Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe evolution of income inequality in host countries affects the migrants working there. As a significant number of these migrants do not earn high incomes, this evolution tends to significantly affect migrants' abilities to send money back to their home countries. We test this hypothesis considering the evolution of income inequality in 59 countries with Portuguese emigrants through observations from 1996 to 2014. Using the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator, we found that an increase in income inequality leads to fewer remittances per emigrant. We also controlled income inequality with several determinants of remittances, including the real GDP per capita, unemployment rate, education skills, and the self‐employment rates of the host countries.

Pork-barrel effects are discussed using a specific program of Portuguese investment expenditures (PIDDAC) that has been observed since 1997. My framework adds new insight to this important branch of economics literature. First, my analysis is the first to be based on sequential dictators games, which are more appropriate for studying the strategies of the agents involved in pork-barrel practices. Second, I examine the role of 'irrelevance effects', which limit or offset the pork-barrel effect even if the recipient municipality and the Portuguese government are ruled by the same political wing. My empirical estimations confirm that the Portuguese government tends to increase PIDDAC transfers to the municipalities that are being ruled by the same political wing. Municipalities with fewer residents or fewer parishes tend to suffer the most significant irrelevance effects. PIDDAC transfers to all municipalities were found to be more generous during election years.

SummaryDoes the economy influence the focus of believers' prayers and their publicly acknowledged graces? This paper offers some preliminary answers to this question. Using cointegration analyses on Catholic bulletins, we found that the composition of published graces varies according to the economic cycle – a higher unemployment rate, a lower real GDP growth rate and electoral periods lead to a higher number of graces focused on economic issues (as opposed to graces motivated by other concerns, such as health). These results contribute to the literature by providing evidence that the economic cycle also influences believers' prayers and publicly acknowledged graces.

AbstractPolitical longevity in young democracies has attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners alike due to several particular characteristics of such democracies, such as a low level of trust, a low level of credibility, corruption, economic difficulties, a less well‐established rule of law and an increased bureaucracy. In such a context, we studied the tenure duration of Romanian ministers since 1989, as well as their accumulated political longevity in ministerial offices. Using proportional hazards regression, we observed some peculiarities in the young Romanian democracy in comparison with more established regimes. We observed that left‐wing majorities tend to increase the probability of seat changes and thus diminish tenure longevity. We also observed that good economic conditions may lead to the substitution of certain types of ministries, while higher inflation rates tend to shorten tenure longevity for Romanian ministers. Moreover, our estimations support the finding that Romanian ministers tend to have shorter tenures as the number of past ministerial functions increases and that the burden of simultaneously managing various ministries significantly contributes to the shorter political longevity of a given minister. Finally, recent ministers have had longer tenures than those in the first years after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.

Taxpayers want to pay as little in taxes as possible to fund an adequate level of public goods and services in their local government, and so they need to keep their local incumbents accountable. Online local budget transparency (OLBT) facilitates this accountability, as it enables citizens to find information online about their local budgets that is timely, accurate, comprehensive and understandable. The aim of this article is to identify the most important determinants of OLBT for all 556 Croatian cities and municipalities from 2014 to 2017. Using a dynamic spatial lag Durbin model, the analysis explores the direct and indirect effects of potential determinants on OLBT. The main contribution is the pioneering use of a dynamic spatial lag Durbin model for researching local budget transparency determinants in a Central and Eastern European democracy. The results show that neighbours have an influence on OLBT but that direct effects dominate; that is, the major OLBT determinants come from within each city/municipality. Particularly important determinants are residents' income, the local government's wealth, the number of public employees in the city/municipality and the population size.