Kyklos最新文献

The aim of this article is to quantify the relationship between public expenditure on education and individual subjective well-being, providing empirical evidence of the social return on this investment. We use microdata from the European Social Survey (ESS) merged with macroeconomic variables from official sources. Econometric estimations are carried out using multilevel models. Our results show a positive association between public expenditure on education and individual well-being. However, this effect is not homogeneous across educational levels, as robust evidence of a positive contribution is only found for tertiary education. Furthermore, we explore whether this relationship is contingent on individuals' ideological preferences. Our findings indicate that individuals who espouse a conservative ideology exhibit a weaker effect compared to those with a progressive mindset. Nevertheless, the positive correlation between education expenditure and well-being persists for the latter group. To assess the robustness of our results, we have replicated the calculations using a different survey, specifically the Eurobarometer, and conducted estimations with alternative methodologies, which confirm their consistency.

The paper explains two centuries of development of the political systems of the west by the underlying economic fundamentals. Democracy indices for the average country have a strong long-run empirical relation to income that looks like a perfect transition curve. The traditional steady state political system was the three pillars model of king, aristocracy, and Church for half a millennium before modern development. Development caused the gradual but inevitable collapse of this model, as the agricultural and religious transitions undermined two of the pillars. However, all political systems try to consolidate, giving spells of status quo equilibria, so the model broke down in leaps and bounds. Development also caused the growth of the middle class, which came to dominate. It wanted mass representation, so the political system changed to democracy. This explains why the main causal direction is from development, as proxied by income, to democracy.

This paper estimates the time to graduate employment of new graduates from universities in the United Kingdom. Using data from the UK Graduate Outcomes Survey, survival functions are estimated to identify differences in time to graduate employment among different groups of graduates, stratified by institution. Differences in survival functions are confirmed across the different categories of university in the United Kingdom, with Russell Group universities holding a greater probability of employment at each time interval. A Cox Proportional Hazard model is estimated to identify the determinants of the differences in the time to graduate employment, with constant effects associated with secondary school performance, parental degree status, private school status and ethnicity. The remaining effects were shown to be time varying, including institution, degree classification and degree subject, with Russell Group graduates, graduates with high degree classifications and graduates of STEM displaying a persistent advantage in the early career labour market.

This study examines how the impact of economic conditions on criminal activity is mitigated by the presence of labour market policies and that of a sizeable shadow economy. The analysis reveals a positive relationship between economic downturns and property crime, supporting the well-documented idea that economic hardships intensify criminal activity. Most importantly, however, we find that the relationship is mitigated when active labour market policies, as well as labour training, are employed by enhancing skills and productivity, thus lowering incentives for criminal behaviour. Passive policies, on the other hand, also weaken the link, primarily through the income effect, with their effectiveness being increased in the presence of high levels of the shadow economy. High levels of both kinds of labour market policies and of the shadow economy significantly reduce crime, though additional investment in those shows different returns. These findings suggest that a comprehensive approach is required when effective crime reduction is considered during economic downturns, accounting for both formal and informal sector dynamics.

This study uses a novel dataset to examine the impact of early-life inflation experiences on government debt across 30 African nations from 1980 to 2022. We propose that central bankers who encountered inflation crises during their formative years are more likely to develop preferences for hawkish monetary policies. However, for these preferences to influence fiscal outcomes, central bankers must operate within an environment of institutional independence. Indeed, our analysis reveals that past exposures to inflation crises, on their own, have no statistically significant impact on government debt. However, when central bank independence is accounted for, a significant negative relationship emerges, indicating that institutional autonomy enables central bankers to translate their early-life experiences into policies that curb debt accumulation. This relationship holds even after controlling for central bankers' expertise, highlighting the critical interplay between personal history and institutional design in shaping government debt dynamics.