An empirical application of the median voter model and of the interest group influence model to the Portuguese and Galician municipalities

The analysis of the median voter hypothesis indicates that a more realistic comprehension of local public choice might be achieved with the opening of the median voter model to the interst group influence hypothesis. A non-nested specification that combines the two models is estimated and its results are compared to the median voter model (MVM) and to the interest group influence model (IGM) results. The empirical analysis is developed for the Portuguese and the Galician municipalities. In addition, I tested the hypothesis of the relative political power of the median voter and of interest groups to vary with the dimension of the population of the municipalities. Finally, I analyse the existence of institutional and political differences between the two territories and their effects on the results. Fiscal illusion is compared for Portugal and Galicia.

Empirical analysis of the influence of voters and politicians in the public choice of Portuguese municipalities universidade portucalense

When estimating a specification combining different influences on local public choice, three public issues of different ideological attributes were compared for two periods of Portuguese local government intervention: the beginning and the ending of one electoral cycle. The most exciting results of the paper are the significance of ideology at local level and the decline of its importance in the ending of the electoral cycle. There is also some evidence on the political influence of interest groups, especially in low visible issues. On the general issue, majority is also influent and fiscal illusion is found. Some preliminary panel data results including two electoral cycles are analyzed. JEL CLASSIFICATION: H42; H73; R51 KEYWORDS: Median Voter; Interest Groups; Ideology; Local Government, Opportunistic Political Cycle

Weighted Hardy spaces associated with elliptic operators. Part I: Weighted norm inequalities for conical square functions

This is the first part of a series of three articles. In this paper, we obtain weighted norm inequalities for different conical square functions associated with the Heat and the Poisson semigroups generated by a second order divergence form elliptic operator with bounded complex coefficients. We find classes of Muckenhoupt weights where the square functions are comparable and/or bounded. These classes are natural from the point of view of the ranges where the unweighted estimates hold. In doing that, we obtain sharp weighted change of angle formulas which allow us to compare conical square functions with different cone apertures in weighted Lebesgue spaces. A key ingredient in our proofs is a generalization of the Carleson measure condition which is more natural when estimating the square functions below $p=2$

PRODUCTIVITY, INFLATION, AND INVESTMENT: AN ANALYSIS OF CAUSALITY

This paper elaborates a Vector Error Correction (VEC) in order to determine the causality between inflation and productivity, and between the productivity and investment in Mexico. A VEC allows a causality analysis among cointegrated variables with the same integration order [Hall and Milne, 1994]. This work incorporates the test of constancy in the cointegration rank developed by Quintos (1997). The results show a consistent and bidirectional causality between inflation and productivity. Furthermore, these results denote that some investment components (mainly machinery and equipment imports, and construction) have a strong link with productivity.causality, constancy of rank