1,720,977 research outputs found
Political support to public debt repudiation in a Monetary Union: the role of the geographical allocation of debt
No full textThis paper proposes a stylized two-period two-country OLG model illustrating the potential role played by the nationality of investors on the incentives for a government to renege on its domestic debt. The two countries belong to a Monetary Union where monetary policy is decided by the Union’s Central Bank, while fiscal policy is set by each national government. In the first period, governments issue debt which is acquired both by resident and non resident families. In the second period, public debt must be paid back. Since debt is issued internally, discriminatory taxation against foreign investors is not available. The government can thus choose to repay the debt by levying a tax on resident families’ labour income, or to repudiate it. The repayment scheme is the outcome of the interaction between the government and interest groups (identified by resident and non resident families) with conflicting preferences about debt redemption. Families exert their influence on government decisions by proposing a contribution function contingent on policy outcomes. The main result produced by our model is that if a sufficient share of debt is owned abroad, then incentives to default on domestic debt increase irrespective of the stock of public debt. The main implication of this result is that for a given level of domestic debt, diversification, increasing the share of domestic debt held by foreigners, raises countries’ default risk. This is of some relevance for the EMU where a progressive greater integration of the market for sovereign issuances has been observed
The politics of social protection: social expenditure vs market regulation
No full textIt has been argued that the notion of a European social model is misleading and that there are in fact different European social models with different features and different performances in terms of efficiency and equity. In this paper, we look at the welfare state from a political economy point of view and interpret the different regimes as possible outcomes of a political process through which heterogeneous preferences of voters are aggregated. In our model, agents differ in two respects: income and socio‐economic vulnerability. Policy‐makers have to decide on two policies: a proportional income tax to finance a social transfer, providing equal benefits to all citizens, and a market regulation policy which benefits only vulnerable workers, providing them with additional protection against unemployment risk. Market regulation is inefficient because it decreases aggregate resources. Individuals' heterogeneity generates a conflict over policies. We feature the political process as a two‐party electoral competition in a citizen–candidate model with probabilistic voting. We show that an inefficient equilibrium exists and that this outcome is more likely as income inequality and the proportion of vulnerable workers become greater. Intuitively, greater inequality raises the level of redistributive spending desired by the poor, making, at the same time, the rich more adverse to the welfare state. In this framework, both the rich and the poor, in order to win the election and realise the fiscal gain, have an incentive to support market restrictions, in the attempt to capture the votes of the vulnerable minority, who benefit from these policies.welfare state, social protection, market regulations, political process, political economy, D72, H53, L5, J65,
Intergenerational Upward (Im)mobility and Political Support of Public Education Spending
Full text linkThis paper provides a simple model of hierarchical education to study the political determination of public education spending and its allocation between different tiers of education. The model integrates private education decisions by allowing parents, who are differentiated according to income and human capital, to top up public expenditures with private transfers. We identify four groups of households with conflicting preferences over the the size of the public education budget and its allocation. In equilibrium, public education budget, private expenditures and expenditure allocation among different tiers of education, depend on which group of households is in power and on country-specific features such as income inequality and intergenerational persistence in education. By running a cluster analysis on 32 OECD countries, we seek to establish if distinctive ‘education regimes’, akin to those identified in the theoretical analysis, could be discerned. Our main finding is that a high intergenerational persistence in education might foster the establishment of education regimes in which the size and the allocation of the public budget among different tiers of education prevent a stable and significant increase of the population graduation rate, thus plunging the country in a ‘low education’ trap
Political support to public debt repudiation in a Monetary Union: the role of the geographical allocation of debt
No full textThe main arguments for the Stability and Growth Pact turn on the need to protect the European Central Bank against
inflationary pressures from the fiscally prodigal countries (repudiation through inflation). Taking a political economy
approach, in this paper we inquire into the conditions under which national governments may reach the decision for a partial
or total repudiation of their debt. The main result produced by our model is that a debt management policy of lowering
effective yields might be the dominant option for a self-interested government whose creditors consist in part of
non-residents. On the basis of such result we argue that the impact of the fiscal position of the various member
countries on the stability of EMU does not depend on the stock of debt but on the proportion of it that is held [email protected]
Inequality, redistribution and the allocation of public spending in education. A political-economy approach
Full text linkThe incidence of public expenditure in education appears to be skewed in favour of the middle
and upper classes. This paper inquires into the determinants of this bias using a political economy approach.
We develop a model with two time periods with an election occurring between the two. In the first period,
agents differ in their initial wealth. In the second period, differences in wealth are combined with
differences in income. In the first period, the incumbent government issues debt to finance public spending
in education and decides how to allocate available resources between primary and tertiary education. Both
increase aggregate income, but while investment in primary education reduces income inequality, investment
in tertiary education increases it. At the beginning of the second period, a two-party electoral competition
is held and probabilistic voting decides the winner. By varying the parameters of the linear income tax, the
elected policy-maker can redistribute resources between low and high income individuals, while by choosing a
debt default rate she can renege on the promise to fully repay public obligations, redistributing resources
from bond-holders to tax-payers. We show that the investment in primary education might not be (politically)
viable. Intuitively, investment in primary education, by reducing income inequality with respect to wealth
inequality, might increase the desired debt default rate of future policy makers, making issuing debt to
finance primary education [email protected]
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
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