The role of capital taxation on the business cycle: the case of Chile, 1960–2019

Economic Change and Restructuring - How relevant could capital income tax be as a growth engine? We analyse the Chilean experience that since the mid-80s has shown significant increase in its...     

Constructing a transnational crime: pesticide smuggling in Brazil

Crime, Law and Social Change - Pesticide smuggling may intensify public health, occupational health, and environmental risks associated to the use of agrochemicals. Yet, there is little scholarly...     

Scientific Research on the Efficiency of Public Expenditures: How and Where is it Going?

ABSTRACT

Recent scientific research has advanced the measurement of the relative performance of organizations and the efficiency of public spending, based on analyzes of the services offered and results achieved. However, from the methodological point of view, there are several methods to analyze the performance and efficiency of spending in the private and public sectors. In this sense, the present study performs a systematic bibliometric review to analyze all scientific publications on the efficiency of public spending published in the last 20 years. The results show that most cost-efficiency analyzes have been limited to education and health expenditures and have used quantitative analysis, mainly through the application of data-involution analysis. The present review is a first step in mapping scientific publications on efficiency in public spending, which will support researchers and managers to make public spending more efficient.     

Economic voting in Portuguese municipal elections

This paper analyses the impact of economic conditions on Portuguese municipal electoral outcomes. We use two extensive datasets to estimate an economic voting model which accounts for the possibility that different levels of government have different levels of responsibility for economic outcomes and for clarity of government responsibility. The empirical results indicate that the performance of the national economy is important especially if local governments are of the same party as the central government. The municipal situation is also relevant particularly in scenarios of greater clarity of national and sub-national government responsibility.     

The constitutional court and control of presidential extraordinary powers in Colombia

This study analyzes the attempts of Colombia's Constitutional Court to control the abuse of presidential emergency powers in the last decade. After describing the dilemmas that governmental emergency powers pose to constitutional regimes and explaining some particularities of Colombia as a democracy under permanent emergency, the account focuses on the efforts of the Constitutional Court to exercise a ‘material’ control of the declaration of a state of emergency by the President. According to this legal doctrine, it is the duty of the court to analyze if the facts invoked by the government constitute a crisis severe enough to justify the use of emergency powers. The analysis shows that the court has exercised this material control in a quite strict way and has nullified several declarations of a state of emergency by different presidents. The study goes on to show how this form of judicial review has been possible in a country like Colombia, with a precarious democracy and a cruel armed conflict. It describes also the impact of this form of judicial control in Colombian politics and offers some more general conclusions based on Colombian experience.     

Genetic admixture and diversity estimations in the Mexican Mestizo population from Mexico City using 15 STR polymorphic markers

The 15 AmpFlSTR Identifiler loci D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, TH01, D13S317, D16S539, D2S1338, D19S433, vWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818 and FGA were analyzed in a sample of 378 unrelated individuals from Mexico City, Mexico. Significant deviations from HW equilibrium in 14/15 STR loci alleles were not detected. The D18S51 locus had the highest power of discrimination (0.970). Genetic admixture estimations revealed a 69% of Amerindian, 26% of European and 5% of African contribution. Comparative analyses between Mexicans and other neighboring populations reveal significant differences in genetic diversity. Our results are important for future comparative genetic studies in different Latin American ethnic groups, particularly Mexican Mestizos and Amerindians. They should also be helpful in genetics, population evolution, forensic and paternity testing.     

Population data for 15 Y-chromosome STRs in a population sample from Quito (Ecuador)

Population frequencies for the 9 Y-STR loci included in the "minimal haplotype" from Y-STR Haplotype Reference Database (YHRD), plus other 6 Y-STRs (DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, GATA A7.2, GATA H4 and GATA A10) were obtained for a sample of 120 males from Quito (Ecuador). One hundred and sixteen unique haplotypes were identified within the sample. Haplotype diversity (0.9994) was among the highest in comparison to other populations from Iberia and South-America. Genetic distances were calculated and our sample presented significative differences with all other samples, the lowest values being with a Guinean sample.