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Grid‐ or pixel‐based models, used across various scientific disciplines from microscopic to planetary scales, contain an unquantified error that bias our interpretation of the data. The error is produced by projecting 3D data onto a 2D grid. For Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) the projection error affects all slope‐dependent topographic metrics, like surface area or slope angle. Due to the proportionality of the error to the cosine of the slope, we can correct for it. We quantify the error and test the correction using synthetic landscapes for which we have analytical solutions of their metrics. Application to real‐world landscapes in California, reveal the systematic underestimation of surface area by up to a third, and mean slope angles by up to 10° in steep topography in current DTMs. Correcting projection errors allow for true estimates of surface areas and slope distributions enabling physics‐based models of surface processes at any spatial scale. Plain Language Summary: Hiking up a steep mountain slope feels longer than the horizontal distance measured on a map. The slope angle is calculated by taking the height over the horizontal distance. The length of a (mountain) slope is always greater than the horizontal plane. This mistake is also very common in Digital Terrain Models (DTMs). Here landscapes images captured in a bird's eye view are projected onto horizontal gridded surfaces. In the model, each grid cell has the same length and contains the height of the landscape. Due to the view, the slopes are only represented by the horizontal distance, which is shorter. We call this the projection error. Because the error depends on the slope, we use it to fix it. We test the correction on different landscapes with steep and gentle topography. We find that uncorrected models underestimate surface area and length by up to a third. Fixing the projection error shows that mountain slopes are much steeper and longer than usually reported. Knowing the true length of a mountain slope, we can use the topographic data to better understand and maybe predict processes and volumes, like landslides or fluid transport. Key Points: The projection error in gridded models biases our view of surface topography at all scalesCorrecting for the projection error allows exploring physics‐based erosion and transport lawsThe correction enables better sourcing of the topographic data we have access to [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature on women's empowerment (aligned with SDG 5) overlooks the diverse experiences and obstacles faced by women from various racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. This lack of intersectionality within women's empowerment studies hinders our understanding of the unique challenges encountered by marginalized women and limits the effectiveness of policies and interventions aimed at fostering their empowerment. To address this gap, this study delves into the challenges and processes of empowering women in Bangladesh. Qualitative data were gathered through semi‐structured interviews with 12 working women. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed that women face numerous challenges, including lack of education, family support, and economic freedom, as well as complicated processes to access government support and adapt to technological changes. Furthermore, the study identified several potential processes for empowering women, including free education, and training, government support, awareness development, technological support, and mentorship. The study concludes with discussions, policy implications, limitations, and future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies analyzing the pattern of international refugee flows have so far focussed on movements to OECD destinations, even though the vast majority of refugees live in non‐OECD countries. Employing a standard gravity model of international migration, we fill this research gap by investigating the impact of destination country characteristics on south‐south refugee movements over the period 2004–2019. Our findings suggest that refugees tend to move to safe neighboring countries but also positively respond to local pull factors such as relatively high per‐capita income levels and the availability of education and health services when choosing their country of destination. Donors have the ability to affect the direction of south‐south refugee movements by investing in the social infrastructure of potential destination countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial frauds can cause serious damage to financial markets but are hard to detect manually. In this study, we develop an intelligent detecting model to efficiently identify financial frauds by using XGBoost on raw financial data items in corporation financial statements. With listed companies in Chinese A‐share Market taken as samples, empirical results reveal that the proposed model works better than traditional models by a large margin in detecting fraud. Notably, the proposed model exhibits superior performance when used together with raw financial data items than with financial indicators. Moreover, the proposed model remains robust on outperformance in fraud detection when serial fraud cases are recoded, test periods are altered, more raw financial data are input, as well as other machine learning models–the AdaBoost and SVM–are selected as benchmark models. Our study enriches the application of machine learning in finance sector, and highlights the economic significance of raw financial data as the financial system's most fundamental components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a platform for the trading of bulk commodities, securities, and futures, exchanges, characterized by platform‐like attributes, provide inexhaustible power for the further development of commodity economy through horizontal integration. This paper examines the international integration landscape of the modern exchanges through the lens of platform economy theory, specifically examining the ramifications of their horizontal integration on market efficiency. Employing the net utility hypothesis within the Hotelling model, we construct a nuanced trader utility model. Through a comparative analysis of platform profit, trader utility, and social welfare, the research discerns the impact of exchanges' horizontal integration. We highlight the intrinsic incentives for such integration within exchanges and put forth pertinent policy recommendations, adding a dimension of practical relevance to the academic discourse. The paper concludes by highlighting the role of government in promoting the efficiency of platform enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how enterprise digital transformation affects audit quality. The results show that the relationship between enterprise digital transition and audit quality takes on a U‐shaped. Mechanism test results indicate that during the initial stages of digitization, the restrictive effect of auditor's professional competence mismatch predominates. Conversely, during the mature stages of digitization, the promotion effect of improved auditor's substantive independence predominates. Heterogeneity tests demonstrate that this U‐shaped relationship is significant primarily within the sample set of short audit tenure and state‐owned enterprises. The study reveals the internal mechanism of the impact of enterprise digital transition on audit quality, offering empirical evidence to comprehend the incremental dynamic effects of enterprise digitalization and mitigate potential adverse consequences throughout the transformation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of the digital economy has ushered in unprecedented opportunities for corporate development. Utilizing a comprehensive data set comprising Chinese listed companies spanning the period 2011–2020, this study empirically examines the impact of digital transformation on corporate illegality. The findings reveal a significant reduction in corporate illegality attributable to digital transformation. This empirical result retains its significance even when subjected to a battery of robustness tests. In terms of the underlying mechanisms, this paper conjecture that digital transformation reduces the internal and external information asymmetry, thereby curbing corporate illegality. Further heterogeneous analysis shows that digital transformation is more effective among corporates with higher agency cost (state‐owned or large corporates) or corporates located in regions with lower degree of marketization level. These heterogeneous effects provide supportive evidence to the above conjecture. The implications of this study extend the boundaries of digital transformation research and furnish novel and actionable insights into the prevention of corporate illegality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extant research provides inconsistent results regarding the effect of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on firm productivity. There is no research on the effect of OFDI in belt and road (B&R) countries on Chinese firm productivity. In this paper, the impact of B&R OFDI on Chinese firm productivity and its influencing mechanisms are investigated. The main findings of this research are as follows. First, B&R OFDI positively influences productivity by alleviating firms' financial constraints. Second, the presence of market‐driven and production‐driven subsidiaries in B&R countries exerts a favorable moderating impact on firm productivity. Finally, the productive influence of B&R OFDI is more pronounced for firms in eastern China and for those in the energy and transportation sectors, and it is particularly significant for nonstate‐owned enterprises. These findings have practical implications for governments engaged in the design of effective policies for the promotion of B&R OFDIs and for firms developing robust OFDI strategies along the Belt and Road to improve their levels of productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, the deviation of enterprises from the real economy to the financial sector has raised concerns. Using a sample of listed companies held by central state‐owned enterprises from 2009 to 2018, we investigate the influence of government supervision on this deviation. We find that government supervision effectively reduces investments in financial assets by central state‐owned enterprises. The impact is more significant in enterprises with internal control deficiencies, especially in those related to finance. Further study finds that the effect of government supervision conducted for the first time, second time, and third time shows a decreasing trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the influence of local official turnover on litigation efficiency using manually collected data from listed companies in China from 1995 to 2013. Our findings indicate that official turnover leads to a decrease in litigation efficiency, with a 16.3% increase in the duration of litigation cases. This effect is more pronounced when newly appointed officials are working in different locations. It is more significant when the involved enterprise is a private entity, suggesting that political cycles contribute to the selective enforcement of private enterprises. Further analysis reveals that the adverse impact of official turnover on litigation efficiency is short‐lived. The conclusions contribute to the existing literature on official turnover and litigation efficiency and hold potential implications for judicial independence reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically tests the impact of terrorism and counter‐terrorism on voting by focusing on the two 2015 general elections in Turkey ‐ and the 2011 general election. This period offers a unique case because, after the first election, the ongoing peace process between the incumbent party (AKP), the political party associated with the perpetrators (pro‐Kurdish political party, HDP), and the imprisoned leader of the terrorist organization (PKK) was canceled. Instead, terror attacks recurred and curfews were implemented as counter‐terrorism measures. This enables the impact of curfews and terror attacks on electoral outcomes to be analysed in a difference‐in‐differences setting. Terror attacks are estimated to reduce the incumbent's vote share by 3.2% points, while increasing the vote share of the party associated with the perpetrators by 3.6% points. Curfews are estimated to cancel out the impact of terror attacks in attacked municipalities and decrease the incumbent's vote share by 4.7% points in non‐attacked municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research shows that populist governments in general depress countries' economic growth and fail to improve income distribution. We study the short‐term macroeconomic consequences of populist policies implemented in Poland since 2015. Using the augmented synthetic control method, we find that the populists boosted the gross domestic product per capita by almost 8% between 2016 and 2019. We do not find any effect of populism on inflation and estimate only small labor market impacts. The populists improved tax revenue collection and reduced public debt. A generous child benefit program and other redistributive policies introduced by the populists significantly reduced overall poverty and almost eradicated absolute child poverty. Our results suggest that antiestablishment populists may have macroeconomic viability, at least in the short term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do natural disasters affect election results? Some studies have shown that natural disasters negatively impact subsequent elections, while others do not. This study investigated the link between natural disasters and local elections using data from the Japanese prefectural governor elections for the years 1985–2015. A rich data set is available for prefectural governor elections in Japan that includes information on who won, the vote shares of all candidates, and when the election was held, among others. We found empirical evidence that the number of days between an election and most recent disaster before election positively impacted the vote share of the incumbent/successor. In other words, an incumbent/successor is likely to have less support in the election immediately following a disaster by the constituencies, but can get more support as time passes after the disaster. Moreover, political alignment with the central ruling parties positively affects the vote share of an incumbent/successor over time between an election and the most recent disaster. These results suggest a possibility that politicians seek popularity not through the implementation of proper disaster recovery policies but by taking advantage of their connection with central ruling parties, which may harm citizens' welfare in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vast contest literature disregarded the possibility of optimal contest design with simultaneous attainment of various objectives. The main goal of the current article is to illustrate the potential usefulness of a navigation tool that allows the designer to achieve, simultaneously, multiple objectives in contests between companies (competing for resources/patents/market‐share, etc), based on a unit tax and a lump‐sum subsidy. Our proposal is illustrated applying the most common simple setting of two contestants whose winning probabilities are determined by the simple lottery contest success function (CSF). We focus on seven main objectives: reducing the competition's intensity in terms of efforts: increasing profit for the state treasury; promoting equality between the players in terms of gap between the contestants' efforts, winning probabilities and expected payoffs, and budget and expenditure balancing. We also analyze the possible negative external effects of achieving a particular objective. Our main insight is that a complete differential policy can be used to attain, simultaneously (with two exceptions), all the objectives of the designer. In contrast, the use of a uniform policy, subject to a balanced budget objective, cannot ensure complete equality or maximize profit. It nevertheless guarantees a Pareto‐superior outcome relative to the situation before the designer's intervention. Future research may generalize the findings to any type of contest or CSF and multiple contestants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central bank independence (CBI) has been widely advocated as a means to address the time‐inconsistency problem of controlling inflation. Consequently, many countries have embraced central bank reforms since the 1990s. While extant research in political science has sought to unveil the consequences of CBI, there remains an unexplained variation in the response of countries with regard to capital account openness. Notably, a positive association exists between CBI and capital account openness due to the constraints CBI places on leaders' discretionary monetary and fiscal policies, thereby fostering reliance on financial policy to boost their economies. However, this relationship is contingent on the domestic political contexts of countries. CBI leads to capital account liberalization only when the rule of law is guaranteed, given that CBI is often stipulated by laws. Therefore, in countries where political leaders can easily override formal rules, CBI shows no discernible impact on capital account openness. Employing two‐way fixed‐effects and error‐correction models, the study reveals that CBI increases capital account openness only in democracies, in the presence of multiple veto players, and a high level of transparency. The findings underscore the pivotal role of the domestic political environment in analyzing how CBI constrains political leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of Social Insurance Law in 2011 on enterprises' digital transformation, using a quasi‐natural experiment with difference‐in‐differences method. Implementation of the law contributes to enterprises' digital transformation. Mechanism tests reveal that implementation of the law promotes enterprise digital transformation by increasing labor costs. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that nonstate enterprises, enterprises with weaker financing constraints, and mature enterprises experience a more pronounced impact of the law. Enterprises in regions with highly integrated digital development and those in industries with a high level of digital transformation are more affected by the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of Chinese A‐share listed firms over the period 2010–2017, this paper investigates the impact of local donation culture on corporate tax avoidance. We find that firms located in areas with a strong local donation culture are less engaged in tax avoidance. The results remain robust under a variety of robustness tests. Furthermore, we find that this relationship is driven by enhancing the moral identity of managers. In further analysis, we also explore the role of media attention, chief executive officer's (CEO's) childhood famine experience, and CEO duality in the relationship between local donation culture and corporate tax avoidance. This study enriches the existing literature on culture and firms' behaviors, and the conclusion of this paper has significant policy implications for governing corporate tax avoidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a subnational level, studies typically find that embedded or local leaders are better at providing public goods relative to leaders appointed from other areas. This paper tests whether this finding holds in the context of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Specifically, it examines the impact of a cadre transfer policy whereby the central government assigns (nonresident) officials to provincial leadership positions rather than them being elected locally. Using data covering the period 2005–2017, changes in the development of provinces led by local (embedded) leaders versus nonlocal leaders are compared. Provincial development is measured using the incidence of headcount poverty as well as "vegetation" and "build‐up" indices constructed using satellite data. Using fixed‐effects modeling, findings suggest that improved provincial development is associated with nonlocal leaders. This finding is in contrast to those of existing studies including those examining embeddedness in other authoritarian states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of Transaction Cost Theory, this paper proposes a conceptual model to assess ownership and management control decisions of private partners in public‐private partnerships for infrastructure with regard generic risk factors, namely asset specificity, demand risk, environmental risk, social risk, macroeconomic risk, and governance or behavioral risk. Using an ordinal logistic model, hypotheses are tested on data covering 2152 projects in 12 emerging countries for the period 2010–2019. Overall results indicate that the extent of private ownership and management control is negatively related to risks, the marginal effects of which are moderated by high‐quality public institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether capital flow management and monetary policies effectively reduce credit growth in emerging market economies in the presence of both conventional and unconventional monetary policy actions undertaken by advanced economies. We apply a dynamic panel model with fixed effects to a sample of 21 emerging market economies from 2000 to 2020 using quarterly data and more continuous variables than in other studies rather than limiting the variability using proxies. We find that capital controls and macroprudential regulation, as tools of capital flow management policy, moderate credit growth. This effect is particularly shown in countries with tighter monetary conditions. Our main findings highlight the useful role of coordinating capital flow management and monetary policies. This role stands for both fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes. Lastly, we find capital flow management and monetary policies manage to control credit in normal periods, but their coordination is less effective during crises and high volatility periods. Robustness checks suggest that these findings are stable across alternative proxies used in the literature, thus providing additional support for the validity of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our society, in general, and health care, in particular, faces notable challenges due to the emergence of innovative digital technologies. The use of socially assistive robots in aged care is a particular digital application that provokes ethical reflection. The answers we give to the ethical questions associated with socially assistive robots are framed by ontological and anthropological considerations of what constitutes human beings and how the meaning of being human relates to how these robots are conceived. Religious beliefs and secular worldviews, each of which may participate fully in pluralist societies, have an important responsibility in this foundational debate, as anthropological theories can be inspired by religious and secular viewpoints. This article identifies seven anthropological considerations grounded in the synthesis of biblical scriptures, Roman Catholic documents, and recent research literature. We highlight the inspirational quality of these anthropological considerations when dealing with ethical issues regarding the development and use of socially assistive robots in aged care. With this contribution, we aim to foster a global and inclusive dialogue on digitalization in aged care that deeply challenges our basic understanding of what constitutes a human being and how this notion relates to machine artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese imports starting in 2018. American firms that rely on Chinese imports were allowed to apply for exclusions for products. In this paper, we investigate political factors affecting the approval rates for these tariff exclusions. We also consider factors that may impact this estimate, such as firm selection into requesting and legitimacy of request. We find that tariff exclusion is increasing in the Republican vote share. Counties with a 10 percentage point higher Republican vote share experience a 10% higher probability of tariff exclusion approval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to empirically examine whether and how the innovation activities would change in the face of shocks caused by heightened US‐China tensions for US high‐tech firms from trade sectors with China. It is found that although the overall innovation intensity slides down during periods of heightened geopolitical risk and policy uncertainty, innovativeness of the US high‐tech companies from trade sectors with China is not completely suppressed by the escalated tensions and still maintains certain levels of momentum compared with other firms. However, the empirical evidence demonstrates that the superiority of the innovation intensity of US high‐tech companies from trade sectors with China to other firms is curbed during periods of heightened tensions in comparison with periods in the absence of geopolitical shocks and economic uncertainty. Moreover, the negative impact of US‐China tensions on corporate innovation is further amplified when the firm is less established, more financially constrained and of smaller size and less human power capital, each of which serves as an important moderator driving the negative relation. The findings of the paper are based on multifaceted empirical methods and contribute to the literature on corporate innovation, international trade, and geopolitical and economic tensions between nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between welfare state or social expenditure composition and health human capital in 37 OECD countries spanning 1980–2018. Our findings confirm that public health spending has a positive effect on health capital formation. Dissecting social expenditure according to other nine social spending categories reveals a positive influence for old age pensions and unemployment benefits. The results for the remaining social programs vary with the health capital proxy and estimation method used. It thus appears that more comprehensive and universal social programs, possibly by guaranteeing the necessary income, do a better job in improving health human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a manually collected data set of Chinese publicly traded firms from 2010 to 2017, this study examines how public–private partnerships (PPP) affect the cost of debt and financial reporting. We argue that a firm gains political capital through a PPP and thus may access debt markets at a lower cost. Consistent with our expectation, we find that participants of PPP enjoy significantly lower bank loan interest rates than other firms. This is more pronounced for nonstate‐owned enterprises, for firms without politically connected CEOs, and for loans from state‐owned banks. However, these participants reduce their accounting conservatism, suggesting a substitution between financial reporting and political connections. Also, participating in PPP does not improve firms' financial performance. Thus, the lower interest rates are not justified by economic fundamentals or financial reporting quality. Overall, our study suggests that PPP distort state‐owned banks' lending decisions and lower accounting conservatism, highlighting the potential cost of PPP to society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a vast body of literature dedicated to identifying the major drivers that explain human impacts on the environment. In this study, we utilize the STIRPAT framework to assess whether two controversial factors should be considered when examining how humans affect the environment. Specifically, we investigate whether the quality of the democratic regime and the size of the informal economy play significant roles in determining human impacts on the environment. To address this question, we employ the extreme bounds analysis (EBA) to characterize these drivers as either robust or fragile. Based on the findings of this paper, both variables are classified as fragile, suggesting that they may not fully explain human impacts on the environment. We have taken great care in interpreting the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether the assessment of local government officials affects firm participation in targeted poverty alleviation. Using a sample of Chinese A‐share listed companies in the Midwest from 2016 to 2019, the results show that the greater the importance of officials' poverty alleviation assessment, the higher the participation of firms in precise poverty alleviation. State‐owned enterprises (SOEs) contribute more to the reduction of destitution than private enterprises. We further find that local SOEs' participation in precision poverty alleviation enhances the likelihood of executive promotion, while private enterprises' participation in precision poverty alleviation increases government subsidies and reduces the cost of debt financing. These findings imply that the evaluation mechanisms of Chinese officials can effectively promote enterprises fulfilling social responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of status seeking behavior on the growth of income. Conventional wisdom suggests that such behavior should stimulate the growth rate. We introduce a general status indicator as an average of relative income and another that reflects relative expenditure on a status good in a simple dynamic model. We show that the conventional approach, which includes only concern for relative income, matters for growth. Otherwise, higher relative expenditure on a status good does not have any additional impact on optimal growth beyond the golden rule. Thus, the accepted wisdom that relative status concern always stimulates incentive for growth is called into question and provides fresh policy perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A government sets the level of taxation to provide a public good valued by consumers. There are two groups of consumers, the rich and the poor. The government has redistributive preferences, but is initially constrained to use lump‐sum taxation. This potentially leads the government to provide a very low level of the public good out of concern for not reducing private good consumption of the poor. In this context, allowing a small amount of redistribution from the rich to the poor may be Pareto improving. The loss in private consumption by the rich may be more than offset by the added utility from increased public good provision. I also analyze the extent to which a flat income tax can induce the government to choose a level of public good consistent with the Samuelson condition. When consumers have a survival constraint on private consumption, a progressive tax code is required to induce the government to choose the efficient level of the public good. Generally speaking, there is a trade‐off between a desire to restrain the government's ability to redistribute income and a desire to induce it to choose the level of the public good implied by the Samuelson condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the threat of political violence affect wellbeing? We argue that political violence induced by elections reduces wellbeing as it provokes emotional reactions like anxiety and fear. There is a lingering effect from political violence that reemerges with new rounds of elections, and that reduces wellbeing. To test this claim, we employ an experimental analysis in Côte d'Ivoire. We motivate political violence via a treatment about the 2020 election, and the proximity of the 2020 election. We find that each has a negative effect on wellbeing. In Côte d'Ivoire, we also consider the direct effect of political violence on wellbeing, and find that it is inversely associated with wellbeing. Finally, we extend the analysis of election proximity to Nigeria during the 2023 election. The results here show that proximity is (i) inversely associated with wellbeing and (ii) that it is directly associated with the expectation of political violence. In all cases, political violence lowers self‐assessed wellbeing. We argue that this effect is likely to be greater for women than men, but find that it is generally true for the latter. We conclude the paper with considerations about its generalizability, ideas for future research, and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from 285 Chinese cities for the years 2005–2018, this study analyzes the relationship between industrial land administrative allocation and local government fiscal imbalance in China. We find that the administrative allocation of industrial land significantly increases excessive fiscal expenditures and exacerbated fiscal imbalances. The increases in relevant government investment and transportation construction cost are the mechanisms by which industrial land administrative allocation aggravate government's financial imbalance. Further analysis indicates that land administrative allocation in medium cities, highly industrialized cities, and highly marketized cities have more significant impacts on local government' fiscal excess expenditures and deficits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a relationship between income inequality and the electoral success of incumbent governments in developing and transitional democracies, and if so, what explains its variations? Using a large N study of national legislative elections in 38 developing and transitional democracies from 1987 to 2016 and controlling for economic growth, inflation, and unemployment rates, this paper tests: (i) whether change in income inequality is negatively associated with the vote share for the incumbent party and (ii) whether the level of media freedom affects the extent of economic voting. Overall, we find evidence that increasing income inequality is negatively and significantly related to the vote share for the incumbent but only in countries with free or somewhat‐free media. Furthermore, consistent with past studies, the most robustly significant economic factor in affecting incumbent vote shares remains economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global financial cycles have become a growing concern for scholars and policymakers. Recent research has identified these cycles as originating in American markets, at least in part due to policy innovations in the United States. We articulate a previously unidentified, but powerful, mechanism that influence growth (and growth volatility) in the global economy: expansions in the American financial cycle disproportionately affect global credit conditions, leading to a higher incidence of gross capital inflow surges that subsequently create a boom‐bust growth dynamic in recipient economies. We evaluate this argument with an extensive empirical examination of 102 countries from 1975 to 2011 and find substantial support for the argument: US financial market developments produce capital flow cycles that challenge the ability of policymakers to stabilize their macroeconomies. We disaggregate capital flows and find that interbank lending plays a crucial role in driving these outcomes, with the results exhibiting a high degree of robustness to alternative specifications. Domestic policy tools alone may be insufficiently powerful to counteract volatility induced by these capital waves emanating from the core of the global financial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments try to improve re‐election chances by using fiscal instruments; they can shift voters' expectations of government competence because some voters are impaired by uninformedness. We argue that uninformed voters may also be impaired in another way which has not been considered in the literature, namely that uninformed voters are uncertain about the precision of that expected competence. Analytically, we show that political budget cycles (PBCs) are only produced when we have many uninformed voters and their expected competence of the government is fairly uncertain; or with few uninformed voters and certain expectations. This could explain two empirical puzzles on why we sometimes find and sometimes not (i) PBCs in developed and democratic countries with strong institutions, and (ii) that press freedom exacerbates PBCs. In a panel of 70 countries (1986–2015) we find empirical support for these findings. Results are robust to alternative specifications and explanations like fiscal rules, corruption and expected downturns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do gains from globalization erode support for economic nationalism? We study how North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)‐enhanced local access to US markets affected Mexican demands for protectionist platforms. The left—led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)—underperformed in cities benefiting from export‐access gains during the 2006 presidential elections. This effect is observed strictly in 2006—the only post‐NAFTA election in which debates over trade integration played a salient role. Our findings are robust to controls for import‐competing pressures from NAFTA and the China shock. AMLO's 2006 protectionist platform likely cost him that year's election, and campaign media strategies in 2012 map to this earlier backlash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political globalization trilemma asserts that a government cannot simultaneously opt for deep international integration, national sovereignty and democratic politics, but rather is constrained to choosing two of the three at most. This paper employs cross‐country panel data operationalizing the multifaceted three vertices of the trilemma. After explorative data analysis, we employ panel error‐correction techniques to uncover the mutual interdependencies among the variables in the system. The econometric evidence supports the existence of a long‐run relationship between economic integration, national sovereignty and democratic politics as postulated in the political globalization trilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large literature examining the macroeconomic effects of state economic development incentives on employment, income, tax revenue, and growth. At best, these incentives are found to be weakly effective at job creation, but inefficient due to the distortions, secondary effects, and increased rent‐seeking they encourage, with little public accountability. Given the evidence on their inefficiency, what explains their continued popularity? We find that large development incentives create substantial benefits for incumbent politicians in the form of both higher campaign contributions (particularly from business, labor, and construction sectors) and higher margins of victory at election time. Thus, political rent extraction may be the best explanation for the continued existence and popularity of these relatively ineffective incentive programs in states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we examine the impact of the European Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) on narratively identified fiscal adjustments whose prime focus is to reduce the budget deficit and compare the effects with those on the primary and the structural budget balance. The cross section of EU and non‐EU economies and the sample period 1980–2014 allow for an assessment of the SGP regarding its effectiveness, cyclicality, and the type of fiscal adjustments (tax hikes vs. spending cuts) as compared with counterfactual scenarios. Our findings indicate that the SGP has effectively boosted budget consolidation measures identified by means of the narrative approach, whereas it had no overall impact on the primary and an overall minor impact on the structural budget balance. However, the effectiveness of the SGP has varied considerably over time. All measures indicate that the SGP was particularly effective in the period after the introduction of the Euro, except for the 2 years following the financial crisis in 2008. We find no evidence that fiscal policy has become more procyclical under the SGP. Finally, fiscal consolidation under the SGP favors spending cuts, whereas the application of tax hikes shows no sizeable differences as compared with the reference group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper mainly presents a complete analysis of the impact of such sanctions on the innovation performance of target countries by exploiting the difference‐in‐differences method for panel data of 91 countries in the period 1988–2016. The empirical results confirm a significantly negative impact of overall international sanctions on innovation in the target countries; moreover, except for noneconomic sanctions, other types of sanctions have a negative impact on the level of innovation in the target countries to varying degrees. These findings are also supported by two semiparametric matchings: artificially matching according to the two factors of geographical location and land area respectively and the propensity score matching, one nonparametric matching: entropy balancing, as well as the system generalized method of moments estimates that account for any bias due to lagged dependent variables. This paper also shows that the significantly negative effect of international sanctions is manifested in the countries with high levels of trade openness, globalization, and democracy, but not in the countries with low levels of trade openness, globalization, and democracy. Our empirical findings merit particular attention from policy‐makers in target countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much of lobbying activities disclosed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) actually represent foreign clients? What are their interests? By identifying the global ultimate owners of all corporate clients filing with the LDA, I find that majority‐owned subsidiaries of foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) account for nearly 20% of corporate lobbying spending in 2015–2016. This amount is comparable to the entire foreign lobbying spending reported under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Domestic subsidiaries of foreign MNCs are also found to lobby more frequently and spend more lobbying than American multinationals, after controlling for firm size, industry, and PAC contributions. These subsidiaries actively lobby on issue areas that clearly benefit their foreign parents. The findings suggest that foreign MNCs may actively influence U.S. policies through their domestic subsidiaries, and that the FARA captures only part of foreign lobbying in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do politicians from dominant parties choose different fiscal policies in response to an external economic shock than politicians from competitive parties? This paper argues that politicians from dominant parties might adopt different fiscal policies than politicians from competitive parties in response to an external economic shock. Politicians from dominant parties might enjoy a political advantage that allows them to underinvest in areas with low political gains compared to politicians from competitive parties and divert the money to policy areas more politically profitable. I examine my theoretical prediction using a panel data set of Mexican governors from 1995 to 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The onset of the European NGEU program represented for European member states a formidable opportunity for post‐pandemic recovery and yet a significant challenge at the same time: to receive and retain EU funds, each state had to promptly draw up a National Recovery and Resilience Plan—NRRP) and commit to a pressing timetable for its implementation. Regarding this challenge, the Italian government's response is a case in point: first, Italy is by far the largest beneficiary of NGEU funds; second, it has long had a reputation for being laggard in both the implementation of European directives and the spending of cohesion policy structural funds; and the formulation of the NRRP, the design of the governance in charge of its implementation, and implementation itself, occurred at a particular moment in the country's political life. Based on these premises, the article examines the upstream process by which the Italian government designed the implementation arrangements for the adoption of simplification policies under the NRRP and their downstream recalibration in the first two years, taking the implementation arrangements as the dependent variable. Analytically, the focus is on the interplay between the pressures of EU timetables and internal political dynamics, be they the legacy or strategic political considerations on the part of national policymakers, in determining the design and eventual re‐design of implementation arrangements as the plan unfolds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]