Suchergebnisse

This article examines long‐term political determinants of divergent levels of public health investment inChina andIndia. Addressing the welfare‐state literature hypothesis that democracies tend to invest more than non‐democracies in social services including public health, we hypothesize that in low‐income countries the development ideologies held by political leaders and the degree to which lower classes pressure the state for public services may impact public health investment more strongly than regime type. We offer a test of this hypothesis through comparative historical analysis of democraticIndia and non‐democraticChina. Controlling for economic growth rates and including analysis of the outlyingIndian state ofKerala, we find support for our hypothesis that development ideology and systematic pressure from the lower classes have a major impact on government investment in public health.

The social expenditure in 30 European countries over the period 1970-2011 is examined, applying static and dynamic panel estimators in order to identify the determinants of social expenditure. After a brief introduction and a survey of the economic literature on this issue, we discuss the data and briefly introduce the applied methodologies. Empirical results, in line with previous researches, suggest that real per capita GDP growth, unemployment rate, general government consolidated gross debt, and openness to trade have a direct impact on real social expenditure. Moreover, some political factors, such as government fragmentation, political globalization, and democracy degree contribute to explain the variability of social expenditure. It is found that higher growth is associated with less expenditure: Granger causality analysis reveals mixed results, and only four countries of our sample exhibit a unidirectional flow running from economic growth rate to social expenditure. ; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313594409_The_Political_Determinants_of_Social_Expenditure_in_the_European_Countries

We contribute to the literature on the political determinants of regional financing by analyzing the case of Spain, a largely decentralized country. Using a dynamic panel data model, we argue that the rise in relative bargaining power of regional parties in Spain can partly explain the increase in budgetary allocations to regions observed during the period 1986–2006. In particular, our results show that the rise in parliamentary representation of the nationalist Catalonian party, measured by the Banzhaf voting power index, has been a significant factor in ensuring increasing financial resources to regional governments. In addition, the traditional hypotheses of the political economy literature on legislative apportionment are tested for the case of Spain, with no significant results observed. The overall distribution of regional financing in Spain seems to be in general well aligned with the basic economic principles of efficiency and equity recommended for such a system.

The article presents a few numerical models designed for use in statistical investigations of the impact of political factors upon economic growth in the developing countries. The main assumptions of the models are that economic growth is influenced by (1) the economic level of the country, (2) foreign capital inflow, and (3) political factors. The influence of the economic level of a country is taken into account by using a simple savings function relating per capita savings linearly to GDP per capita. The impact of the political factors is intro duced in the models by letting the savings depend also upon those factors. The value of the contribution of foreign capital inflow to GDP growth is assumed to be a third of the value of the inflow itself. While mainly concerned with methodological proposals, the article also presents an empirical investigation of the importance of the political mobilization of various social groups for economic development, and how political integration influences economic growth. The results of this study suggest that the political mobilization of the lower classes in the devel oping countries may have a positive impact upon the development efforts of these countries.

In the absence of congressional action, states have two nonexclusive e‐commerce sales tax policy options: membership in the Streamlined Sales Tax Project or enactment of Amazon tax legislation. Previous research has suggested that economic factors are important predictors of adopting the former, and legislators frequently assert that lost revenue is a motivation for adopting either. There is also some evidence that a state's political environment determines policy selection. This article tests these claims. Using two unique datasets, one for each policy, economic factors and foregone revenue are found to not be statistically significant predictors of e‐commerce tax policy adoption. Instead, the political environment matters. The analysis concludes that governors drive state e‐commerce sales tax policy, and that the naïve perception that Republicans are less willing to tax than Democrats is misleading. Furthermore, the analysis finds indirect evidence that retail lobby influence is an important factor in a state's enactment of Amazon tax legislation.Related Articles
Bauroth, Nicholas. 2007. "." Politics & Policy 35 (): 366‐394. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2007.00064.x/abstract

Smith, Robert W. 2004. "." Politics & Policy 32 (): 636‐659. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2004.tb00199.x/abstract

Farnsworth, Stephen J. 2002. "." Politics & Policy 30 (): 460‐480. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2002.tb00130.x/abstract
Related Media
Film Clip: . 2011. "." http://www.bloomberg.com/video/74930810/
Ante la falta de acción del Congreso, los estados tienen dos opciones no exclusivas para su política fiscal de comercio electrónico: una afiliación al Streamlined Sales Tax Project o el establecimiento de la ley fiscal Amazon. Investigaciones anteriores sugieren que los factores económicos son importantes predictores para adoptar este último, mientras que los legisladores afirman frecuentemente que la pérdida de ingresos es un incentivo para adoptar cualquiera de las dos opciones. También existe evidencia de que el contexto político de un estado determina la elección de política fiscal. Este estudio pone a prueba estas afirmaciones. Usando dos conjuntos separados de datos, uno para cada política, se encontró que los factores económicos y el ingreso perdido no son predictores estadísticamente significativos de la adopción de políticas fiscales para el comercio electrónico. De hecho, el contexto político sí importa. El análisis concluye que los gobernadores son quienes estatales impulsan la política fiscal para el comercio electrónico y que la imagen ingenua de que los republicanos están menos dispuestos a gravar que los demócratas es engañosa. Además, nuestro análisis muestra evidencia directa de que la influencia el cabildeo de los vendedores al por menor es un factor importante en la promulgación estatal de la ley fiscal Amazon.

This article analyses the effect of political factors on privatisation reforms and considers the practical implications of such policy from a comparative point of view in Europe. According to a sample of 25 countries in 1995–2013, our findings suggest that privatisation reforms could be impeded by veto players, fragmentised governments and political competition. These reforms tend to be used less by politicians who have been in power for a long period of time and implemented at the start of an office term, except in the case of right-wing governments. Our findings support greater privatisation in concentrated conservative governments, especially when the next elections are about to be held.

The expansion of digital interconnectivity has simultaneously increased individuals' access to media and presented governments with new opportunities to regulate information flows. As a result, even highly democratic countries now issue frequent censorship and user data requests to digital content providers. We argue that government internet censorship occurs, in part, for political reasons, and seek to identify the conditions under which states censor. We leverage new, cross-nationally comparable, censorship request data, provided by Google, to examine how country characteristics co-vary with governments' digital censorship activity. Within democracies, we show that governments engage in more digital censorship when internal dissent is present and when their economies produce substantial intellectual property. But these demand mechanisms are modulated by the relative influence that democratic institutions provide to narrow and diffuse interests; in particular, states with proportional electoral institutions censor less.