Suchergebnisse

Fil: Torre, Iván. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía; Argentina. ; Los debates públicos entre candidatos durante la campaña electoral son una práctica común en la mayoría de las democracias modernas. Al día de hoy los determinantes de esta práctica no están claros al comparar entre países: si bien académicos han estudiado la decisión individual que lleva a un candidato a participar o no en un debate, poco se sabe sobre qué es lo que hace más probable que estos debates se celebren en un país o en otro. En este trabajo me focalizo en el rol de la tecnología de los medios de comunicación y estudio la relación entre los debates electorales y la penetración de la televisión. Para llevar adelante este estudio construí una base inédita que registra cuándo se realizaron debates electorales para la posición ejecutiva más alta en 32 países democráticos en el período 1945-2008. Encuentro que la penetración de la televisión está positivamente asociada con una mayor probabilidad de celebrar debates electorales, aunque esta relación es no-lineal: existe un umbral –alrededor de 27 televisores cada 100 habitantes- que aumenta enormemente la probabilidad de que dicha práctica se lleve a cabo. Chequeo la solidez de las estimaciones verificando si las características institucionales del país tienen un efecto y encuentro que la relación entre la penetración de la televisión y los debates electorales es particularmente importante para aquellos países cuyas instituciones tienen origen en el derecho anglosajón. ; Public debates between candidates during electoral campaigns are a common feature of most modern democracies. The drivers of this practice are not well understood in a cross-country setting: whilst researchers have studied the individual decision that drives a candidate to engage or not in such debate, little is known about what makes some countries more prone to hold this type of political events than others. In this paper I focus on the role of media technology by studying the relationship between electoral debates and the penetration of television. To do so, I built a unique database that registers the timing of electoral debates for the highest executive position in 32 democratic countries for the period 1945-2008. I find that, indeed, increased TV penetration is positively associated with a higher probability of holding electoral debates, although this relationship is non-linear: there is a threshold –around 27 TV sets per 100 inhabitants- which increases dramatically the probability of such event happening. I check the robustness of the estimates by looking at whether institutional characteristics have an effect and find that the relationship between TV penetration and electoral debates is particularly important for countries whose institutions trace to Common Law. ; Galiani, Sebastián

This paper develops an indicator that measures the level of human capital to address the specific education and health challenges faced by middle income countries. We apply this indicator to countries in Europe and Central Asia, where productive employment requires skills that are more prevalent among higher education graduates, and where good health is associated to low levels of adult health risk factors. The Europe and Central Asia Human Capital Index (ECA-HCI) extends the World Bank's Human Capital Index by adding a measure of quality-adjusted years of higher education to the original education component, and it includes the prevalence of three adult health risk factors - obesity, smoking, and heavy drinking - as an additional proxy for latent health status. The results show that children born today in the average country in Europe and Central Asia will be almost half as productive as they would have had they reached the benchmark of complete education and full health. Countries with good basic education outcomes do not necessarily have good higher education outcomes, and high prevalence of adult health risk factors can offset good education indicators. This extension of the Human Capital Index could also be useful for assessing the state of human capital in middle-income countries in general.

We exploit three natural experiments in Argentina in order to study the role of legislative malapportionment on the biased federal tax sharing scheme prevalent in the country. We do not find support to attribute it to legislative malapportionment during periods when democratic governments were in place; nor did we find any evidence that the tax sharing distribution pattern became less biased under centralized military governments. We argue that these results are at least partly attributable to two of Argentina's institutional characteristics: first, the predominance of the executive branch over the legislature (main fiscal decisions are the outcome of a bargaining process among executive authorities); and, second, the lack of any significant difference in the pattern of geographic representation in the executive branch under democratic and autocratic governments. Thus, the observed biases in the distribution of tax revenues among the Argentine provinces are not caused by legislative malapportionment, but are probably the result of a more structural equilibrium that transcends the geographic distribution of legislative representation and even the nature of the political regime. Our findings illustrate the importance of informal institutions and de facto mechanisms to study fiscal federalism in developing countries.

Abstract
This article analyses the reopening process of countries in Europe and Central Asia after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides evidence on the effects of different reopening trajectories and their timing and speed on economic recovery. The analysis indicates that countries that adopted a gradual, staged reopening experienced stronger economic recovery compared with the countries that rushed into lifting the restrictive measures before the pandemic was under control. Postponing lifting the restrictions until after the pandemic's peak was reached has a positive impact on economic activity. Governance also matters: a higher level of trust in government is associated with increased economic activity among countries that carried out a gradual reopening process. There is also suggestive evidence that providing people objective data on the progress of the pandemic may speed up the recovery process. (JEL codes: D14, E21, and G51).

AbstractThis paper estimates the economic impact of the non‐pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by countries in Europe and Central Asia during the initial stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic. The analysis relies on daily electricity consumption, nitrogen dioxide emission and mobility records to trace the economic disruptions caused by the pandemic and calibrate these measures to estimate the magnitude of the economic impact. To address the potential endogeneity in the introduction of NPIs, we instrument their stringency by the extent of a country's social ties to China. The results suggest that the NPIs led to a decline of about 10% in economic activity across the region. On average, countries that implemented non‐pharmaceutical interventions in the early stages of the pandemic appear to have better short‐term economic outcomes and lower cumulative mortality, compared with countries that imposed non‐pharmaceutical interventions during the later stages of the pandemic. Moreover, there is evidence that COVID‐19 mortality at the peak of the local outbreak has been lower in countries that acted earlier. In this sense, the results suggest that the sooner non‐pharmaceutical interventions are implemented, the better are the economic and health outcomes.