1,721,102 research outputs found
Political budget cycles and effects of the excessive deficit procedure: The case of Greece
Get PDFWe study the existence, magnitude, and determinants of political budget cycles in Greece over the past 40 years. We find that the Greek economy has been characterised by extensive electorally-motivated cycles, which are not typical of a developed country. However, we show that the corrective fiscal measures imposed by the European institutions in the face of the Greek debt crisis suppressed these pre-electoral fiscal policy manipulations. In particular, the imposition of the Excessive Deficit Procedure of the Stability and Growth Pact reduced the ability of domestic politicians to increase public deficits to the point where it eliminated, albeit only marginally, political budget cycles
Domestic vs. External Economic Sectors and the Political Process: Insights from Greece
Get PDFBuilding on the well-established relationship between economic dynamics and political processes, we focus on the most important element of the political process, namely, general (or national) elections, and look into their effects on public finance and total economic output. In this vein, the present study has three objectives: (i) to investigate political budget cycles in Greece during the period known as the ‘Third Hellenic Republic’ (in Greek, ‘Metapolitefsi’, hereafter THR) since 1974; (ii) to assess whether national elections affect total economic activity in a stabilizing or destabilizing way; and (iii) to examine the possible effects of the external sector of the economy on the budget balance. The empirical findings of our analysis document how the Greek economy was characterized by sharp political budget cycles in correspondence with the THR, exerting a destabilizing effect on the total output of the economy. Performances of the external sector of the economy have significantly affected budget balances in Greece
Toward a political budget cycle? Unveiling long-term latent paths in Greece
No full textEmpirical studies demonstrated the existence of political budget cycles in many countries, although mechanisms underlying such cycles remain substantially unclear. The present work investigates this mechanism using data from the Greek economy encompassing four decades (1980–2018). Results of regression models indicate that opportunistic political and economic behaviors arise on the part of elected politicians in power via manipulation of public expenditure rather than through the handling of public revenue. In years of general or parliamentary elections, public expenditure rose by about 2.2% of the country’s gross domestic product. This increase is atypical for advanced economies with well-established democratic systems. A specific analysis delineating what specific categories of public spending are associated with political budget cycles, also demonstrated that they were created through final consumption expenditure and especially through collective consumption expenditure. Our findings are robust to various specifications of the econometric model, both linear and non-linear. We conclude that, in the case of Greece, future fiscal rules aimed at suppressing political budget cycles should control pre-election collective consumption expenditures instead of regulating direct and indirect taxes
A historical investigation of regional patterns of specialization: the case of Italy
No full textIl capitolo analizza la specializzazione delle regioni italiane dal secondo dopoguerra. Dopo aver costruito un indicatore di specializzazione regionale, basato sui dati dei Censimenti Istat del 1951, 1961, 1971, 1991, si stima la stabilità della specializzazione regionale con una regressione Galtoniana. Si stimano le ipotesi di ‘effetto di mobilità’ positivo e di diversifying incremental change o reinforcing incremental change. Tutte le stime conducono alla conclusione che, dal 1951, le regioni italiane restano mediamente specializzate negli stessi settori industriali. Questi risultati conducono a preoccupazioni circa la possibilità del paese di competere sui mercati globali. Questa immutata specializzazione regionale, concentrata nei settori tradizionali e del made in Italy, fa sorgere dubbi circa la possibilità delle regioni di sviluppare settori alternativi e tecnologicamente più avanzati
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
New ways to specify data edits
No full textData editing is the process by which data that are collected in some way (a statistical
survey for example) are examined for errors and corrected with the help of software. Edits, the logical conditions that should be satisfied by the data, are specified by subject-matter experts with a procedure which could be tedious and could lead to mistakes with practical implications. To render the process of edit specification more efficient we provide a new step—the definition of the so-called abstract data model of a survey—which describes the structure of the phenomenon that is studied in a survey. The existence of this model enables experts to identify all combinations of variables which should be checked by edits and to avoid the definition of conflicting edits.Furthermore, we introduce an automatic data validation strategy—TREEVAL—that
consists of fast tree growing to derive automatically the functional form of edits and of a statistical criterion to clean the incoming data. The TREEVAL strategy is cast within a total quality management framework. The application of the methodologies proposed is demonstrated with the help of a real life application
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
New ways of specifying data edits
No full textData editing is the process by which data that are collected in some way (a statistical survey for example) are examined for errors and corrected with the help of software. Edits, the logical conditions that should be satisfied by the data, are specified by subject-matter experts with a procedure which could be tedious and could lead to mistakes with practical implications. To render the process of edit specification more efficient we provide a new step-the definition of the so-called abstract data model of a survey-which describes the structure of the phenomenon that is studied in a survey. The existence of this model enables experts to identify all combinations of variables which should be checked by edits and to avoid the definition of conflicting edits. Furthermore, we introduce an automatic data validation strategy-TREEVAL-that consists of fast tree growing to derive automatically the functional form of edits and of a statistical criterion to clean the incoming data. The TREEVAL strategy is cast within a total quality management framework. The application of the methodologies proposed is demonstrated with the help of a real life application. Copyright 2004 Royal Statistical Society.
- …
