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Political Economy Literature (political + economy_literature)
Selected AbstractsGovernance and Agricultural Production Efficiency: A Cross-Country Aggregate Frontier AnalysisJOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2009Mon-Chi Lio O13; O47; Q17 Abstract This study uses a stochastic frontier approach to investigate the relationship between six governance indicators and agricultural efficiency. We find that improvements in rule of law, control of corruption and government effectiveness enhance agricultural productivity significantly if each indicator enters the inefficiency equation independently. When all six indicators are included in the equation, we find that an improvement in rule of law raises agricultural efficiency significantly, but increases in voice and accountability and political stability appear to significantly reduce agricultural efficiency. Grouping the six indicators into three dimensions, we find that an improvement in ,respect for institutional framework' raises agricultural efficiency significantly, but an enhancement in ,selection of authority' reduces agricultural efficiency significantly. Our results imply that poorer countries can enhance their agricultural efficiency substantially by strengthening the state and citizens' respect for institutional framework. However, our results show that greater democracy is associated with lower agricultural efficiency. This finding is consistent with interest group capture and political failure arguments of the political economy literature. [source] Transparency, Political Polarization, and Political Budget Cycles in OECD CountriesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2006James E. Alt We investigate the effects of fiscal transparency and political polarization on the prevalence of electoral cycles in fiscal balance. While some recent political economy literature on electoral cycles identifies such cycles mainly in weak and recent democracies, in contrast we show, conditioning on a new index of institutional fiscal transparency, that electoral cycles in fiscal balance are a feature of many advanced industrialized economies. Using a sample of 19 OECD countries in the 1990s, we identify a persistent pattern of electoral cycles in low(er) transparency countries, while no such cycles can be observed in high(er) transparency countries. Furthermore, we find, in accordance with recent theory, that electoral cycles are larger in politically more polarized countries. [source] Pathways to industrial environmental improvement in the East Asian newly industrializing economiesBUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, Issue 2 2002Michael T. Rock After the adoption of ,grow first clean up later' environmental strategies, governments in the East Asian newly industrializing economies (NIEs) turned to environmental ,clean-up' by enacting landmark environmental legislation, creating command and control environmental agencies and promulgating tough air and water emissions standards. Available evidence suggests there is wide variability in the performance of these new environmental regulatory agencies. Most attribute this variability to differences in ,political will'. However, why have some governments among the East Asian NIEs been able to muster the ,political will' to impose duties on industrial polluters while others have not? This paper answers this question by summarizing a larger study (Rock, 2002) which examines the ,politics of industrial pollution' control in six East Asian NIEs. Each case study is based on extensive interviews, the collection of data on the effectiveness of pollution management policies, and the integration of both with the political economy literature on each economy. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment [source] Economic Insecurity and the Globalization of ProductionAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2004Kenneth Scheve A central question in the international and comparative political economy literatures on globalization is whether economic integration increases worker insecurity in advanced economies. Previous research has focused on the role of international trade and has failed to produce convincing evidence that such a link exists. In this article, we argue that globalization increases worker insecurity, but that foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is the key aspect of integration generating risk. FDI by MNEs increases firms' elasticity of demand for labor. More-elastic labor demands, in turn, raise the volatility of wages and employment, all of which tends to make workers feel less secure. We present new empirical evidence, based on the analysis of panel data from Great Britain collected from 1991 to 1999, that FDI activity in the industries in which individuals work is positively correlated with individual perceptions of economic insecurity. This correlation holds in analyses accounting for individual-specific effects and a wide variety of control variables. [source] | ||||||||||