Choosing electoral rules: theory and evidence from US cities

This paper studies the choice of electoral rules, in particular, the question of minority representation. Majorities tend to disenfranchise minorities through strategic manipulation of electoral rules. With the aim of explaining changes in electoral rules adopted by US cities (particularly in the South), we show why majorities tend to adopt "winner-take-all" city-wide rules (at-large elections) in response to an increase in the size of the minority when the minority they are facing is relatively small. In this case, for the majority it is more effective to leverage on its sheer size instead of risking to concede representation to voters from minority-elected districts. However, as the minority becomes larger (closer to a fifty-fifty split), the possibility of losing the whole city induces the majority to prefer minority votes to be confined in minority-packed districts. Single-member district rules serve this purpose. We show empirical results consistent with these implications of the model

Democracy, technology, and growth

We explore the question of how political institutions and particularly democracy affect economic growth. Although empirical evidence of a positive effect of democracy on economic performance in the aggregate is weak, we provide evidence that democracy influences productivity growth in different sectors differently and that this differential effect may be one of the reasons of the ambiguity of the aggregate results. We provide evidence that political rights are conducive to growth in more advanced sectors of an economy, while they do not matter or have a negative effect on growth in sectors far away from the technological frontier. One channel of explanation goes through the beneficial effects of democracy and political rights on the freedom of entry in markets. Overall, democracies tend to have much lower entry barriers than autocracies, because political accountability reduces the protection of vested interests, and entry in turn is known to be generally more growth-enhancing in sectors that are closer to the technological frontier. We present empirical evidence that supports this entry explanation

Government Spending Cycles: Ideological or Opportunistic?

ands. The time series analysis, covering the period 1953–1993, allows for different types of government spending. In general, spending is inspired by ideological and opportunistic motives: all government expenditure categories show an upward drift during election times and the partisan motives behind government spending are clearly revealed: left-wing cabinets attach greater importance to social security and health care than right-wing cabinets and right-wing cabinets value expenditure on infrastructure and defense more than left-wing parties. Constructive comments by Frans van Winden, Wilko Letterie, Peter Cornelisse, Arie Ros, André de Moor, Harry ter Rele and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged

Structure and Response in the World Trade Network

We examine how the structure of the world trade network has been shaped by globalization and recessions over the last 40 years. We show that by treating the world trade network as an evolving system, theory predicts the trade network is more sensitive to evolutionary shocks and recovers more slowly from them now than it did 40 years ago, due to structural changes in the world trade network induced by globalization. We also show that recession-induced change to the world trade network leads to an \emph{increased} hierarchical structure of the global trade network for a few years after the recession.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Partisan Views of the Economy

In this paper it is argued that political parties may have incentives to adopt a partisan view on the working of the economic system. Our approach is based on a dynamical spatial voting model in which political parties are policy oriented. This model revolves around two interrelated issues x and y. The policy maker sets x directly. There exist two views on the relationship between x and y. Model uncertainty confronts policy makers with the problem of the selection of a model to base their actions on. We show that if voters have imperfect information about the working of the economic system that model selection contains a strategic element. Policy makers are inclined to adopt a view on the working of the economic system which fits in with their preferences. There is no inherent logic that places monetarists to the right of New Economists. They have different models of economic mechanism, but they need not have different political values. A conservative can be a Keynesian and a liberal a monetarist. These combinations are in fact surprisingly rare. James Tobin, 1974,The New Economics One Decade Older, p. 62. I am greatly indebted to Peter Broer, Ben Heydra, Jos Jansen and Wilko Letterie for many helpful suggestions. Furthermore, I would like to thank an anonymous referee for his comments

Country characteristics and the incidence of capital income taxation on wages: an empirical assessment

This paper examines the incidence of corporate income taxes on wages using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for 13 OECD countries. Within a wage-bargaining framework, our econometric analysis shows that a substantial share of the corporate tax burden is shifted from capital to labour. However, the magnitude of this shift is influenced importantly by country characteristics affecting the process of wage determination, such as the degree of capital mobility, a country's relative influence over the world price of output and trade unions’ strength

Political institutions and debt crises

This paper shows that political institutions matter in explaining defaults on external and domestic debt obligations. We explore a large number of political and macroeconomic variables using a non-parametric technique to predict safety from default. The advantage of this technique is that it is able to identify patterns in the data that are not captured in standard probit analysis. We find that political factors matter, and do so in different ways for democratic and non-democratic regimes, and for domestic and external debt. In democracies, a parliamentary system or sufficient checks and balances almost guarantee the absence of default on external debt when economic fundamentals or liquidity are sufficiently strong. In dictatorships, high stability and tenure play a similar role for default on domestic debt

Old and Young Politicians

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151327/1/ecca12287_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151327/2/ecca12287.pd

Cross-country differences in unemployment : fiscal policy, unions, and household preferences in general equilibrium

We develop a five period overlapping generations model with individuals who differ by ability and with an imperfect labour market (union wage setting) for the individuals of lower ability. The model explains human capital formation, hours worked and unemployment within one coherent framework. Its predictions match the differences in the unemployment rate across 12 OECD countries remarkably well. A Shapley decomposition of these differences reveals an almost equal role for fiscal policy variables and union preferences. As to fiscal policy, differences in unemployment benefits play a much more important role than tax differences. Differences in households’ taste for leisure are unimportant