| 1. |
- Folke, Olle, 1979-
(författare)
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Parties, Power and Patronage : Papers in Political Economy
- 2010
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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.
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| 2. |
- Besley, Timothy, et al.
(författare)
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Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man : Theory and Evidence from Sweden
- 2017
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Ingår i: The American Economic Review. - : American Economic Association. - 0002-8282 .- 1944-7981. ; 107:8, s. 2204-2242
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We develop a model where party leaders choose the competence of politicians on the ballot to trade off electoral success against their own survival. The predicted correlation between the competence of party leaders and followers is strongly supported in Swedish data. We use a novel approach, based on register data for the earnings of the whole population, to measure the competence of all politicians in 7 parties, 290 municipalities, and 10 elections (for the period 1982-2014). We ask how competence was affected by a zipper quota, requiring local parties to alternate men and women on the ballot, implemented by the Social Democratic Party in 1993. Far from being at odds with meritocracy, this quota raised the competence of male politicians where it raised female representation the most. We argue that resignation of mediocre male leaders was a key driver of this effect.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Altmejd, Adam, et al.
(författare)
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Inequality and COVID-19 in Sweden : Relative risks of nine bad life events, by four social gradients, in pandemic vs. prepandemic years
- 2023
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS. - : National Academy of Sciences. - 1091-6490 .- 0027-8424. ; 120:46
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The COVID-19 pandemic struck societies directly and indirectly, not just challenging population health but disrupting many aspects of life. Different effects of the spreading virus—and the measures to fight it—are reported and discussed in different scientific fora, with hard-to-compare methods and metrics from different traditions. While the pandemic struck some groups more than others, it is difficult to assess the comprehensive impact on social inequalities. This paper gauges social inequalities using individual-level administrative data for Sweden’s entire population. We describe and analyze the relative risks for different social groups in four dimensions—gender, education, income, and world region of birth—to experience three types of COVID-19 incidence, as well as six additional negative life outcomes that reflect general health, access to medical care, and economic strain. During the pandemic, the overall population faced severe morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 and saw higher all-cause mortality, income losses and unemployment risks, as well as reduced access to medical care. These burdens fell more heavily on individuals with low income or education and on immigrants. Although these vulnerable groups experienced larger absolute risks of suffering the direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic, the relative risks in pandemic years (2020 and 2021) were conspicuously similar to those in prepandemic years (2016 to 2019).
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| 5. |
- Andersson, Tommy, et al.
(författare)
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2020 års Ekonomipris till Paul Milgrom och Robert Wilson
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ekonomisk Debatt. - : Nationalekonomiska Föreningen. - 0345-2646. ; 48:8, s. 5-12
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien har beslutat dela ut årets Ekonomipris till Paul Milgrom och Robert Wilson, båda från Stanford University, USA, för ”förbättringar av auktionsteorin och uppfinningar av nya auktionsformat”. Årets pristagare har i sin forskning sammanfört teori och praktik, till nytta för enskilda individer, företag och samhällen världen över.
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| 6. |
- Baltrunaite, Audinga, 1985-
(författare)
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Political Economics of Special Interests and Gender
- 2016
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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.
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| 7. |
- Besley, Timothy, et al.
(författare)
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Economic Approaches to Political Institutions
- 2008. - 2. ed
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Ingår i: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. - Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9780333786765
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Political institutions affect the rules of the game in which politics is played. Economists now have theoretical approaches to explain the impact of institutions on policy, and empirical evidence to support the relevance of the theory. This article sketches a framework to inform discussions about how political institutions shape policy outcomes. It does so using four examples: majoritarian versus proportional elections; parliamentary versus presidential government; whether to impose term-limits on office holders; and the choice between direct and representative democracy. Each example illustrates how theory and data can be brought together to investigate a specific issue.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Besley, Timothy, et al.
(författare)
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Repression or Civil War?
- 2009
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Ingår i: The American Economic Review. - : American Economic Association. - 0002-8282 .- 1944-7981. ; 99:2, s. 292-297
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Perhaps the crowning achievement of mature democracies is the peaceful acceptance of the ballot box as the primary instrument for deciding who should hold power in society. We do not have to go far back in the history of most democratic states, however, to find a distinct role for political violence. Moreover, many inhabitants of the globe still remain at risk of falling prey to widespread violence in the struggle for political office. Forms of political violence differ a great deal. We focus on two important manifestations: repression and civil war distinguished by whether violence is one-sided or two-sided. We present a unified approach to studying these forms of political violence with common roots in poverty, natural resource rents, and weak political institutions. First, we lay out rudimentary model to analyze whether violence will occur and, if so, manifest itself as repression or civil war. Three regimes — peace, repression and civil war — emerge as alternative equilibrium outcomes in the interaction between an incumbent government and an opposition group. Moreover, the theory suggests a natural ordering of these regimes. We then construct empirical measures of repression and civil war, which we map into ordered variables as suggested by the theory. We investigate how the regime depends on economic and political variables, using an ordered logit model defined over the three regimes. Our estimation results indicate a strong correlation between low incomes, weak political institutions and both forms of political violence.
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| 10. |
- Besley, Timothy, et al.
(författare)
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The Causes and Consequences of Development Clusters : State Capacity, Peace and Income
- 2014
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Ingår i: Annual Review of Economics. - : Annual Reviews. - 1941-1383 .- 1941-1391. ; 6, s. 927-949
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Three important aspects of development-per capita income, state capabilities, and (the absence of) political violence-are correlated with each other at the country level. This article discusses the causes of such development clusters and highlights two explanations: common economic, political, and social drivers and complementarities (two-way positive feedbacks). It also draws out preliminary policy implications of these patterns of development and proposes topics for further research.
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