Trade at the margin: Estimating the economic implications of preferential trade agreements

Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) have become the most prevalent form of international trade liberalization in recent decades, even though it remains far from clear what their effects on economies and their key units, firms, are. This paper evaluates the distributional consequences of trade liberalization within industries differentiating two distinct aspects in which trade liberalization could result in higher trade flows: the intensive vs. the extensive margin of trade. In particular, we analyze whether trade liberalization leads to increased trade flows because either firms trade more volume in products they have already traded before (intensive margin) or because they start to trade products they have not traded previously (extensive margin), or both. We test these arguments for the Dominican Republic–Central America–United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) and exporting firms based in Costa Rica for the time-period 2008–2014. The results of our study suggest that the effects of CAFTA-DR depend not only on whether we analyze the extensive versus the intensive margin of trade but also whether the product in question is homogenous or differentiated and whether the exporting firm under analysis is small or large. In particular, we find support for the theoretical expectation that firms exporting heterogeneous products, such as textiles, gain from trade agreements, such as CAFTA-DR, in that they can export more varieties of their products. Yet at the same time, they tend to lose at the intensive margin by a reduction in their trade volume while the opposite pattern occurs for firms exporting homogenous products.     

Executive-legislative competition in agenda setting: an analysis of longitudinal changes in South Korea

The historical patterns of executive dominance in national policymaking have undergone a rapid transformation in South Korea. In the context of an emerging institutional rivalry between the executive and legislative branches in forming national policies, this study examines a causal nexus among the agenda power parity, jurisdictional complexity, and the scope and diversity of the national agenda space. A series of data analyses on various original measures of the key variables reveal that the two dimensions of the national agenda space have been reshaped via different causal processes. While the rise of the legislative power in agenda setting and the complexity of legislative jurisdictions tend to increase the scope of the national agenda space, democratic transition subsumes the influence of all other factors in increasing the diversity of the national agenda space.     

An ecological path model of use of violence among African American adolescents

This cross-sectional study used an ecological framework to understand the risk and protective factors associated with use of violence among African American adolescents ages 12–17 years (N = 2,328). Using data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the authors study identified different direct paths in predicting use of violence among African American adolescents. The authors then computed a multigroup analysis to determine whether significant gender differences exist in use of violence. Path analysis results suggest micro, meso, and macro factors significantly predicted violence use. The strongest predictor of use of violence among African American youth was parental conflicts. The multigroup analysis suggests that the pathways to use of violence significantly differ between African American boys and girls. Among African American boys, the strongest predictor of increased use of violence was parental conflicts; among African American girls, it was negative peer influence. Findings suggest that all 3 ecological domains and gender differences should be accounted for when developing prevention or intervention services that target use of violence among young African Americans.     

The Polarization of American Environmental Policy: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Senate and House Votes, 1971–2013

The partisan polarization of environmental policy is an important development in American politics, but it remains unclear how much such polarization reflects voter preferences, as opposed to disagreements between partisan elites. We conduct a regression discontinuity analysis of all major environmental and energy votes in the Senate and the House, 1971–2013. In total, we have 368,974 individual roll call votes by senators and House Representatives. The causal effect of electing a Democrat instead of a Republican in close elections on pro‐environmental voting is large: when a Democrat wins, pro‐environmental voting increases by over 40 percentage points. Because of the quasi‐experimental research design, this difference cannot be attributed to the median voter's preferences. Next, we test hypotheses concerning possible explanations for the elite partisan conflict. The Democrat–Republican gap is the widest when fossil fuel interests make contributions exclusively to Republicans and when state‐level public opinion is polarized.     

Economic crises and augmenting financial bureaucratic power in South Korea

Despite negative public opinion, the role of the Korean government has expanded, while overcoming two rounds of global financial crises. The phenomenon of the re-swelling state is mainly attributed to the strengthening of the central bureaucracy, in particular the financial bureaucracy, rather than the whole central government or the state. The argument of the strengthening of the ‘state’ or the ‘government’ after economic crises might be subject to the error of generalization. Through the two rounds of economic crises, the financial bureaucracy succeeded in acquiring the authority of market supervision and industrial support. In consequence, the bureaucracy's institutional supremacy within the government grew less challenged. The central bureaucracy was no longer the loyal servant to the President. It has reinforced its institutional strength and autonomy vis-a-vis the President, the National Assembly, the Central Bank and civil society, under the pretext of building up the rational and autonomous market and democratic politics.     

Residential Stability and Trust in the Police: an Understudied Area of Police Attitudinal Research

American Journal of Criminal Justice - Residential in/stability has been observed to influence several behavioral outcomes such as mental health, child abuse, adolescent substance uses and...     

On the stability of U.S. politics: post-sample forecasts and refinements of the Congleton–Shughart models of Social Security and Medicare benefit levels

Public Choice - An important issue associated with empirical research is the extent to which statistical results continue to hold in the post-sample period. Although many tests of robustness within...     

Institutional Differences and Local Government Performance: Evidence from Property Tax Assessment Quality

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between institutional differences embedded in local governance structures and government performance in the specific context of property assessment. In order to provide deeper insight into why certain governance structures perform better than others, we focus on the impact of nested levels of institutions—constitutional-level and substantive-level rules of governance—beyond the conventional perspective of the form of government. Based on panel data of cities and towns in New York State between 1993 and 2010, our analysis indicates that, among other institutional arrangements, municipalities employing the council–manager form with appointed assessors are most likely to achieve higher levels of assessment quality (uniformity) of the residential property. This indicates that having politically independent (more career-oriented), low-powered appointed governance structures rather than politically risk-averse (more voter-oriented), high-powered elected counterparts are more likely to be effective at reducing risk in tax equity issues, thus providing better financial performance.     

Predictors of job satisfaction among police officers: Does personality matter?

The aim of this research was to enhance the theoretical foundation of job satisfaction within the field of policing. The data were collected through a self-report survey administered to a sample of sworn police officers (N = 87). The primary research question was whether personality characteristics significantly contribute to perceptions of job satisfaction beyond which could be explained through demographic and job characteristic variables. Although results of hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that overall personality measurement added to the variance accounted for in job satisfaction beyond demographic and job characteristic variables, none of the independent personality scales were significant predictors. Overall, results demonstrated that years of experience and the job characteristic factors of autonomy and feedback were the most important predictors of job satisfaction in this sample of police offers. Implications and future directions are discussed.