Economics & Politics最新文献

This study examines features shared by societies built around petroleum and the impact of COVID-19. For our cross-sectional analysis, we use epidemiological data on COVID-19, country-level long-run oil production data, and data on petroleum geology for econometric identification. We first document that a country's long-run oil production is associated with significantly higher COVID-19 deaths. Exploring mechanisms, we find that women's election into political offices reduces the risk from COVID-19, but only in oil-poor countries. Furthermore, we find robust evidence that petroleum wealth reduces the percentage of women in parliament. These findings highlight the risk and plausible mechanisms of COVID-19 vulnerability in oil-exporting countries. Policymakers should be aware of these effects.

This study examines whether comment letters have spillover effects on audit fees. By examining listed companies in China, we find that the frequency of comment letters received by peer firms is positively associated with focal firms' audit fees. The spillover effect is stronger when companies have the same audit firm as their peers and the comment letter is longer, asks more questions, is more negative, or contains more risk information. Furthermore, the effect is more pronounced (weaker) for companies with higher growth (audited by Big Four audit firms). Our findings suggest that comment letters have regulatory effectiveness, which influences companies' and auditors' behavior on a large scale.

The uncertainty surrounding oil-related policies has raised concerns about its influence on revenues derived from resource extraction activities. In this view, the current study aims to investigate the nuanced relationship between oil policy uncertainty (OPU) and resource rents, focusing on oil rents (ORTs), natural gas rents (NRTs), and total resource rents (TRT). Analyzing data spanning from 1985 to 2019 across Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, various econometric models including DOLS, FMOLS, and autoregressive distributed lag are employed to assess the impact of OPU on resource rents. The empirical findings reveal a significant negative effect of heightened OPU levels on resource rents, indicating a reduction in ORT, NRT, and TRT. This negative impact underscores the deterrence of long-term investments in oil exploration and production due to regulatory unpredictability, leading to decreased revenues from oil extraction activities. Additionally, increased OPU contributes to heightened volatility in oil prices, disrupting the stability of resource rents. Furthermore, variables such as FDI inflow, inflation rate, and banking sector development exhibit positive relationships with resource rents, emphasizing their role in bolstering revenues derived from natural resources. The study's implications highlight the necessity for policymakers to address and mitigate OPU to foster stability and sustainable revenues within resource-driven economies. This study contributes to the existing literature by offering empirical insights into the adverse impact of OPU on resource rents.

We model institutional development through Tullock contests. We define appropriability in terms of the extent to which high effort can enable agents to acquire control of the resource in the contest. At low appropriability, all agents share the resource equitably at the Nash equilibrium. Hence, institutions are inclusive and have a high aggregate payoff and equality. Social welfare is high. However, with high appropriability, the strongest agents exclude others from the resource. Institutions are then exclusive. Excessive rent seeking by the strongest agents reduces payoffs but increases inequality. Social welfare is low. We also establish the robustness of the Nash equilibrium under the best response dynamic.

Previous studies report mixed results regarding the relationship between military conscription and educational incentives. We provide new evidence from a distinct institutional environment—the Soviet Union, a totalitarian and centrally planned superpower. We examine the impact of abolishing student deferments on higher education (HE) enrollments. Competing hypotheses about the value of Soviet HE imply an uncertain relationship. For a sample of individuals from Latvia, then part of the Soviet Union, we find that this change significantly reduced the odds of male but not female enrollments. There is no evidence that this relationship varied by nationality. Additionally, we find that males who enrolled in HE just before the deferments were abolished were less likely to complete their education. Our results confirm that Soviet HE was used, in part, to avoid military service.

Using a sample of China's A-share listed firms from 2016 to 2021, this study empirically examines the influence of digital transformation on the pay gap within firms. Based on the optimal salary contract theory, we posit that digital transformation widens within-firm pay gap. Conversely, based on the managerial power theory, we posit the competing hypothesis that digital transformation is negatively correlated with the pay gap. Our findings support the optimal salary contract theory, suggesting that digital transformation is positively related to the pay gap, as evidenced by an increase in executive compensation rather than a decrease in the pay of rank-and-file employees. These findings are robust to various checks, including alternative measurements, quantile regression model, Heckman selection model, and IV-2SLS method. Further tests reveal that the positive relationship between digital transformation and the pay gap is more pronounced in labor-intensive enterprises and those with lower risk-taking abilities. This study argues that a widening internal pay gap in the digital era is a rational market choice, as evidenced by the positive impact of the within-firm pay gap resulting from digital transformation on firms' performance. This study extends our understanding of the impact of digital transformation and enriches the literature on compensation contract design.

We explore the impact of overpaid dividends on future stock price crash risk. Using a dataset of 2662 firms with 15,416 firm-year observations of China's A-share listed firms, our result indicates that overpaid dividends are positively related to the likelihood of future stock price crash risk. The results further suggest that high-quality corporate governance and financial analyst coverage can moderate the positive effect of overpaid dividends on the crash risk. Moreover, continuous overpaid dividends and state-owned enterprises with overpaid dividends have a stronger impact on the crash risk, and overpaid dividends are significantly affected by their peer firms.

What factors affect trade preferences? This article focuses on current-account balances, which despite being de-emphasized by mainstream economic theory, play an outsized role in political rhetoric regarding the costs and benefits of free trade. This article shows that individual preferences over trade openness reflect the mercantilist belief that when a country is running a current-account deficit, trade reduces that country's aggregate employment prospects and diminishes its status on the world stage. This article shows that current-account balances are an important driver of individual trade preferences. The theory's predictions are borne out by hierarchical analysis of cross-national observational survey data, and further supported by the results of an original survey priming experiment in the United States. These results contribute to a growing literature emphasizing the effect of macroeconomic factors on preferences.

We explore the impact of management team ability on firm-level accounting comparability. Through using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2022, the paper documents that accounting comparability has an inverse U-shaped association with management team ability where a certain level of managerial ability leads to the highest levels of accounting comparability. Further analysis shows that high-ability managers have different incentives on accounting comparability when compared to low-ability managers, especially when they suffer financing constraints, possess more proprietary information, experience weak market environment, bear excessive price risk and risk premium and work in the politically connected firms.

I investigate the impact of automation on political behavior in postindustrial societies, particularly focusing on political disengagement. I argue that structural changes in the labor market lead to political alienation due to increased economic insecurities, diminished resources from lower wages, and greater economic polarization. Using hierarchical logistic modeling with varying intercepts by country, I present evidence from survey data across several advanced democracies. I find that workers exposed to technological change are less likely to feel close to a political party, participate in elections, and take part in protests. The impact of automation on political engagement is smaller among wealthier citizens and in highly unionized environments. The political message from these interaction effects speaks to the reinforcing forces between economic inequality and automation and the role of collective organization. My findings have important implications for understanding the links between structural change in labor markets and politics, especially since disengaged workers are the reservoir for radical right parties.