Journal of Comparative Economics最新文献

This paper empirically investigates the interplay between de jure political institutions and de facto elite-versus-citizen political power in determining the likelihood of the adoption of pro-citizen or aggregate welfare-enhancing economic institutions. Our key innovation is to measure the elite vs. citizens’ de facto power by the stock of land reforms that have taken place up to a given year in a country during the period 1900 to 2010. Our empirical analysis documents that, controlling for permanent country differences, common time shocks and country-specific time trends, and addressing the biases owing to initial differences in land distribution and time-varying omitted variables, democratization correlates with a relatively more likely movement towards aggregate welfare-maximizing policies in countries where adequate citizen power has been built (elite power has been adequately destroyed) over time. In addition, each land reform, which is an incremental destruction of the elite power, is associated with a relatively more likely movement towards aggregate welfare-enhancing policies in countries under democratic regimes, compared to autocracies.

This study examines the impact of risk-sharing on entrepreneurship-driven innovation in an occupational choice model, where entrepreneurs exert effort to innovate. Risk-sharing may increase the number of individuals who become entrepreneurs by limiting the downside risk. The effort of entrepreneurs may, however, be hampered by high risk-sharing if this limits the returns faced by successful entrepreneurs relative to unsuccessful entrepreneurs. We construct a simple theoretical model where risk-sharing may be either private or provided through the welfare state by means of taxation. We show that, in addition to the occupational and effort choice dimensions, the level of public risk-sharing also matters for the characteristics of entrepreneurs.

Conservative Talk Radio continues to shape US politics in the 21st century, but it has a deeper history. Using newly digitized archival records, we provide new evidence on the electoral effects of Conservative Talk Radio in the historically consequential period from 1950 to 1970. Conservative radio hosts like Clarence Manion, Billy James Hargis, and Carl McIntire rapidly expanded their network during the early 1960s before the Kennedy administration took regulatory steps to dismantle their business model. We find that in counties where these shows aired on local stations, the Republican vote share increased following their introduction. Anticipatory effects are small and insignificant, which supports a causal interpretation of this effect.

This study examines the impact of historical disease burden on the development of contemporary China. Using historical records spanning nearly six centuries, we construct a county-level dataset for the distribution of epidemics in China. Our results indicate that historical disease pressure has a positive impact on long-term economic development. This positive association withstands rigorous testing through a series of robustness checks. Furthermore, we find that earlier institutional development in disease control and the improvement in human capital are effective channels. The establishment of disease prevention centers facilitated the early adoption of modern disease control systems, which, in turn, enhanced public health, education, and productive activities.

This study examines the short- and medium-term impacts of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the labor market for Ukrainian workers. Using a unique dataset of 5.4 million online job advertisements for Ukrainian job seekers in Poland and Ukraine over the 2021–2022 period, we show a short-term surge in demand for Ukrainians to work in Poland, while the number of jobs available in Ukraine is relatively stable. Since February 2022, the demand for soft and analytical skills in Ukraine has increased, while the demand for such skills in Poland has remained the same. Moreover, the increase in Polish jobs available to Ukrainian workers is largest for medium/high-skilled jobs and female-oriented jobs. Further analysis suggests a persistent shift (to the left) in wage distribution driven by both the decline of wages within job titles and the change in the composition of jobs across Poland.

Are Chinese government subsidies making the targeted Chinese firms more productive? Alternatively, are efforts to promote productivity undercut by efforts to maintain or expand employment in less productive enterprises? In this paper, we attempt to shed light on these questions through the analysis of previously underutilized microdata on direct government subsidies provided to China's publicly traded firms. We estimate total-factor productivity (TFP) for Chinese listed firms and investigate the relationship between these estimates of TFP and the allocation of government subsidies. We find little evidence that the Chinese government consistently “picks winners”. Firms’ ex-ante productivity is negatively correlated with subsidies received by firms, and subsidies appear to have a negative impact on firms’ ex-post productivity growth throughout our data window, 2007 – 2018. Neither subsidies given out under the name of R&D and innovation promotion nor industrial and equipment upgrading positively affect firms’ productivity growth. On the other hand, we find a positive impact of subsidy on current year employment. These findings suggest that China's rising wave of government subsidies may have generated limited effects in promoting productivity.

Can decentralization of political powers increase trust in government? We present quasi-experimental evidence from Ukraine where political trust has been among the lowest levels worldwide. The national government devolved powers and resources to newly formed local governments (hromadas) between 2015 and 2020; this includes a substantial share of taxes on local incomes. We exploit local differences in the timing of the decentralization reform. Difference-in-differences estimations show that citizens in decentralized communities report more trust in local authorities and participate more often in local elections. The most likely mechanism is the democratic process of coming together to build new local communities. Local trust however does not spill over to trust in national institutions. The results may explain the strong role of hromadas in Ukraine’s resilience against the detrimental effects of the Russian invasion.

What are the economic consequences of geopolitical fragmentation on trade? We answer this question by using a canonical general equilibrium trade model to quantify the trade and welfare effects stemming from world trade fragmentation along geopolitical borders. To calibrate the size of the increase in trade costs, we use a new aggregate measure of trade restrictions that spans over the last 70 years and includes up to 157 countries and estimate the impact on trade of very broad trade policy restrictions in a theory-consistent structural gravity framework. We estimate that a fragmentation into three different trade blocs (Western, Eastern, Neutral)—defined according to how countries voted on the suspension of the rights of membership of the Russian Federation in the United Nations Human Rights Council because of the invasion of Ukraine— would have important effects on trade between them, reducing trade flows by 22%–57%, in the most extreme scenarios. Welfare losses would be the largest in the Eastern bloc, where the median country would experience a welfare loss of up to 3.4%.

Using a newly created dataset of detailed and disaggregated military expenditures, this paper studies the impact of military expenditures on GDP changes in nine Central and Eastern European countries in 1999–2021. The cumulative fiscal multipliers of military expenditures estimated using the Local Projections method take values 0.6 on impact, 1.5–1.6 in the second and in the third year after shock and gradually decrease in subsequent years. They are higher during recession periods. Personnel military expenditures have relatively the highest multipliers among disaggregated military expenditures. Other military expenditures have positive, but lower than unity multipliers, while the multipliers of military equipment purchases are insignificant and close to zero. Cumulative multipliers of military expenditures during military build-up after the outbreak of the war in Donbas were lower than cumulative multipliers in the whole sample.

Basic economics teaches that price caps are bad – limiting the price of a good distorts demand and discourages producers from supplying the market. So why did the Biden Administration, led by Janet Yellen, the consummate economist, champion a price cap on oil from Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022? The answer is that this price cap, implemented for crude oil in December 2022 and oil products in February 2023, differs significantly from the standard cap discussed in introductory economics classes. This paper explains these differences and describes  the first six months this policy has been in existence. We  provide background on Russian oil trade  and describe the goals, structure,   enforcement and economics of the price cap. We review the main concerns and contrast them with the outcomes observed to date.