on election day. We find that the introduction of an exit poll influences the incentive to vote both before and after the poll is published, but the signs of the effects are generally ambiguous. The fact that exit polls influence the incentive to vote before they are even published is sometimes overlooked in the debate on their desirability. We show that this can lead to premature conclusions about the impact of exit polls on election outcomes.elections; exit polls; voter turnout

Mice Do Not Take Bribes

This paper explores the empirical association between internet use, e-government and corruption in a large panel of countries covering the 1998-2003 period. We show that higher numbers of internet users and higher levels of e-government are associated with significantly lower levels of corruption. Controlling for most variables used in previous work on corruption and addressing the endogeneity issue, results are shown to be robust and to carry economic significance. This leads us to conclude that well-designed ICT policies are likely to bring substantial benefits in the fight against corruption.corruption; ICT; internet; e-government

Reconsidering the origin of the 21 micron feature: Oxides in carbon-rich PPNe?

The origin of the so-called "21 micron" feature which is especially prominent in the spectra of some carbon-rich protoplanetary nebulae (PPNe}) is the matter of a lively debate. A large number of potential band carriers have been presented and discarded within the past decade. The present paper gives an overview of the problems related to the hitherto proposed feature identifications, including the recently suggested candidate carrier silicon carbide. We also discuss the case for spectroscopically promising oxides. SiC is shown to produce a strong resonance band at 20-21 micron if coated by a layer of silicon dioxide. At low temperatures, core-mantle particles composed of SiC and amorphous SiO$_2$ indeed have their strongest spectral signature at a position of 20.1 micron, which coincides with the position of the "21 micron" emission band. The optical constants of another candidate carrier that has been relatively neglected so far -- iron monoxide -- are proven to permit a fairly accurate reproduction of the "21 micron" feature profile as well, especially when low-temperature measurements of the infrared properties of FeO are taken into account. As candidate carrier of the "21 micron" emission band, FeO has the advantage of being stable against further oxidation and reduction only in a narrow range of chemical and physical conditions, coinciding with the fact that the feature, too, is detected in a small group of objects only. However, it is unclear how FeO should form or survive particularly in carbon-rich PPNe.Comment: 28 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ (December

Cross-Border Flows of People, Technology Diffusion and Aggregate Productivity

A number of empirical studies have investigated the hypothesis that cross-border flows of goods (international trade) and capital (FDI) lead to international technology diffusion. The contribution of the present paper consists in examining an as yet neglected vehicle for technology diffusion: cross-border flows of people. We find that increasing the intensity of international travel, for the purpose of business and otherwise, by 1% increases the level of aggregate total factor productivity and GDP per worker by roughly 0.2%.Technology diffusion, Productivity, IV estimation

Digging deeper: How do different types of organic consumers influence the increasing organic market share?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how sub markets with different degrees of maturity develop during a period of general organic growth, and how different consumer segments behave on these sub markets. The paper uses actual purchasing behaviour of six consumer segments with different attitudes towards food in general and organic production and products in particular. The data is from the Danish market for organic foods, which is one of the most mature markets in the world. The segmentation splits consumers into a positive and a non-positive half, each half consisting of three different segments. The estimations show that the development in general organic consumption varies between segments, and that their behaviour varies between sub markets. The positive half of the population has driven the overall growth in organic budget share at the Danish market over the period 2005 to 2007, while the other half have not changed their consumption significantly. The results indicate that for the most dedicated organic consumers, the organic budget share may be approaching a saturation point for some types of food, but also identifies other types of food which still have a growing organic budget share, even among the most dedicated consumers. The combination of attitudes and actual behaviour for a large number of consumers is new, and the results provide a valuable contribution to the ongoing investigation of organic consumers, and provide new nuances to the understanding of the latest organic growth.organic budget shares, organic consumers, consumer segments, latent class analysis, demand

Cross-Border Flows of People, Technology Diffusion and Aggregate Productivity

A number of empirical studies have investigated the hypothesis that cross-border flows of goods (international trade) and capital (FDI) lead to international technology diffusion. The contribution of the present paper consists in examining an as yet neglected vehicle for technology diffusion: cross-border flows of people. We find that increasing the intensity of international travel, for the purpose of business and otherwise, by 1% increases the level of aggregate total factor productivity and GDP per worker by roughly 0.2%.technology diffusion; productivity; IV estimation

Power outages and economic growth in Africa

This paper estimates the total effect of power outages on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1995-2007. Outages are instrumented using a satellite-based measure of lightning density. As suggested by Henderson et al. (2011), we also combine Penn World Tables GDP data with satellite-based data on nightlights to arrive at a more accurate measure of economic growth. Our results suggest that the annual economic growth drag of a weak power infrastructure is about 2 percentage points.Economic growth; public utilities; electricity; earthlights; Africa

Internal computational fluid mechanics on supercomputers for aerospace propulsion systems

The accurate calculation of three-dimensional internal flowfields for application towards aerospace propulsion systems requires computational resources available only on supercomputers. A survey is presented of three-dimensional calculations of hypersonic, transonic, and subsonic internal flowfields conducted at the Lewis Research Center. A steady state Parabolized Navier-Stokes (PNS) solution of flow in a Mach 5.0, mixed compression inlet, a Navier-Stokes solution of flow in the vicinity of a terminal shock, and a PNS solution of flow in a diffusing S-bend with vortex generators are presented and discussed. All of these calculations were performed on either the NAS Cray-2 or the Lewis Research Center Cray XMP