| 1. |
- Jackson, David, 1973-
(författare)
-
Enforcing Social Norms : How Economics Shapes Reputation and Social Punishment
- 2024
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates how the economic environment shapes levels of trust and cooperation and the nature of norm enforcement. The idea that many social norms can be understood as an effective response to challenges presented by the economic and ecological environment has significant empirical support. However, few theoretical models study this relationship in detail.Many existing models of reputation are driven by imperfect information. However, information frictions are often assumed rather than derived. The first paper 'Reputation on Networks', uses a network model to investigate how the structure of a communication network affects the value of reputation. The results suggest an inverted U-shaped relationship between trust and the level of clustering in a network. High levels of clustering limit the number of potential partners agents have access to and lower the value of reputation. While, when networks become too open trust is undermined because agents become information gatekeepers for their reputation.The second paper 'Reputation, Punishment and the Informal Enforcement of Norms', looks at informal enforcement when reputation and costly social punishment are considered within the same framework. The results suggest a complementary relationship between these two forms of social punishment. Because reputation leverages a third-party punishment threat over many future interactions, the mechanism provides a novel and compelling explanation of costly third-party and altruistic punishment. Unlike other models, the theory provides predictions about the overall intensity of social punishment and how this varies with the combined package of behaviours a community regulates using social norms.The third paper 'Ingroup Norms and Relation Specific Punishment', considers when agents can maintain or renegotiate trust with a defector, either bilaterally or within an identifiable group. These agents will adopt an ingroup norm such that members who defect outside the group are still trusted within it. The results detail when agents are individually motivated to punish their friends and ingroup members to support reputation-based trust beyond the group. The analysis provides a novel explanation for ingroup bias and details the conditions for inter-group trust and where relation-specific or ingroup norms will be adopted over universal ones.
|
|
| 2. |
- Baltrunaite, Audinga, 1985-
(författare)
-
Political Economics of Special Interests and Gender
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Political Finance Reform and Public Procurement: Evidence from Lithuania. Can political donations buy influence? This paper studies whether firms trade political contributions for public procurement contracts. To answer this question, I focus on the Lithuanian political economy. Combining data on a large number of government tenders, the universe of corporate donors and firm characteristics, I examine how a ban on corporate donations affects the awarding of procurement contracts to companies that donated in the past. Consistent with political favoritism, contributing firms’ probability of winning goes down by five percentage points as compared to that of non-donor firms after the ban. Among different mechanisms, the hypothesis that corporate donors get confidential information on competing bids prevails. The empirical results are in line with predictions from a first-price sealed-bid auction model with one informed bidder. Evidence on firm bidding and victory margins suggests that contributing firms adjust their bids in order to secure contracts at a maximum revenue. I assess that tax payers save almost one percent of GDP thanks to the reform.Gender Quotas and the Quality of Politicians. We analyze the effects of the introduction of gender quotas in candidate lists on the quality of elected politicians, as measured by the average number of years of education. We consider an Italian law which introduced gender quotas in local elections in 1993, and was abolished in 1995. As not all municipalities went through elections during this period, we identify two groups of municipalities and use a difference-in-differences estimation. We find that gender quotas are associated with an increase in the quality of elected politicians, with the effect ranging from 0.12 to 0.24 years of education. This effect is due not only to the higher number of elected women, who are on average more educated than men, but also to the lower number of low-educated elected men. The positive effect on quality is confirmed when we measure the latter with alternative indicators, it persists in the long run and it is robust to controlling for political ideology and political competition.Affirmative Action and the Power of the Elderly. There is evidence that age matters in politics. In this article we study whether implementation of affirmative action policies on gender can generate additional effects on an alternative dimension of representation, namely, the age of politicians. We consider an Italian law which introduced gender quotas in candidate lists for local elections in 1993, and was abolished in 1995. As not all municipalities went through elections during this period, we can identify two groups of municipalities and use a difference-in-differences estimation to analyze the effect of gender quotas on the age of elected politicians. We find that gender quotas are associated with election of politicians that are younger by more than one year. The effect occurs mainly due to the reduction in age of elected male politicians and is consistent with the optimizing behavior of parties or of voters.Let the Voters Choose Women. Female under-representation in politics can be the result of parties' selection of candidates and/or of voters’ electoral preferences. To assess the impact of these two channels, we exploit the introduction of Italian Law 215/2013, which prescribes both gender quotas on candidate lists and double preference voting conditioned on gender. Using a regression discontinuity design, we estimate that the law increases the share of elected female politicians by 22 percentage points. The result is driven by the increase in preference votes cast for female candidates, suggesting a salient role of double preference voting in promoting female empowerment in politics.
|
|
| 3. |
- Dehdari, Sirus Håfström, 1983-
(författare)
-
Radical Right, Identity, and Retaliation
- 2018
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Economic Distress and Support for Far-right Parties – Evidence from Sweden. This paper studies the effects of economic distress on support for far-right parties. Using Swedish election data, I show that layoff notifications among low-skilled native-born workers account for 31 percent of the increased vote share for the Swedish far-right party the Sweden Democrats. The effect of layoff notifications on support for the Sweden Democrats is larger in areas with a high share of low-skilled immigrants, and in areas with a low share of high-skilled immigrants. These findings are in line with theories suggesting that voters attribute their impaired economic status to immigration, due to labor market concerns. Furthermore, I find no effects on voting for other anti-EU and anti-globalization parties, challenging the notion that economic distress increases anti-globalization sentiment. Using detailed survey data, I present suggestive evidence of how increased salience of political issues related to immigration channels unemployment risk into support for far-right parties.The Origins of Common Identity: Division, Homogenization Policies and Identity Formation in Alsace-Lorraine. We exploit the quasi-exogenous division of the French regions Alsace and Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 due to disagreements in the German leadership to provide evidence of group identity formation within historically homogeneous regions. People in the treated area, which was exposed to repressive homogenization policies aimed to suppress group identity, express a stronger regional identity and support more regional autonomy today. Using a regression discontinuity design at the municipal level, we find that support for two crucial referenda, which would have increased regional autonomy, subscription rates to regional newspapers, and regionalist party votes are significantly higher in the treated area. The results are robust across different specifications and bandwidths, and not driven by language differences, large agglomerations or distance to foreign countries. The differences in regional identity are strongest for the first two age cohorts after World War II and become weaker for later generations.Gender Differences in Revenge and Strategic play: A Natural Experiment. This paper provides new evidence of gender differences in retaliatory behavior. Using game show data from a natural setting where stakes are high, we ask whether men are more likely to retaliate following an attack and whether the gender of the target matters for this decision. The behavior studied in this paper is the decision of whom to send the question to in a quiz show setting. We observe a 23 percent gender gap in the propensity to retaliate: women are less likely to seek revenge. The gender of the target matters for women but not for men, with women being more likely to retaliate against men than women. In addition, we show that retaliation is a successful way to avert future attacks in the short term. This is especially true for women, yet we find that women seek less revenge than men.
|
|
| 4. |
- Folke, Olle, 1979-
(författare)
-
Parties, Power and Patronage : Papers in Political Economy
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three empirical essays in political economics."Shades of Brown and Green: Party Effects in Proportional Election Systems" is the first paper to develop a method for estimating the causal effect of party representation in proportional election systems. This method is applied to Swedish municipalities. The results show that party representation has a large effect on immigration policy and environmental policy. Parties profiling themselves in a policy area also have the largest effects on it. There is no evidence for party representation having an effect on tax policy."Midterm Slumps in US State Elections: Coattails, Power Balancing, or Referenda?" examines midterm slumps in US state legislatures and the mechanisms that cause them. The results show that the party of the governor systematically loses legislative seats in the midterm elections. Through the use of a regression discontinuity design it can be ruled out that this is caused by a surge-and-decline type mechanism. Instead, the results suggest that the midterm slump can be attributed, in about equal shares, to the midterm elections being a referendum on gubernatorial performance and the voters using the midterms for balancing of power."Patronage and Elections in U.S. States" examines if control over patronage jobs increased a political party's probability of winning elections in US States. A patronage system is a practice where a political party, after winning an election, reward their supporters by giving them government jobs. The essay provides evidence that patronage does -- or, rather, did -- help U.S. parties in power to retain it. There is also evidence for an "entrenched" party in power for a longer time period can use patronage more effectively than a "weak" party that usually is out of power.
|
|
| 5. |
- Fukushima, Nanna, 1978-
(författare)
-
Essays on the Economics of the 1956 Clean Air Act
- 2021
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three essays in environmental and health economics.The UK Clean Air Act, Black Smoke, and Infant MortalityThis paper estimates the effects of the 1956 UK Clean Air Act on infant mortality. Using novel data, I exploit the seasonality in demand for coal to analyze the effects of a staggered expansion of a ban on local smoke emission. The findings show that the policy eliminated the seasonal difference in air quality as well as infant mortality. According to my instrumental variables estimates, the reduction in air pollution between 1957 and 1973 can account for 70 % of the observed decline in infant mortality during the same period. The results are relevant to explain the fast decline in post-war infant mortality in developed countries and understand the effect of pollution on infant mortality in many developing countries.A Fine Solution to Air Pollution?This paper studies the effect of an exogenous change in air pollution regulation enforcement on regulation compliance. I exploit the spatial and temporal variation in the roll-out of zonal bans on smoke from coal in densely populated areas in England between 1963 – 1973 to study the effect of regulation on air pollution when the monetary punishment if convicted is doubled. I find that the increase in fine size increased the effect of the regulation on air pollution by 37 percent. However, evidence suggests that the poorest households disproportionally carried the cost of the marginal improvement in air quality from an increase in fine. The findings highlight the distributional concerns associated when designing an effective environmental regulation.Environmental Regulation and Firm PerformanceThis paper investigates the effect of environmental regulation in England in the 1960 – 70s on changes in employment and the entry and exit of manufacturing plants. It matches 1 km2 grid resolution plant data for multiple years with novel data on the location and timing of a roll-out of a ban on bituminous coal, the leading source of energy and heating in industry at the time. I show that the regulation negatively affected employment in low-productive plants but increased the probability of survival, employment, and the entry of high-productive plants. I present a simple theoretical model with heterogeneous firms and find empirical evidence in line with model predictions.
|
|
| 6. |
- Khoban, Roza, 1989-
(författare)
-
Globalization and Development : The Impact of International Trade on Political and Social Institutions
- 2021
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Impact of Trade Liberalization in the Presence of Political DistortionsPolitical distortions are prevalent in many developing countries and can imply substantial productivity losses. Theory is ambiguous as to whether greater openness to trade amplifies or reduces the effects of such distortions. This paper shows that trade liberalization in India decreased the value of firms' political connections, suggesting a reduction in political distortions. First, using variation in firm connections stemming from political turnover, we identify that political connections increased firm performance by 10-20%. Second, we evaluate how the value of political connections changed after India's externally imposed tariff reductions, using a triple-difference and difference-in-discontinuities design. We find that political connections became substantially less valuable when tariffs on input goods were reduced. Our findings imply that access to international markets reduces firms' dependence on political connections to source input goods, thus reducing the distortionary effect of such connections. The results suggest a new margin for gains from trade in the presence of political distortions through a direct effect of trade liberalization on the prevalence of such distortions.Importing Gender EqualityGender equality remains low in many developing countries and can partly be explained by social norms. In this paper, I investigate whether trade and, in particular import, can shift gender norms. Specifically, I study whether trading and interacting with firms in countries with higher gender equality can affect firms' gender composition in India. I construct a global industry-level index of gender equality and exploit India's trade liberalization in the 1990s to study the trade-induced increased exposure to other countries' gender norms. I find that tariff reductions increased the probability of having a female worker only for firms in industries with higher exposure to gender equality. The effect is stronger for firms in industries with higher exposure to gender equality that, to a greater extent, use relationship-specific input goods. Taken together, the results suggest that trade-induced increased exposure to other countries' gender equality can influence firms' gender composition among workers.Trade-Induced Protests: Evidence from the Brazilian Trade LiberalizationThis paper examines whether trade liberalization can induce shifts in citizens' willingness to mobilize and participate in protests. Specifically, I study the regional effects of Brazil's trade liberalization in the 1990s. I show that regions that were exposed to larger tariff reductions experienced a relative increase in protests. Protests increased in harder-hit regions almost immediately after the liberalization, and the effect is amplified over time. By studying potential mechanisms, I show that the surge in protests follows the pattern of the trade-induced increase in income inequality and reductions in government spending.
|
|
| 7. |
- Mitrunen, Matti, 1988-
(författare)
-
Essays on the Political Economy of Development
- 2019
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Structural Change and Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from the Finnish War ReparationsThis paper presents evidence that government industrial policy can promote new industries, move labor out of agriculture into manufacturing, and have long-term effects via increased human capital accumulation and upward mobility. I use plausibly exogenous variation generated by the Finnish war reparations (1944-1952) that forced the largely agrarian Finland to give 5% of its yearly GDP to the Soviet Union in the form of industrial products. To meet these terms, the Finnish government provided short-term industrial support that persistently raised the employment and production of treated, skill-intensive industries. I trace the impact of the policy using individual-level registry data and show that the likelihood of leaving agriculture for manufacturing and services increased substantially in municipalities more strongly affected by the war reparations shock. These effects were persistent: 20 years after the intervention, the reallocated workers remained in their new sectors and had higher wages. Younger cohorts affected by the new skill-intensive opportunities obtained higher education and were more likely to work in white-collar occupations by 1970. This result is consistent with higher returns to education. Finally, I link parents to children to study how the policy affected upward mobility. I show that mobility in both income and education increased in the exposed locations, as people in lower socioeconomic groups benefited from the structural change.Tracing Out the Finnish Kuznets Curve: Famine, Threat of Revolution, and DemocratizationWe study the long-run development of Finland with a particular focus on some causes and consequences of inequality broadly defined. We show that the Finnish famine of 1866-1868 led to increased inequality in the long-run and tighter coercion in the labor markets of the early 1900s. Economic inequality at the time meant political exclusion, as voting rights and vote counts in municipal elections were tied to taxable income. We provide evidence consistent with discontent theories of conflict that these factors contributed to the emergence of the Finnish Civil War in 1918. The threat of revolution became real with the civil war and further led to the successful extension of the franchise. Municipalities with higher levels of inequality and more insurgents experienced a more drastic shift towards equality and higher levels of redistribution after the conflict.Can You Make an American? Compulsory Patriotism and Assimilation of ImmigrantsThis paper investigates the success of assimilation efforts in the U.S. during the Age of Mass Migration. I focus on a largely overlooked case of American nation-building, the introduction of compulsory patriotic acts, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, to American schools in the late 19th century. Using a legislative change in the State of New York as an experiment, I show that immigrant children exposed to compulsory patriotism in school were more assimilated as adults, measured by naturalization, the naming of children, military service, and intermarriage. These positive effects on assimilation hold for immigrants from all the large origin countries. Overall, this paper provides evidence that even softer, hearts and minds types of interventions that do not provide any new information can have long-lasting effects.
|
|
| 8. |
- Odendahl, Christian, 1980-
(författare)
-
Parties, Majorities, Incumbencies : Four essays in political economics
- 2013
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained essays on political economics. The first paper studies the impact of having one party in government versus a coalition of parties, where the exogenous variation in the type of government stems from close election outcomes. It uses a new algorithm to detect these close elections in multi-party systems to answer this question. Based on data from more than 2,000 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria, it finds that single-party governments spend more, not less as is often concluded in the theoretical and empirical literature. The second paper uses the same method of detecting close elections to extract exogenous variation, but looks at the political power of parties and its effect on tax policies. It finds significant effects of party power that are mostly in line with expectations. The third paper looks at the transition of voters between parties in three consecutive elections for the state parliament in Bavaria, and infers parties’ ideological positions from these transition flows. After estimating the transition matrices with a method based on maximum entropy, it uses these matrices to compute a distance matrix and uses multi-dimensional scaling to place parties in a policy space. The resulting positions of parties are plausible, consistent across both transition periods, and comparable to those estimated with other methods. The final paper studies the heterogeneity in the advantage of incumbent district candidates in German federal and state parliament elections. In particular, it looks at the party in government, and how that affects the incumbency advantage of district candidates. It finds that an incumbency effect only exists (for both major parties) if the center-left SPD is in government, a heterogeneity that is robust across different specifications and jurisdictions.
|
|
| 9. |
- Qin, Bei, 1980-
(författare)
-
Essays on Empirical Development and Political Economics
- 2013
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis consists of three essays in development and political economics.Political Connection, Government Patronage and Firm Performance: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing FirmsThe paper tests whether politically connected firms receive preferential favor from the government, as measured by state capital investment from the central government and subsidies. My results suggest that firms connected with one more top leader from the State Council receive 9.4 percent more subsidies, firms connected with one more leader who holds positions on both the Central Committee and the State Council obtain 23 percent more state capital and then have a 2 percentage point higher product markup. When there is extra state capital due to political connections, other domestic capital is crowded out. The heterogeneous effects find that firms with more employees, but lower sales and less profit tend to receive more state capital if equally connected, while firms with higher sales tend to obtain more subsidies. This additional state capital and these subsidies do not seem to improve the firm's performance.The Determinants of Media Bias in ChinaWe measure and investigate the determinants of political control of newspapers in China. We find that more strictly politically controlled newspapers cover disasters and corruption more than their commercial competitors, most likely in order to monitor lower level officials. We also find that they cover leaders and the official news agency Xinhua to a larger extent. We find that in the cross section, the political control correlates negatively with GDP per capita and population size, but there is no time trend in the political control of Chinese newspapers in the 2000s. Finally, we analyze the effect of a reform to close down all county papers in 2003. The reduced competition significantly affected the degree of political control of the remaining papers.Chinese Microblogs and Drug QualityThis paper examines the impact of the introduction of Sina Weibo, the most popular microblog in China, on the quality of drugs on the market. I find that the number of bad drugs is decreasing in Sina Weibo use: if the Sina Weibo use is doubled, the number of bad drugs found will be reduced by 21 percent. I show that the reduction of bad drugs is driven by two mechanisms: Sina Weibo induces more effort from the Drug Administration and it deters the production of bad drugs. The results suggest that microblogs can play an important role in monitoring both the public and the private sectors, especially in a context with media censorship.
|
|
| 10. |
- Sun, Xueping, 1988-
(författare)
-
Essays on China’s Economic Development : Innovation, Public Debt and Social Connections
- 2022
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Innovation Cost of Short Political Horizons: Evidence from Local Leaders’ Promotion in ChinaI digitize the career histories of Chinese city leaders and link them to economic policies and innovation outcomes. I exploit political connections formed through previous work ties to generate variation in leaders’ promotion expectations. I find that when leaders are connected, they can expect an earlier promotion. Such expectations lead them to pursue a fast-over-slow strategy for growth: higher spending on infrastructure, lower spending on science and technology, and a lower effort in promoting innovation. As a result, the local economy has higher short-term growth but lower future patenting and long-term growth.Public Debt Financing and Local Credit Allocation: Evidence from ChinaWe exploit a regulatory change in China that shifts its local governments’ debt financing from bank loans to bond issuance as a quasi-experiment to study the effect of public debt financing on local firms’ capital structure. We first find a crowding-out effect between corporate borrowing and public debt when local governments heavily rely on bank debt. Following the regulatory shock that local governments switch to another financing alternative – bonds, we observe that firms are crowding-in in cities where public bank debt is high, and this result is mainly driven by firms with higher performance. Lastly, we find that the switch in public debt financing leads firms with sufficient cash flow to increase investment.Social Connections and the Spatial Spread of COVID-19 in ChinaI study how well the spread of COVID-19 across Chinese cities can be predicted by social connections and travel flows across cities. I analyze a panel of 300 cities for the period from January 23rd to March 23rd, 2020. I construct a measure, SocialMediaConnection, of social connections using aggregated social media communications across cities from Weibo, one of China’s largest social media platforms. I find that SocialMediaConnection outperforms travel flows in predicting the arrival time of COVID-19: cities with higher SocialMediaConnection to Wuhan, the initial outbreak center, have their first COVID-19 cases earlier. I also find that both social media and travel connections have dual effects on local transmission, because they correlate with interpersonal contacts, but also capture communication about infection risks. The second effect is particularly pronounced for SocialMediaConnection. Consistent with this, I find that social distancing increases in cities with strong SocialMediaConnection to cities with high infection rates.
|
|
