| 1. |
- Engström, Per, et al.
(författare)
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Maternal Addiction to Parental Leave
- 2006
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Rapport (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- The increased demand for a more equal parental sharing of the responsibilities for children has led many countries to reconstruct their parental leave systems so to provide stronger incentives for fathers to participate in childcare. Father’s quotas are becoming widely spread across Europe. This paper provides arguments for why it may be welfare improving for both parents to increase the father’s share of the family’s parental leave time. However, regulations in terms of father’s quotas may not be optimal since it fails to recognise potentially heterogenous preferences. Instead, self-commitment devices should be provided in order to prevent mothers from taking too large share of the family’s leave time.
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| 2. |
- Engström, Per, et al.
(författare)
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Maternal-biased parental leave
- 2009
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Psychology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-4870 .- 1872-7719. ; 30:4, s. 583-590
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The division of parental leave time between parents is in most countries extremely skewed towards mothers. In this paper we argue that, although it may be rational for a family to let the mother take the main part of the parental leave, the division is too skewed towards the mother even from the family’s own perspective. The reason for this inefficiency is that parents have present-biased preferences, which make them place too much weight on the immediate utility effects of childcare. Time-consistent welfare can therefore be improved by increasing fathers’ share of the family’s parental leave time. In the light of recent regulations in the parental leave system in many countries, we argue that provision of commitment devices is more preferable than regulation when preferences are heterogeneous or uncertain.
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| 3. |
- Jordahl, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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Merged Municipalities, Higher Debt : On Free-riding and the Common Pool Problem in Politics
- 2006
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Rapport (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- We use the 1952 Swedish municipal amalgamation reform to study free- riding and the common pool problem in politics. We expect municipalities that were affected by the reform to increase their debt in anticipation of a merger, and this effect to be larger if they were merged with many other populous municipalities (i.e. facing a large common pool). We use ordinary least squares and matching on the complete cross section of rural municipalities for the period 1947−1951, fixed effects when exploiting the panel features, as well as a geographical instrumental variables strategy. We find an average treatment effect close to the amount that the average merged municipality increased its debt with during this period, which corresponds to 2.8 percent of average income or 63 percent of the average increase in income. However, we do not find larger increases in municipalities that were part of a larger common pool.
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| 4. |
- Liang, Che-Yuan
(författare)
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Collective Lobbying in Politics : Theory and Empirical Evidence from Sweden
- 2008
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Rapport (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- This paper first formulates a model of how the politicians in a local government collectively lobby to raise intergovernmental grants to their local government. The model identifies a relationship between council size and grants received. I then study this relationship empirically using the distribution of intergovernmental grants to the Swedish local governments. I use a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design that exploits a council size law to isolate exogenous variation in council size and find a large negative council size effect. This pattern provides indirect evidence for the occurrence of lobbying. The direction of the effect could be explained by free-riding incentives in individual lobbying effort contribution caused by a collective action problem in grant-raising among local government politicians.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Liang, Che-Yuan, 1981-
(författare)
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Essays in Political Economics and Public Finance
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained essays.Essay 1: This paper first extends a recently developed nonparametric approach to estimate labor supply (Blomquist and Newey 2002) to handle the case when there are individuals that do not work. The extension makes it possible to sort out responses on the participation and hour margins. The method is used to estimate the labor supply of married women in Sweden. These estimates are then, together with estimates for married men found in other papers, used to evaluate the earned income tax credit program introduced in Sweden in 2007 with respect to married couples through simulations. I find that the reform increases labor supply with 3.6 percent and gross labor income with 3.1 percent. The cost is a net revenue loss of 0.5 percent for the government.Essay 2: This paper investigates the effects of political representation on electoral outcome at the party level in proportional election systems. There are two notions of representation: to hold seats and to belong to the ruling coalition. I refer to the effect of the former as the incumbency effect and the effect of the latter as the effect of ruling. The discontinuous variation in the number of seats and participation in a ruling coalition is used to identify causal effects. I find that incumbency determines the distribution of 12 percent of the votes, which is similar to the advantage found in majoritarian systems. Further, I find no effects of ruling, contrary to the commonly found cost of ruling in proportional systems.Essay 3: This paper first models how local government politicians lobby to raise intergovernmental grants and identifies an effect of council size on grants received. This relationship is then studied empirically using the distribution of intergovernmental grants to Swedish local governments. A regression-discontinuity design that exploits a council size law is used to isolate exogenous variation in council size. I find a large negative effect of council size on grants received. This pattern provides indirect evidence for the occurrence of lobbying. The effect could be explained by free-riding incentives in lobbying effort contribution caused by a collective action problem in grant-raising among local government politicians.Essay 4 (co-authored with Henrik Jordahl): This paper uses the Swedish municipal amalgamation reform of 1952 to study the common pool problem in political decision making. The anticipated amalgams are common pools, and we investigate if local governments free-ride on their amalgamation partners by increasing debt prior to the reform. We find that municipalities that merged in 1952 increased their per capita debt substantially between 1948 and 1952 when the reform could be anticipated with a high degree of certainty. The increase amounted to two thirds of new debt issued or two percent of total revenue in the merged municipalities. But free-riding did not increase with common pool size contrary to the prediction of the “law of 1/n”.
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| 7. |
- Liang, Che-Yuan
(författare)
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Is There an Incumbency Advantage or a Cost of Ruling in Proportional Election Systems?
- 2007
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper investigates the effect of political representation on the electoral outcome at the party level in a proportional multiparty election system using data from Swedish local government elections. There are two notions of representation in a council; the first is to hold seats, and the second is to belong to the ruling coalition. I refer to the effect of the former as the incumbency effect and the effect of the latter as the effect of ruling. To identify causal effects, I use the discontinuous variations in the number of seats and ruling (as a coalition receives a majority of the seats) to isolate exogenous variation in incumbency and ruling respectively. I find an advantage of 0.11 percent of the votes for each percent of incumbency. 11 percent of the votes in an election are therefore determined by incumbency, a figure close to the advantage found in majoritarian systems. However, the advantage differs significantly between parties. Further, I find no effects of ruling, contrary to the commonly found cost of ruling in proportional systems.
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| 8. |
- Liang, Che-Yuan
(författare)
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Nonparametric Structural Estimation of Labor Supply in the Presence of Censoring
- 2009
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper extends the nonparametric method to estimate labor supply developed by Blomquist and Newey (2002) to handle cases in which there are individuals who do not work. The method is then applied to married women in Sweden from 1973 to 1999. For 1999, I find an aggregate uncompensated wage elasticity around 1 and an aggregate income elasticity around -0.05. Furthermore, marginal tax rates are beyond the net government revenue maximizing rates. Despite large labor supply effects, the dramatic evolution of the tax system can only explain a small share of the 58 percent rise in female labor supply during this period.
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