Economics & Politics最新文献

As a platform for the trading of bulk commodities, securities, and futures, exchanges, characterized by platform-like attributes, provide inexhaustible power for the further development of commodity economy through horizontal integration. This paper examines the international integration landscape of the modern exchanges through the lens of platform economy theory, specifically examining the ramifications of their horizontal integration on market efficiency. Employing the net utility hypothesis within the Hotelling model, we construct a nuanced trader utility model. Through a comparative analysis of platform profit, trader utility, and social welfare, the research discerns the impact of exchanges' horizontal integration. We highlight the intrinsic incentives for such integration within exchanges and put forth pertinent policy recommendations, adding a dimension of practical relevance to the academic discourse. The paper concludes by highlighting the role of government in promoting the efficiency of platform enterprises.

This study explores how enterprise digital transformation affects audit quality. The results show that the relationship between enterprise digital transition and audit quality takes on a U-shaped. Mechanism test results indicate that during the initial stages of digitization, the restrictive effect of auditor's professional competence mismatch predominates. Conversely, during the mature stages of digitization, the promotion effect of improved auditor's substantive independence predominates. Heterogeneity tests demonstrate that this U-shaped relationship is significant primarily within the sample set of short audit tenure and state-owned enterprises. The study reveals the internal mechanism of the impact of enterprise digital transition on audit quality, offering empirical evidence to comprehend the incremental dynamic effects of enterprise digitalization and mitigate potential adverse consequences throughout the transformation process.

In this article, we investigate the influence of local official turnover on litigation efficiency using manually collected data from listed companies in China from 1995 to 2013. Our findings indicate that official turnover leads to a decrease in litigation efficiency, with a 16.3% increase in the duration of litigation cases. This effect is more pronounced when newly appointed officials are working in different locations. It is more significant when the involved enterprise is a private entity, suggesting that political cycles contribute to the selective enforcement of private enterprises. Further analysis reveals that the adverse impact of official turnover on litigation efficiency is short-lived. The conclusions contribute to the existing literature on official turnover and litigation efficiency and hold potential implications for judicial independence reforms.

In China, the deviation of enterprises from the real economy to the financial sector has raised concerns. Using a sample of listed companies held by central state-owned enterprises from 2009 to 2018, we investigate the influence of government supervision on this deviation. We find that government supervision effectively reduces investments in financial assets by central state-owned enterprises. The impact is more significant in enterprises with internal control deficiencies, especially in those related to finance. Further study finds that the effect of government supervision conducted for the first time, second time, and third time shows a decreasing trend.

The extant research provides inconsistent results regarding the effect of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on firm productivity. There is no research on the effect of OFDI in belt and road (B&R) countries on Chinese firm productivity. In this paper, the impact of B&R OFDI on Chinese firm productivity and its influencing mechanisms are investigated. The main findings of this research are as follows. First, B&R OFDI positively influences productivity by alleviating firms' financial constraints. Second, the presence of market-driven and production-driven subsidiaries in B&R countries exerts a favorable moderating impact on firm productivity. Finally, the productive influence of B&R OFDI is more pronounced for firms in eastern China and for those in the energy and transportation sectors, and it is particularly significant for nonstate-owned enterprises. These findings have practical implications for governments engaged in the design of effective policies for the promotion of B&R OFDIs and for firms developing robust OFDI strategies along the Belt and Road to improve their levels of productivity.

Studies analyzing the pattern of international refugee flows have so far focussed on movements to OECD destinations, even though the vast majority of refugees live in non-OECD countries. Employing a standard gravity model of international migration, we fill this research gap by investigating the impact of destination country characteristics on south-south refugee movements over the period 2004–2019. Our findings suggest that refugees tend to move to safe neighboring countries but also positively respond to local pull factors such as relatively high per-capita income levels and the availability of education and health services when choosing their country of destination. Donors have the ability to affect the direction of south-south refugee movements by investing in the social infrastructure of potential destination countries.

This paper empirically tests the impact of terrorism and counter-terrorism on voting by focusing on the two 2015 general elections in Turkey - and the 2011 general election. This period offers a unique case because, after the first election, the ongoing peace process between the incumbent party (AKP), the political party associated with the perpetrators (pro-Kurdish political party, HDP), and the imprisoned leader of the terrorist organization (PKK) was canceled. Instead, terror attacks recurred and curfews were implemented as counter-terrorism measures. This enables the impact of curfews and terror attacks on electoral outcomes to be analysed in a difference-in-differences setting. Terror attacks are estimated to reduce the incumbent's vote share by 3.2% points, while increasing the vote share of the party associated with the perpetrators by 3.6% points. Curfews are estimated to cancel out the impact of terror attacks in attacked municipalities and decrease the incumbent's vote share by 4.7% points in non-attacked municipalities.

Do natural disasters affect election results? Some studies have shown that natural disasters negatively impact subsequent elections, while others do not. This study investigated the link between natural disasters and local elections using data from the Japanese prefectural governor elections for the years 1985–2015. A rich data set is available for prefectural governor elections in Japan that includes information on who won, the vote shares of all candidates, and when the election was held, among others. We found empirical evidence that the number of days between an election and most recent disaster before election positively impacted the vote share of the incumbent/successor. In other words, an incumbent/successor is likely to have less support in the election immediately following a disaster by the constituencies, but can get more support as time passes after the disaster. Moreover, political alignment with the central ruling parties positively affects the vote share of an incumbent/successor over time between an election and the most recent disaster. These results suggest a possibility that politicians seek popularity not through the implementation of proper disaster recovery policies but by taking advantage of their connection with central ruling parties, which may harm citizens' welfare in the long run.

Recent research shows that populist governments in general depress countries' economic growth and fail to improve income distribution. We study the short-term macroeconomic consequences of populist policies implemented in Poland since 2015. Using the augmented synthetic control method, we find that the populists boosted the gross domestic product per capita by almost 8% between 2016 and 2019. We do not find any effect of populism on inflation and estimate only small labor market impacts. The populists improved tax revenue collection and reduced public debt. A generous child benefit program and other redistributive policies introduced by the populists significantly reduced overall poverty and almost eradicated absolute child poverty. Our results suggest that antiestablishment populists may have macroeconomic viability, at least in the short term.

Central bank independence (CBI) has been widely advocated as a means to address the time-inconsistency problem of controlling inflation. Consequently, many countries have embraced central bank reforms since the 1990s. While extant research in political science has sought to unveil the consequences of CBI, there remains an unexplained variation in the response of countries with regard to capital account openness. Notably, a positive association exists between CBI and capital account openness due to the constraints CBI places on leaders' discretionary monetary and fiscal policies, thereby fostering reliance on financial policy to boost their economies. However, this relationship is contingent on the domestic political contexts of countries. CBI leads to capital account liberalization only when the rule of law is guaranteed, given that CBI is often stipulated by laws. Therefore, in countries where political leaders can easily override formal rules, CBI shows no discernible impact on capital account openness. Employing two-way fixed-effects and error-correction models, the study reveals that CBI increases capital account openness only in democracies, in the presence of multiple veto players, and a high level of transparency. The findings underscore the pivotal role of the domestic political environment in analyzing how CBI constrains political leaders.