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This paper proposes a "before-and-after" approach to empirical examination of the relationship between democracy and growth. Rather than the commonly used cross-country regression method, this paper compares the economic performances of forty countries before and after they became democracies or semi-democracies sometime within the last forty years.The empirical evidence indicates that an improvement in growth performance typically follows the transformation to democracy.Moreover, growth under democracy appears to be more stable than under authoritarian regimes. Interestingly, wealthy countries often experience declines in growth after a democratic transformation, while very poor nations typically experience accelerations in growth.Growth change appears to be negatively related to the initial savings ratio and positively related to the export ratio to GDP.Partial correlation between growth change and primary school or secondary school enrollments and the ratio of government expenditure to GDP is not identified.

The Friendship Theorem states that if any two people in a party have exactly one common friend, then there exists a politician who is a friend of everybody. In this paper, we generalize the Friendship Theorem. Let $\lambda$ be any nonnegative integer and $\mu$ be any positive integer. Suppose each pair of friends have exactly $\lambda$ common friends and each pair of strangers have exactly $\mu$ common friends in a party. The corresponding graph is a generalization of strongly regular graphs obtained by relaxing the regularity property on vertex degrees. We prove that either everyone has exactly the same number of friends or there exists a politician who is a friend of everybody. As an immediate consequence, this implies a recent conjecture by Limaye et. al.

The Friendship Theorem states that if any two people in a party have exactly one common friend, then there exists a politician who is a friend of everybody. In this paper, we generalize the Friendship Theorem. Let λ be any nonnegative integer and µ be any positive integer. Suppose each pair of friends have exactly λ common friends and each pair of strangers have exactly µ common friends in a party. The corresponding graph is a generalization of strongly regular graphs obtained by relaxing the regularity property on vertex degrees. We prove that either everyone has exactly the same number of friends or there exists a politician who is a friend of everybody. As an immediate consequence, this implies a recent conjecture by Limaye et. al. ; Naval Postgraduate School

The Chinese government is in the process of providing health insurance to the uninsured rural population by expanding the rural Cooperative Medical System (CMS) to every rural county. Using the China Health Surveillance Baseline Survey in 2001, we conducted a case study on two CMS pilot programs and investigated whether or not enrolling in these CMS pilot programs has led to an increase in health care utilization and a decrease in the likelihood of catastrophic health spending for rural residents. Matched data sets are produced using propensity score and the instrumental variable (IV) method is used. We have found that the CMS pilot programs have had a significant and positive effect on the probability of seeking medical care and the number of visits. However, the CMS programs did not seem to have had a significant impact on households' out‐of‐pocket health expenditure and on reducing catastrophic spending. The findings generated from the matched data are consistent with those obtained from the full set of data and those obtained from the IV method. (JEL I18)

We empirically investigate the dynamic linkages of the state-level natural gas markets in the USA. By introducing a novel spatio-temporal network quantile econometric model, we can estimate the dynamic cross-state dependency or market integration of the state-level natural gas markets and the dependence of the state natural gas markets on the national crude oil market at different quantile levels. We find that significant local dynamic neighbouring market integrations exist in the natural gas markets not only in the eastern and central states as evidenced in the literature but also in some western and southwest states. Our results also show that there are significant linkages of the state-level natural gas markets to the national crude oil market through the lagged price shocks and the long-run price equilibrium with the national gas markets under varying price shock propagations. The results can help local government and energy users to mitigate the negative impacts from the expected or unexpected fluctuations in the oil and the neighbouring natural gas markets, which will enact appropriate state-level price discovery and energy policy and investment decision makings.

We empirically investigate the dynamic linkages of the state-level natural gas markets in the USA. By introducing a novel spatio-temporal network quantile econometric model, we can estimate the dynamic cross-state dependency or market integration of the state-level natural gas markets and the dependence of the state natural gas markets on the national crude oil market at different quantile levels. We find that significant local dynamic neighbouring market integrations exist in the natural gas markets not only in the eastern and central states as evidenced in the literature but also in some western and southwest states. Our results also show that there are significant linkages of the state-level natural gas markets to the national crude oil market through the lagged price shocks and the long-run price equilibrium with the national gas markets under varying price shock propagations. The results can help local government and energy users to mitigate the negative impacts from the expected or unexpected fluctuations in the oil and the neighbouring natural gas markets, which will enact appropriate state-level price discovery and energy policy and investment decision makings.