Democracy,Government Spending,and Economic Growth: A Political-Economic Explanation of the Barro-Effect

The paper develops a political economicargument for the recently observed inverseu-shaped relation between the level ofdemocracy and economic performance. A modelis constructed that shows why and howpolitical participation influences thespending behavior of opportunisticgovernments that can choose an optimalcombination of rents and public goods toattract political support. If the level ofdemocracy remains comparably low,governments rationally choose rents as aninstrument to assure political support.With increasing democratic participation,however, rents become an increasinglyexpensive instrument while the provision ofpublic goods becomes more and moreefficient in ensuring the incumbentgovernment's survival in power. As a consequence, an increase in democracy tends toraise growth rates of per capita income.However, the beneficial impact of democracyon growth holds true only for moderatedegrees of political participation. If –in semi-democratic countries – politicalparticipation increases further,governments have an incentive toover-invest in the provision of publicgoods. This model allows to derive and testthree hypothesis: Firstly, based on asimple endogenous growth model, weempirically substantiate our hypothesis ofa non-linear, inverse u-shaped relationbetween the level of democracy and growthof per capita income. Secondly, we showthat the impact of government spending oneconomic growth is higher in moredemocratic countries. Thirdly, wedemonstrate that the level of democracy andgovernment share of GDP are correlated in au-shaped manner.     

Lessons Learned: Obtaining Value from Federal Asset Sales

If the government decides to sell assets, how can it obtain full value? Four case studies provide valuable lessons: (1) sale of the Elk Hills oil field by the U.S. Department of Energy, (2) sales of loans and property by the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) after the savings and loan debacle, (3) loan asset sales by the Small Business Administration (SBA), and (4) excess property sales by the Defense Reutilization and Management Service (DRMS). The federal government should create an office to assist agencies that seek to develop effective asset sales programs.     

Prevail or perish: Anglo-German naval competition at the beginning of the twentieth century

Abstract

British politicians often argued that Britain maintained its navy only in order to secure its own survival by keeping sea communications open, while Germany in no real need of a powerful navy, threatened this legitimate British policy-goal by pursuing expansionist politics. German leaders, emboldened and a little dazzled by the tremendous industrial and economic success of the newly unified Reich, held that Britain was maintaining its economic dominance in the Empire by military means and thus blocking the progress Germany hoped to make in its aspiration to parity status and economic prosperity, with all that that entailed. This paper will explore the underlying rationale of the arms race between Britain and Germany shining through in those different positions on legitimate (military) policy aims. It will go beyond the visible symbols, as it were, of the Dreadnought and the Two-Power standard. These very concrete matters will also be dealt with here but, more importantly, this essay is meant to give some answer as to whether an archetypal differentiation between survival on the one hand and domination on the other can be made out as the predominant logic that led the two countries to embark on the road to the Great War.     

Evaluation of a community-based intervention to enhance road safety

A total of 300 motorists were recruited at public places to answer a self-report questionnaire on a new community-based intervention to enhance road safety. The intervention consisted of a speed-displaying device that was mounted next to the road and was visible to both motorists and the public. The device gives feedback about the current speed of the motorist. The majority of motorists believed these devices influenced compliance with the speed limit. They indicated they approached locations with these devices more slowly than similar locations without such devices. Moreover, they slowed down if they were going faster than the speed limit. They also said that their reaction to the devices was not influenced by whether they were driving in a community where they had friends or in a community where nobody knew them. These results were consistent across gender, age, levels of education, and professions.     

Socratic Political Philosophy in Xenophon's Symposium

This interpretative commentary recovers the largely overlooked significance of a work that illuminates, by portraying in a subtle comic drama, the new perspective on existence, the new way of life, that Socrates introduced in and through his founding of political philosophy. The famous “problem of Socrates” as a turning point of world history (Nietzsche) remains a cynosure of controversy and puzzlement. How did Socrates understand the character of, and the relation between, civic virtue and his own philosophic virtue? What is the meaning of Socratic “eros”? What kind of educative influence did Socrates intend to have, on and through his varied followers and associates? And what diverse effects did he actually have? Xenophon's Symposium, viewed in the context of his other writings, affords a playful, but thereby deeply revealing, perspective—from the viewpoint of a slightly skeptical intimate.     

Evaluating Racial Disparities in Hurricane Katrina Relief Using Direct Trailer Counts in New Orleans and FEMA Records

Are charges of racial disparities in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief efforts in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina accurate? Limited publicly available data on trailer distribution in New Orleans are compared to an on‐site trailer count and to a complete trailer count from aerial photographs of New Orleans. The Lower Ninth Ward in Orleans Parish (98 percent Black prior to Hurricane Katrina) had significantly fewer trailers than neighboring Arabi in St. Bernard Parish (95 percent White prior to Hurricane Katrina). To control for administrative differences between parishes and socioeconomic factors, two affluent neighborhoods within Orleans Parish, Pontchartrain Park (97 percent Black prior to Hurricane Katrina) and Lakeview (94 percent White prior to Hurricane Katrina), are compared. The conclusion: racial discrepancies remain large and substantial. A number of hypotheses are developed and the implications discussed.     

Party Competition and Government Formation in Germany: Business as Usual or New Patterns?

The process of coalition formation following the 2017 Bundestag election was the most difficult in German post-war history. For the first time, Germany saw negotiations fail, a minority government being discussed as a real possibility, and the federal president involved as formateur in coalition politics. The aim of this contribution is to explain why government formation was so intricate after the 2017 election. To this end, we trace patterns of party politics and the development of the German party system since 2013. We then study general patterns of government formation at the regional and national levels since the 1990s and evaluate whether these have changed with the advent of the right-wing populist party, Alternative for Germany. Our analysis of the 2017–2018 government formation is based on a novel expert survey of the policy profiles of German parties on various issue dimensions, conducted in 2017. The results show that the continuation of the incumbent coalition government of Christian and Social Democrats was the most likely outcome, and that the Social Democrats were indeed able to enforce a surpassing share of their policy positions in the final negotiation rounds.     

The application of immunoblotting to the phenotyping of group-specific component

A sensitive immunoblotting method for the routine detection of group-specific component (GC) from fresh serum, and from control and casework bloodstains has been developed. GC phenotypes were separated in a thin layer polyacrylamide gel by isoelectric focusing, transferred to nitrocellulose by a rapid capillary blotting procedure, and detected using a double antibody enzyme immunoassay. This method is capable of phenotyping 8 ng of GC extracted from bloodstains, a four-fold increase in sensitivity when compared to immunofixation and silverstaining. A total of 2424 casework bloodstains have been analysed and GC phenotypes identified in 78% of samples. The method is suitable for use in routine laboratories and is more sensitive than other methods for GC phenotyping of casework bloodstains.     

What Kinds of Trade Liberalization Agreements Do People in Developing Countries Want?

One of the most striking developments in the global economy in the past decades is the rapid proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), with many of them concluded among or with participation of developing countries. On the presumption that current popular debates on trade policy are not so much about whether citizens want free trade but rather what kinds of trade liberalization they want, we examine individual trade policy preferences with regard to PTAs that can vary in content along several dimensions. To that end we carried out conjoint choice experiments embedded in representative surveys in three developing countries that differ strongly in income levels, political system, and trade liberalization history: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Vietnam. We conceptualize trade policy preferences as preferences over the scale and scope of trade liberalization, environmental and labor standards, and labor market access (migration). Two main findings emerge. First, non-economic considerations, such as sympathy/antipathy toward particular countries and environmental and labor rights concerns influence citizens’ preferences at least as much as factors based on standard economic logic. Second, preferences over particular facets (attributes) of trade liberalization, that is PTA content, are surprisingly consistent across countries, despite strong differences in macro-economic and political context.