Kyklos最新文献

We use matching methods to explore the relationship between the control of corruption and press freedom from 1996–2016. We find evidence that increases in the control of corruption significantly elevates press freedom over both the four-year and eight-year horizon. These effects are strongest for the legal and political environment categories of press freedom. However, we find little evidence that press freedom influences the control of corruption overall, hypothesizing that this lack of an effect could be due to the absence of other complementary institutions (e.g., the rule of law and democracy) and/or because we are using perceptions-based corruption measurements. We find some evidence that press freedom, paired with a strong rule of law system, can reduce corruption. Our results also suggest that reducing press freedom in countries without such institutions is particularly harmful. Lastly, we find that press freedom reduces voter participation yet increases foreign direct investment, suggesting that the perceptions-based measures of corruption may not tell the full story.

Corruption undermines the fiscal agreement between governments and taxpayers, thereby reducing the motivation to fulfill tax obligations and leading to a rise in dishonest behavior among citizens. To examine the effects of corruption, this study utilizes the locally observed corruption question, which provides a new measure of corruption at the local level, in contrast to corruption measures offered by the typical national corruption perception question. Employing a multilevel hierarchical mixed-effect modeling approach, the analysis reveals that locally observed corruption substantially diminishes tax morale, a metric that assesses individuals' willingness not to cheat on taxes. Additionally, this paper identifies various factors that mediate the effects of corruption, including fairness in the tax system, ethnic diversity, and public policies. Furthermore, the study conducts several hypothesis tests to eliminate potential alternative explanations, such as the influence of peers and reduced expected costs of cheating resulting from exposed corruption.

This paper examines whether inconsistent public sentiments on capitalism may lead governments to adopt incoherent economic liberalization packages characterized by uneven attention to different policy areas. We propose that inconsistent sentiments obstruct political consensus-building on reform trajectory within governing coalitions. These questions are explored empirically using a sample of up to 25 postsocialist countries during the initial phase of their market transition (1991–2001). We present evidence that ideological inconsistency of the median voter—defined as the standard deviation of median capitalism-related sentiments among likely voters—is associated with more fractionalized governing coalitions along party lines and that, in turn, higher government fractionalization increases the dispersion of promarket policies. Countries with greater economic policy dispersion have historically experienced lower income growth rates, highlighting the importance of maintaining balanced reform paths.

Monetary expansion can lead to inflation. Using economy-wide measures, such as the all item CPI or the GDP deflator, these effects can be quantified, but this leaves open the question of which prices are inflating more, and thus whether monetary expansion is more harmful to the rich or poor, depending on their respective consumption patterns. This paper constructs quarterly consumer price indices specific to each income quintile in the United States from 1990 to 2022. Using transfer function autoregressive moving average models with exogenous regressors (ARMAX), significant inflationary effects of monetary expansion CPIs for the lowest income quintile are observed that are independent of changes in the CPI for higher income quintiles. More generally, households that are likely to spend a higher proportion of income on goods with inelastic demand experience higher inflation rates. These effects, which are robust to specification, are caused by monetary expansion from Federal Reserve purchases of government debt, but not other assets.

This study revisits the evidence on the role of females in corporate outcomes by investigating the impact of female shareholders and their interactions with female directors on tax avoidance. We build our investigation on gender socialization and homophily theories and on data from an emerging market, Oman, for the period 2012–2019. Our fixed-effects regressions reveal that female shareholders are associated with lower tax avoidance. We also find that female shareholders and directors on the board interact to significantly reduce tax avoidance practices. In an additional analysis, we find that the effect of female shareholders is more pronounced in firms with low-quality audit committees and nonreligious CEOs. Interestingly, we also observe that female shareholders improve the quality of financial reports, consequently reducing tax avoidance. The main findings were verified using various robustness tests including alternative measures and research designs. The novelty of this study is that it provides innocent evidence on the role of female shareholders and their interaction with other females in firm tax activities.

Many important pro-environmental conservation practices do not only require money, but they also require time. This paper examines what role the shadow price of time plays in shaping green preferences across different behavioral domains. Using household production theory, we develop a simple model of “selfish” green consumer behavior that predicts how (i) rising wages and (ii) longer working hours influence how consumers trade-off between purchasing relatively expensive green goods and engaging in time-intensive conservation practices. The model predicts that rising wages will increase the consumer's Willingness To Pay (WTP) for green goods, but also reduce their propensity to adopt time-intensive conservation practices. A second prediction is that self-perceived financial stress and time stress will have asymmetric effects on inhibiting the adoption of green purchasing and conservation practices. Although time stress is predicted to have no significant influence on consumers' tendency to purchase green goods, it will inhibit the consumers' tendency to engage in time-intensive conservation practices. The reverse is true for financial stress. Empirical evidence sourced from a French household survey supports these hypotheses and policy implications are discussed.

Theoretical concerns suggest that psychological wellness risks experienced during one period can influence endogenous preferences in subsequent periods. This study examines the relationship between childhood psychological wellness risk and altruistic attitudes in adulthood. We find that a one standard deviation increase in the likelihood of experiencing childhood psychological distress predicts a 0.28% to 2.32% decrease (in standard deviation terms) in the desire for dynasty-building and generosity during adulthood. Additionally, we find evidence for the altruism-habit formation hypothesis. We suggest that experiencing psychological wellness risk leads to more self-interest–oriented choices rather than altruism-oriented preferences later in life. These results remain robust across multiple robustness analyses.