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This article exploits the international transmission of business cycles to examine the prevalence of attribution error in economic voting in a large panel of countries from 1990 to 2009. We find that voters, on average, exhibit a strong tendency to oust the incumbent governments during an economic downturn, regardless of whether the recession is home-grown or merely imported from trading partners. However, we find important heterogeneity in the extent of attribution error. A split sample analysis shows that countries with more experienced voters, more educated voters, and possibly more informed voters--all conditions that have been shown to mitigate other voter agency problems--do better in distinguishing imported from domestic growth. (JEL E3, E6), I. INTRODUCTION The vast literature on economic voting finds that voters in many countries reward incumbents for presiding over strong economic growth, low unemployment, and low inflation and punish for [...]

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) expanded its liquidity provision in response to a series of financial panics from 1931–1932; however, the BOJ restricted its lending mostly to correspondent banks. We use the BOJ's preferential treatment of correspondent banks as a quasi-experimental setting to examine the impact of central bank lending on financial intermediation. We find that deposits and loans did not fall as fast for correspondent banks as for other banks during the panic period. Furthermore, correspondent banks were less likely to be closed. The results suggest that central banks' liquidity provision plays a critical backstop role during financial stringency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the Hoa, an ethnically Chinese, economically dominant minority, on regional economic development in Vietnam. To address the endogeneity of the geographical distribution of the Hoa, we use an important historical episode: the rapid deterioration in Sino-Vietnamese diplomatic relationship that led many ethnic Chinese to flee abroad, particularly to the refugee camps in the Guangxi province of China, in 1979. We find that the effects of proximity to the refugee camps on the share of ethnic Chinese in 1989 were more pronounced for provinces that had a larger presence of the ethnic Chinese population in 1979. We also find strong correlations between the 1989 share of ethnic Chinese (instrumented) and contemporary indicators of economic performance. The results suggest that the ethnic Chinese minority had positive economic impacts on Vietnam’s regional economies and that the post-Vietnam War exodus of ethnic Chinese was likely to have had long-term negative economic impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]