Economics & Politics最新文献

The theoretical literature suggests that political ideology matters in the decision to contract out public sector services, whereas the empirical literature is divided. We seek to explain the divide in the empirical literature by providing a link from theory to our empirical analysis by describing the nature of political competition. Using the number of seats in English local government as a measure of political ideology, we find that those governments dominated by Conservative party members have a higher likelihood of contracting out, whereas the opposite is true for the Greens. We also investigate the marginal effect of a Conservative seat. Our results suggest that local governments are more likely to contract out waste management and recycling services, the greater the number of seats that are controlled by the right-wing party (Conservatives). However, an additional Conservative seat seems to have a stronger positive influence when one of the other opposition parties (the Liberal Democrats) is controlling the local legislature rather than the Conservative themselves.

This study investigates the dynamics among US–China political relations, flight frequency, and inbound tourism through the utilization of a time-varying parameter vector autoregression model. As political relations warm, there is a notable uptick in flight frequency between the two nations. Moreover, the rising flight frequency would further increase inbound tourists. Interestingly, our analysis reveals no substantial evidence supporting a significant impact of inbound tourists on either political relations or flight frequency. The study concludes with insightful policy implications drawn from these findings.

This study examines the mediating effect of R&D investment on the relationship between corporate governance and enterprise value, considering ownership (i.e., family vs. non-family firms) and jurisdictional differences (i.e., common law vs. civil law). Using a multinational sample from 2009 to 2018, this study reveals that R&D negatively and partially mediates the relationship between corporate governance and enterprise value, with a more substantial effect in family firms within a civil law context. This supports the assumption that family firms are more conservative towards R&D investment. This study highlights the need for strategic decision-making to consider ownership differences and legal context in shaping enterprise value.

This study explores the relationship between populism and corruption, focusing on the impact of the rise of populist parties on different kinds of corruption levels in a sample of 30 European countries over a recent period (1993–2019). Utilizing feasible-generalized least square estimators, our quantitative analysis reveals a positive correlation between the share of seats held by populist parties and both grand and passive corruption, whereas populist electoral support is negatively correlated with public sector active corruption. The findings, robust to several different robustness tests, suggest that while electoral support for populist parties contributes to a decline in petty and active corruption, once in power there is an increase in grand and passive corruption. The consequences of these findings are discussed. In short, this study sheds light on the nuanced dynamics between populism and corruption, providing crucial empirical insights into the consequences of populist movements on governance and integrity.

When and how do donors cooperate? While a growing literature emphasizes the importance of donor coordination for aid effectiveness, little is known about when and why donors join forces to advance common causes. We leverage the proliferation of special-purpose trust funds at multilateral organizations to cast light on this issue. We argue that not only the decision whether to engage but also when to engage—either as “lead donor” or as “follower” after other donors already contributed—carries important (yet overlooked) informational value. We develop expectations about how donors engage with trust funds building on theories of competitive regime creation and bureaucratic politics. We test these expectations using a novel data set of time-stamped funding commitment decisions by 30 OECD/DAC donors in 190 World Bank trust funds established between 1990 and 2020. We find that a donor is more likely to serve as lead donor if it is engaged in similar sectors as its peers. In addition, a donor is more likely to contribute to a fund already controlled by a group of donors if its own policy preferences are aligned with those of the existing members. The results have important implications for our understanding of donor coordination in an increasingly crowded multilateral development architecture.