Hertie School Research Repository
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Getting ready: Preparation for exporting
No full textThis study examines developments at the plant-product level preceding an expansion into foreign markets. It relies on very detailed Mexican data for 1994-2004, a period of liberalization in US trade policy vis a vis Mexico, mandated by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Our approach is novel in that we focus on quality, proxied by domestic price premium, of current and future export products. Our findings are consistent with quality upgrading taking place in preparation for entry into export markets. We show that manufacturers who export a particular product variety tend to obtain a price premium for their domestic sales of this variety. Consistently with the hypothesis of quality upgrading before exporting, we find evidence that this premium emerges exactly one year before a variety starts being exported. We find no evidence of upgrading after entering export markets. Our IV estimates suggest that the changes in the price premium are driven by the anticipated cuts in US tariffs and are particularly pronounced among producers exhibiting better performance in the initial period
Catching up with the technological frontier: Micro-level evidence on growth and convergence
No full textIn this article, we study how firm heterogeneity influences productivity catching up using plant-level data from Mexico. The article addresses three issues: first, it evaluates the process of convergence towards the global versus the local technological frontier in a middle-income country such as Mexico. Second, it systematically evaluates the role of technological efforts in determining the speed of convergence towards each of these technological frontiers. Third, it assesses the role of openness and trade integration in determining the speed of convergence and presents a horse race between integration and technological effort in explaining the determinants of heterogeneity in influencing the process of convergence toward both the domestic and the global technological frontier. Our results suggest that building firm-level technological capabilities is important for catching up with the global frontier. A policy focused on trade alone will facilitate convergence towards the best technological practices available locally, but it will fall short of encouraging convergence with the global frontier
Waiting time at health facilities and social class: Evidence from the Indian caste system
No full textWaiting time for non-emergency medical care in developing countries is rarely of immediate concern to policy makers that prioritize provision of basic health services. However, waiting time as a measure of health system responsiveness is important because longer waiting times worsen health outcomes and affect utilization of services. Studies that assess socio-economic inequalities in waiting time provide evidence from developed countries such as England and the United States; evidence from developing countries is lacking. In this paper, we assess the relationship between social class i.e. caste of an individual and waiting time at health facilities—a client orientation dimension of responsiveness. We use household level data from two rounds of the Indian Human Development Survey with a sample size of 27,251 households in each wave (2005 and 2012) and find that lower social class is associated with higher waiting time. This relationship is significant for individuals that visited a male provider but not so for those that visited a female provider. Further, caste is positively related to higher waiting time only if visiting a private facility; for individuals visiting a government facility the relationship between waiting time and caste is not significant. In general, caste related inequality in waiting time has worsened over time. The results are robust to different specifications and the inclusion of several confounders
Urban governance innovations in Rio de Janeiro: The political management of digital innovations
No full textThis article analyzes urban governance innovations in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focusing on the role of these innovations within the wider political management strategy of the executive leader. These innovations, all of which utilize digital information and communication technologies, are important elements within a leadership and management strategy. The article explores the role of digital innovations within the broader strategy of the mayor’s use of managerial tools as means to strengthen control of the city’s governance. Though presented as an apolitical management style of “what works,” this form of management is also deployed to enforce contentious political decisions with substantial implications for the social fabric of the city. This article offers an analysis of the political role and implications of urban governance and public service innovations that are often presented and analyzed in purely instrumental and apolitical ways
Selecting the Right Type of Personnel
Get PDFParty membership seems to lose importance for political careers. In the wake of political dealignment and dwindling numbers in party membership, an increasing number of parties have started to recruit candidates without prior party membership. What are the implications of this trend in elite recruitment for candidate loyalty, party unity and legislators' activity in parliament? This thesis empirically addresses these questions by making use of several novel and self-collected quantitative data-sets. First, the thesis explores the formal eligibility criteria within parties that aspirants for candidacies have to fulfill. By using data based on roughly 500 self-collected (historical) party constitutions, data on parties' parliamentary voting records and candidate survey data, this thesis finds that candidacy eligibility criteria that presume a minimum length of prior party membership are associated with greater party unity and candidate loyalty. Secondly, I explore how prior party membership affects to behavior of legislators. Expectations generated from social identity theory are put to empirical tests using data on all Member of Parliament of the German Bundestag from 1953 to 2013, and their voting behavior on unwhipped votes. Longer spells of prior and active party membership are associated with greater coherence, theorized to be the product of socialization processes into parties' norms and values. Finally, the consequences of long-term party membership respective the lack thereof are investigated by taking advantage of the Japanese case. I explore the behavioral differences of candidates nominated through open recruitment and those nominated through traditional channels, as has been practiced by major Japanese parties. I _nd that those candidates nominated under open recruitment, oftentimes lacking prior party membership and political experience, are ill-prepared for legislative office at the national level. Compared to their more traditional colleagues, these candidates are less active in parliament. In conclusion, this thesis finds that party membership matters on such dimensions as party unity and legislative activity, and that it is (enforced) intra-party socialization processes that help prepare the individual candidate for the responsibilities of legislative office. Thus, this thesis contributes to the literature of candidate selection – by looking at eligibility criteria – and legislative studies – by assessing the former's consequentiality
The Governance Report 2017
No full textIn Focus: Democratic Innovations. Democracies around the world seem to be under threat. However, with democracy challenged, analysts have disproportion-ately pointed to familiar sets of shortcomings and challenges, such as declining confidence in representative institutions, lack of citi-zen engagement, and the rise of illiberalism and populism. Far less attention has been paid to the promising initiatives taking place worldwide that seek to counteract backsliding and subversion at the local, national, and international levels. The Governance Report 2017 shifts the focus onto democratic innovations: attempts to address the causes of the democratic malaise, to foster democratic resilience, and to stimulate reconsolidation and development of democratic regimes