Suchergebnisse

In a recent article, Rogowski and Kayser introduced a claim to the political economy literature that majoritarian electoral systems: (a) systematically privilege consumers relative to producers and consequently, (b) reduce real pries. The authors, modifying an established model of regulation showed that, within a competitive political system, politicians favor those who provide only votes over those who provide both money and votes. When producers provide only money, the intuition become apparent even without a model: politicians respond more to voters under systems in which a small change in vote share can produce a large change in seat share. Cross-sectional evidence for the OECD countries in 1990 was strongly supportive, suggesting that real prices were, all else equal, about 10 percent lower in the average OECD country with single-member district electoral systems than in those that used some form of proportional representation. The relationship observed between electoral systems and prices in Rogowski and Kayser could prove anomalous, spurious, or unfounded for too many reasons. As a necessary prologue to the data analysis, the author next considered issues of measurement and of model specification. The author also showed the panel data and the empirical testing in detail. Different model was tested.

As difficult as it might seem to define governance, it appears to be that much more difficult to measure it. Since the World Bank Institute launched the Worldwide Governance Indicators in the late 1990s, the governance indicators field has flourished and experienced significant advances in terms of methodology, data coverage and quality, and policy relevance. Other major initiatives have added to a momentum that propelled research on governance indicators seen in few other academic fields in the economic and social sciences. Given these developments and the prominence and policy relevance the field of governance indicator research has achieved, the time is ripe to take stock and ask what has been accomplished, what the shortcomings and potentials might be, and what steps present themselves as a way forward. This volume--the fifth edition in an annual series tackling different aspects of governance around the world--assesses what has been achieved, identifies strengths and weaknesses of current work, and points to issues that need to be tackled in order to advance the field, both in its academic importance as well as in its policy relevance. In short, the contributions to this volume explore the scope of existing governance indices and indicator frameworks, elaborate on current challenges in measuring and analysing governance, and consider how to overcome them