Suchergebnisse

This thesis consists of five essays in the field of political economy. The first part of the thesis includes three essays covering various aspects of the political economy of globalization and economic reforms, which are linked in several ways. The second part of the thesis includes two essays on the political economy of development in India. The aim of this introductory section is to give a brief and non-technical overview of the essays, as well as to explain the links between them. The discussion of the contribution of the research to the existing literature will be carried out separately in each essay. Globalization and economic reforms are two important concepts in the international political economy field. Explaining the social effects of both has been at the center of the international political economy literature for an extensive period of time. Much has been written about the effects of globalization on social outcomes (Dreher, Gaston, and Martens 2008, Schneider, Barbieri, and Gleditsch 2003) and there are at least two distinct trains of thought in academia and the public discourse. One view is that the structural changes towards more liberal economic policy can positively transform the economy and polity, increasing economic growth and welfare, as well as bringing much required modernization (Bhagwati 2004, Wolf 2004, Friedman 1999). On the other hand, more pessimistic voices, which include mainstream economists such as Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and Marxist critical theorists, believe that globalization can simultaneously promote a 'race to the bottom' in social standards that degrades communitarian bases of social stability and welfare (Rodrik 1997, Stiglitz and Charlton 2006). In fact, the global financial crisis of 2008, where people took to the streets in both developing and developed countries, has made the issue of whether or not globalization and economic reforms create socially undesirable consequences, ever more crucial. The first part of the thesis sheds new light on various aspects of the social effects of globalization and economic reforms, reviewing findings in the literature to date and extending existing theories. A major contribution of the thesis is the rigorous and thorough empirical evaluation of the human rights effects of economic reforms, and to what extent globalization has induced a race to the bottom in labour standards, while also contributing new empirical findings to extend the research surrounding the side effects of participating in IMF programs. The thesis is structured as follows. In chapter 1, we focus on the impact of economic reforms and economic freedom on human rights. It is argued that economic policy reforms will benefit most people in terms of better access to goods, lower inflation, and better economic opportunities (Murphy et al. 1991). However, critics of market reforms see the majority as losers from such reforms, expecting resistance that would lead to political repression (Przeworski 1991). Using the change in the Index of Economic Freedom as a measure of market liberalization reforms, employing data from a panel of 117 countries for the 1981–2006 period, the results show a strong positive association between reforms towards more free markets and governments' respect for human rights, controlling for a host of relevant factors, including the possibility of endogeneity. These results lend support to those who argue that freer markets generate better economic conditions and higher levels of social harmony. In fact, halfhearted measures at implementing reforms could be dangerous to human rights. After exploring the impact of economic reforms on human rights, we continue by linking economic liberalization policies prescribed by international organizations such as the IMF to the outbreak of civil war in chapter 2. As the global economic downturn has heightened concerns over intervention by international financial institutions, as well as political stability, a prominently published work by Hartzell, Hoddie and Bauer (2010) purports to show that signing on to an IMF Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) increased the risk of civil war during the 1970–1999 period. They claim that the IMF's SAPs push economic liberalization to the point where some people are so negatively affected as to foment civil war. We advance this debate by critically examining their theoretical and empirical evidence, particularly questioning their crucial assumptions about the impact of IMF programs on the economic environment in terms of the actual winners and losers from economic liberalization, and who might be in a position to rebel. Separating the effects of crises from IMF interventions is crucial since crises also generate losers in their own right. With only minor adjustments to their study, we find the exact opposite of what they conclude. We show that their measure of signing on to an IMF program remains consistently insignificant in explaining the outbreak of civil war, using the threshold of 25 battle deaths when defining the onset of a civil war. These results suggest that their operationalization of the IMF variable, as well as the utilization of large-scale civil wars (1000 deaths and above), captures the effect of ongoing war rather than the effects of liberalization. After extending the time period under study from 1970–1999 to 1970–2008, as well as making some minor changes to operationalization, again we find that IMF involvement is at worst a poor predictor of conflict, and at best, an alleviator of the risk. The next chapter turns to a topic which is currently the focus of both politicians and the labour unions in general. We analyze whether inter-country competition for investment has adverse effects on labour standards. Among the many concerns over globalization is that as nations compete for international firms, they will relax labour standards as a method of lowering costs and attracting investment. Using spatial econometric estimation on panel data for 148 developing countries over 18 years, we find that the labour standards in one country are indeed positively correlated with labour standards elsewhere (i.e., a reduction in the labour standards of other countries reduces the labour standards of the country in question). This interdependence is more evident in labour practices (i.e., enforcement) than in labour laws. Furthermore, competition is most fierce in those countries which already have low standards. Since there has been a decline in the labour practices and laws across all three groups, this is possible evidence of a race to the bottom as nations compete for investment. The second part of the thesis focuses on essays on the political economy of development in India. India is often hailed as one of the success stories of globalization (Basu 2008). Indeed, after the inception of market economic reforms in 1991, economic growth has been both sustained and impressively robust in terms of national economic indicators (Basu 2008). However, despite rapid economic growth during the post-1990 period, the benefits of economic growth are unevenly distributed, and some areas and groups of people have seen their living standards decline (Banerjee 2010). One could argue that this is somewhat surprising given the rapid surge in economic growth in recent years (Bardhan 2010). In connection with this, two critical issues have attracted a lot of attention, both within and outside India. First is the issue of corruption which is seen as a hindrance to prosperity and development, and the second is the emergence of India as one of the major donors of development aid. In chapter 4, we focus particularly on the influence of the timing of elections on controlling corruption. Firstly, we develop a conceptual framework that extends theories of political budget cycles to corruption, where an incumbent government considers controlling corruption based purely on political considerations. More specifically, we investigate whether the timing of elections affects the responsiveness of the incumbent government to control corruption. Secondly, we empirically test the predictions of the conceptual framework using 30 Indian states during the 1988–2009 period. Consistent with the conceptual framework developed, i.e., an incumbent politician might exert greater effort in an election year to control corruption, the findings show that scheduled elections (and not unscheduled elections) are associated with an increase in the number of corruption cases registered. In addition, we find that corruption cases registered tend to increase as a scheduled election year draws closer. Furthermore, the effects are found to be stronger in 'swing states' (where the margin of victory of the incumbent in the previous election was 5% or less), and in state scheduled election years which coincide with national elections. On the other hand, there is no effect of scheduled elections on corruption cases being investigated by anti-corruption agencies. The following chapter examines a puzzling question about India. Here, we analyze what determines Indian development aid. It is indeed puzzling to note that India, which has a large domestic population suffering from underdevelopment, chronic poverty and mal-governance, is emerging as an important aid donor. With the intension of learning why poor countries provide foreign aid, this is the first work to econometrically analyze India's aid allocation decisions. We utilize cross-sectional data on aid commitments to 128 developing countries by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Export-Import Bank of India, obtained in US dollars from AidData for the 2008-2009 period. We then compare India's bilateral aid allocation with that of other donors to examine if India is any different regarding the motivation behind its allocation decisions. The findings show that India's aid allocation decisions are largely driven by commercial and political self-interest. While recipient need does not seem to be a key determinant, neighboring countries receive considerable attention.

PROFESSOR LAZARSFELD ONCE REFERRED TO SOCIOLOGY AS BEING IN A sense a residuary legatee, the surviving part of a very general study, out of which specializations have successively been shaped.The same might be said of political science. In the West the first deliberate and reflective studies of political life were made in Greece at the end of the th century BC, and in the succeeding century. The histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, some of the pamphlets attributed to Xenophon, above all the normative and empirical studies of Plato and Aristotle were among the direct ancestors of contemporary political science. Parallel examples are to be found in the intellectual history of China, India and Islam. It seems that at certain stages in the development of great societies questions of legitimacy, power and leadership assume supreme importance; and intense intellectual effort, using the best analytical tools available, is devoted to the study of man as brought to a focus in the study of politics.

Defence date: 9 December 2019 ; Examining Board: Prof. Andrea Mattozzi, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Andrea Ichino, European University Institute (Co-supervisor); Prof. James M. Snyder, Jr., Harvard University; Prof. Tommaso Nannicini, Università Bocconi ; In the first chapter, I study whether the introduction of primary elections induces more or less political polarization. Before 1976, only representatives from Indiana had to pass through the primaries, whereas the reform introduced primaries for Indiana's US senators too. Using a difference-in-differences, I show that primaries deliver less-polarized politicians and account for one-fifth of the pre-reform average ideological gap between parties. I interpret the results in the light of a conceptual framework in which primaries lower the cost of participating in candidate selection procedures, giving incentives to participate to moderate voters as well. The second chapter is coauthored with D. Iorio and A. Mattozzi. We use a newly collected dataset from 63 democracies, and we construct the tenure accumulated by the ruling party while in office. We merge these data with fiscal policy indicators. We find an expenditure elasticity of 0.061 and a deficit elasticity of 0.055 over the period 1972-2014. Our findings point into the direction of a honeymoon effect: the older is the coalition of parties, the more divisive tend to be the available policy choices, which require costly transfers in the form of public expenditure to keep coalition members together later on. In the third chapter, I exploit newly collected data on ties between local politicians in Italy from 1985 onwards, to study the relation between cross-party connections and future career prospects. Exploiting a difference-in-discontinuities design, I find that ruling coalition members connected with the runner-up are twice as likely to be promoted to the council in which the runner-up leads the opposition. The effect of connections with the leader of the rivals disappears when I consider appointments to boards of state-owned enterprises. These findings suggest that connected politicians act as political brokers and smooth the relationship between government and opposition. ; 1. Political Polarisation and Primary Elections 2. Good Old Spendthrift. The Fiscal Effects of Political Tenure 3. 'Keep Friends Close, But Enemies Closer': Connections and Political Careers

The thesis addresses three questions related to the main goals of elections, preference aggregation and politicians' accountability. In the first chapter, we explore the effect of adopting a closed or open list proportional representation system on the representation of minorities in Parliaments. The two systems differ in the possibility for the electorate to express preferential votes for candidates within party-lists. We show that minorities are proportionally represented only under open list, if voters can vote for a limited number of candidates. In all other cases, minorities are poorly represented, or not represented at all. The second chapter provides an explanation for sub-optimal policy making decisions by incumbents. We show that the possibility to stand for re-election can induce them to address less relevant issues, when more relevant ones are too difficult to solve. As failing to solve an issue constitutes a bad signal about their quality, politicians prefer to address easier ones, even if they are less important for the electorate. The goal of the third chapter is to axiomatically characterize a measure of ethnic voting, defined as the extent to which voting decisions are affected by ethnic motivations. The main property we impose on the measure is neutrality with respect to size of ethnic groups and total support of parties. We identify the class of size neutral measures of ethnic voting and investigate monotonicity axioms that are compatible with this property. ; (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2014

The thesis addresses three questions related to the main goals of elections, preference aggregation and politicians' accountability. In the first chapter, we explore the effect of adopting a closed or open list proportional representation system on the representation of minorities in Parliaments. The two systems differ in the possibility for the electorate to express preferential votes for candidates within party-lists. We show that minorities are proportionally represented only under open list, if voters can vote for a limited number of candidates. In all other cases, minorities are poorly represented, or not represented at all. The second chapter provides an explanation for sub-optimal policy making decisions by incumbents. We show that the possibility to stand for re-election can induce them to address less relevant issues, when more relevant ones are too difficult to solve. As failing to solve an issue constitutes a bad signal about their quality, politicians prefer to address easier ones, even if they are less important for the electorate. The goal of the third chapter is to axiomatically characterize a measure of ethnic voting, defined as the extent to which voting decisions are affected by ethnic motivations. The main property we impose on the measure is neutrality with respect to size of ethnic groups and total support of parties. We identify the class of size neutral measures of ethnic voting and investigate monotonicity axioms that are compatible with this property. ; (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2014

This dissertation examines three topics in political economy. Chapter 1 studies electoral cycles in public sector employment around US gubernatorial elections. Chapter 2 investigates the well-known fact that the US economy grew faster during Democratic presidencies and to what extent this phenomenon generalizes with respect to state-level elected offices. Chapter 3 studies how the use of best-worst voting rules influences the strategic position-taking behavior of political candidates in a spatial election model.

This dissertation studies the determinants of political institutions and their impact on economic development in various historical contexts. The first chapter asks: Why did the Catholic Church's power decline earlier in Northwestern Europe than in the East and South? I argue that differential demand for collective security in the face of the possible invasion by the "infidels" was an important factor in the Church-state relations. Catholic states had to cooperate to achieve military success and, therefore, delegated legal and fiscal authorities to the Church. To measure the Church's political power, I have assembled a novel dataset on appointments of bishops between 1198 and 1517. I find that in the dioceses located closer to the "infidels," bishops were differentially more likely to be selected by the pope or cathedral chapters than by secular rulers.The second chapter examines the economic origins of discrimination against Jewish entrepreneurs in the Russian Empire. Several changes in government policy between 1889 and 1894 freed large amounts of domestic private capital that now had to be reinvested in the equity market. I explore the relationship between anti-Jewish restrictions in the equity market, that began in 1890, and capital intensity of manufacturing industries. Using the RUSCORP database of all manufacturing corporations created in 1891–1902 and novel data on all Russian factories in 1890, I find a positive association between capital intensity and the probability of restrictions.In the third and final chapter, I study the role of labor mobility restrictions, that existed under serfdom, in shaping economic development. In the Russian Empire, twenty-three million people, who were serfs in 1858 and were not allowed to move to cities, were freed by 1870. I develop a structural model of rural-urban migration incorporating restrictions on mobility, features of the countryside and cities, and the travel costs. I estimate this model using novel detailed data on peasants, cities, and railroads in 1811–1910. The estimated parameters suggest that construction of railroads was the single most important factor explaining rural-urban migration. This is likely because allocation of rural labor was not efficient historically, independently from the impact of serfdom.

This thesis is comprised of three chapters. In the first chapter, I examine a voting model where two political parties have fixed positions on a unidimensional policy space but where the implemented policy is the convex combination of the two positions and study the effects of opinion polls on election results and social welfare. Voters are completely agnostic about the distribution of preferences and gain sequential and partial information through series of opinion polls. Voters' behavior is driven in part by regret minimization. The mass of undecided voters decreases monotonically with the number of polls, but may not necessarily disappear. Voters who remain undecided have centrist ideologies. Finally, social welfare is not necessarily increasing in the number of polls: having more polls is not always better. Features of the model are con firmed by empirical evidence. In the second chapter, which is a joint work with Agustin Casas and Guillermo Diaz, we evaluate the effect of an institutional provision designed to increase accountability of local officials, and we show that its implementation can lead to a distribution of power within the legislature which is not consistent with voters' true preferences. The cause of this inconsistency is the ballot design which asymmetrically affects the officials listed on it. We analyze the case of the Lima's 2013 city legislature recall referendum and show that the design of the referendum ballot had adverse and signifficant effects on the composition of the Lima's city legislature. We also show that the election results with more \neutral" ballot designs would have been signifficantly different, and the composition of the legislature would have been more representative of voters' true preferences. More specifically, we use our results to simulate the outcome of the election with a random order of candidates. Even though the voters' fatigue is still present, it affects all parties equally, obtaining a more faithful representation of the voters' preferences. Finally, the third chapter is a joint work with Marco Serena. For small electorates, the probability of casting the pivotal vote drives one's willingness to vote, however the existence of costs of voting incentivizes ones abstention. In two-alternative pivotal-voter models, this trade-off has been extensively studied under private information on the cost of voting. We complement the literature by providing an analysis under complete information, extending the analysis of Palfrey and Rosenthal [1983. A strategic calculus of voting. Public Choice. 41, 7-53]. If the cost of voting is sufficiently high at least for supporters of one of the two alternatives, the equilibrium is unique, and fully characterized. If instead the cost of voting is sufficiently low for everyone, we characterize three classes of equilibria and we find that all equilibria must belong to one of these three classes, regardless of the number of individuals. Furthermore we focus on equilibria which are continuous in the cost of voting. We show that this equilibrium refinement pins down a unique equilibrium. We conclude by discussing an application of our findings to redistribution of wealth. ; Polling in a Proportional Representation System / Christos Mavridis. -- The last shall be the first: failed accountability due to voters fatigue and ballot design / Christos Mavridis, Agustin Casas and Guillermo Diaz. -- Costly voting under complete information / Christos Mavridis, Marco Serena ; Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Economía ; Presidente: Pablo Amorós González; Secretario: Fracisco Marhuenda Hurtado; Vocal: Orestis Troumpounis