Suchergebnisse

I study the relationship between political institutions and sovereign borrowing when constitutional constraints are systematically chosen to obtain better credit conditions. I argue that the impact of institutional constraints on country risk premia depends on the government's concern with the country's creditworthiness and its "willingness to repay"; two variables that are hardly observable. To properly evaluate the relationship between political institutions and sovereign borrowing, I focus on the link between institutional constraints and the risk premia of Argentine bonds between 1822 and 1913. Specifically, I analyze whether a "structural break" in the government's cost of borrowing time-series exists. I use the Perron-Volesang test for structural change with unknown break dates. The statistical analysis indicates that the adoption of institutional constraints led to significant improvements in borrowing terms: the series has a single structural change; and the distinctive break point is associated with the country's adoption of constitutional checks and balances. Time-series regressions and instrumental variables (IV) estimation reinforce these findings. Adapted from the source document.

Legislatures are critical institutions for the effective functioning of a democratic system and in the policymaking process. They are expected to represent the needs and wishes of citizens, identify problems and adopt statutes to address them, and oversee the implementation of policies. However, the extents to which Latin American legislatures fulfill these roles vary greatly from country to country. Despite the recent proliferation of research on executive-legislative relations in Latin-America, comparative knowledge of how legislative institutions operate in these countries is still quite limited. In an effort to improve understanding in this area, I evaluate the extent and nature of the policymaking role played by 18 Latin American legislatures. Specifically, I use multidimensional scaling (MOS) techniques to test if and how the dimensions by which these legislatures have been previously distinguished correspond to observed similarities among them. The analysis reveals that four types of legislatures can be identified. The findings also confirm that those legislatures with greater capabilities are the ones that play more active roles in the policy making process. Adapted from the source document.

I used elite survey data and scaling techniques to estimate the location of political actors (parties, chief executives, and legislators) from nine countries in a common ideological space. The recovered ideological configuration of each country accurately reflects the description of that country's political landscape given by the popular press and in the scholarly literature. My findings demonstrate that data generated by survey responses can be reliably used to locate legislators' ideological positions in a low‐dimensional space in a manner analogous to the roll‐call‐based methods commonly used in the scholarship on the U.S. Congress. My approach has two important advantages over methods that use roll‐call data, expert surveys, or some combination thereof. First, it does not rely on recorded votes and so is unaffected by concerns about the validity of roll‐call data as unbiased indicators of legislator preference. And, because it does not require access to voting records, this approach can be applied to any legislature in the world. Second, my method can be used to estimate the location of political actors in a common ideological space.

I used elite survey data and scaling techniques to estimate the location of political actors (parties, chief executives, and legislators) from nine countries in a common ideological space. The recovered ideological configuration of each country accurately reflects the description of that country's political landscape given by the popular press and in the scholarly literature. My findings demonstrate that data generated by survey responses can be reliably used to locate legislators' ideological positions in a low-dimensional space in a manner analogous to the roll-call-based methods commonly used in the scholarship on the U.S. Congress. My approach has two important advantages over methods that use roll-call data, expert surveys, or some combination thereof. First, it does not rely on recorded votes and so is unaffected by concerns about the validity of roll-call data as unbiased indicators of legislator preference. And, because it does not require access to voting records, this approach can be applied to any legislature in the world. Second, my method can be used to estimate the location of political actors in a common ideological space. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the domestic politics of sovereign debt crises. I focus on two alternative mechanisms that aggregate the preferences of domestic actors over debt repayment: single‐party versus multiparty coalition governments. I uncover a very strong empirical regularity using cross‐national data from 48 developing countries between 1971 and 1997. Countries that are governed by a coalition of parties are less likely to reschedule their debts than those under single‐party governments. The effect of multiparty coalitions on sovereign defaults is quantitatively large and roughly of the same order of magnitude as liquidity factors such as debt burden and debt service. These results are robust to numerous specifications and samples.