{"title":"The evolution of affluent support for redistribution in Germany in the context of rising inequalities","authors":"Bilal El Rafhi, Thibault Darcillon","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102614","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102614","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the changing attitudes of the most affluent individuals towards state intervention in redistribution in Germany in the context of growing inequality. Contrary to the predictions from traditional political economy models, a growing body of research suggests that the most affluent individuals could support more redistributive policies in reaction to higher income inequality due to altruism, fear of externalities (such as rising crime rates), and potential economic and social costs associated with downward mobility. Using survey data from the European Social Survey (ESS) from 2002 to 2020, our results provide robust evidence of our main prediction: we find a significant relative increase in support for redistribution among the top 30% of earners (compared to the bottom 70% of earners). Our heterogeneous analysis then reveals that the substantial increase in support for redistribution among the affluent has increased among supporters of the political left. This trend seems, however, to be comparatively less pronounced in East Germany.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"85 ","pages":"Article 102614"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142425745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Political alliances and trade: Europe in a polarized world","authors":"Karen Jackson , Oleksandr Shepotylo","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102612","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102612","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates how political alliances influence trade and welfare in Europe and major global economies amidst escalating geopolitical tensions. Utilizing a panel data approach, we assess the impact of military alliances on trade through structural gravity and staggered difference-in-difference methodologies. We further simulate the potential trade and welfare effects of the strengthening and disintegration of political alliances within blocs. Results reveal significant trade and welfare consequences stemming from the expansion or disintegration of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the establishment of a military alliance under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). From a European point of view, our results suggest that the accession of new NATO members will bring economic benefits, while the US leaving NATO, or the deepening of the SCO, will bring negative trade and welfare effects. If a US exit from NATO triggers a disintegration of the alliance and the SCO creates a military alliance, this would lead to severe negative consequences for the EU. Notably, the study finds that the benefits of collective security provided by NATO substantially outweigh the costs associated with its 2% defence spending requirement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"85 ","pages":"Article 102612"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142320317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joscha Beckmann , Robert L. Czudaj , Michael Murach
{"title":"Macroeconomic effects from media coverage of the China–U.S. trade war on selected EU countries","authors":"Joscha Beckmann , Robert L. Czudaj , Michael Murach","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102611","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102611","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The objective of this paper is to analyze the macroeconomic effects of media coverage related to the trade conflict between China and the U.S. for selected countries of the European Union. Our main aim is to evaluate whether media coverage constitutes a relevant transmission channel for macroeconomic effects. We evaluate the response of survey-based macroeconomic expectations, stock prices, and realized industrial production. Our analysis focuses on Germany, France, Italy, and Spain in order to allow for heterogeneous effects across major EU countries. We find significant effects on expectations, stock prices, and industrial production. Especially, a significantly negative effect on current account expectations is observed for three of the four considered EU countries (Germany, Italy, and Spain).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"85 ","pages":"Article 102611"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142320316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond the party push: Gender differences in voters’ persuasion","authors":"Giulia Savio","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102613","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102613","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Despite ongoing efforts to bridge gender disparities, women continue to be underrepresented in political spheres. This paper proposes a novel explanation for the female disadvantage in electoral success, focusing on politicians’ capacity to broaden their electoral base and appeal to voters from opposing parties. Drawing on Swiss elections, this paper leverages various aspects of the electoral system. In Switzerland, the electoral process is characterized by open lists, allowing voters to select candidates within their preferred party, and cross-voting, enabling them to choose candidates from other party lists. Additionally, electoral registers provide data on the number of preference votes garnered by each candidate, categorized by the voter’s preferred party. The analysis reveals that individual preference votes play a pivotal role in driving gender disparities in candidates’ electoral achievements. While the gender gap in preferences expressed by supporters of a particular party is less robust, male politicians outperform their female counterparts significantly in collecting preference votes through cross-voting. This implies that male politicians are more skilled at persuading voters from rival parties. These findings, motivated by various underlying mechanisms, carry considerable policy implications concerning the approach to addressing gender inequalities in politics.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"85 ","pages":"Article 102613"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024001150/pdfft?md5=6f8f28f97398246e29324cfb00461b55&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268024001150-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142272343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Breaking the silence: The effects of online social movements on gender-based violence","authors":"Michele Battisti , Ilpo Kauppinen , Britta Rude","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102598","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102598","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the impact of online social movements against gender-based violence (GBV) on GBV-related crime. Using machine learning techniques, we construct a novel dataset tracking the prevalence of GBV-related social media movements on Twitter from 2014 to 2017. Matching this data with weekly FBI crime reports across U.S. states we estimate the effect of tweets related to GBV on GBV-related reported crime. Our econometric approach aims to mitigate concerns of spurious correlations arising from common trends in Twitter usage and crime. We estimate national level regressions with differential effects on GBV-related and non-GBV-related crimes within the same week, as well as regressions at the state-by-week level controlling for state and month fixed effects. Our main findings reveal that GBV-related tweets led to a small but significant short-term decrease in GBV-related crime reports. Further analysis suggests that the decrease is attributable to a reduction in actual crime rather than in reporting behavior.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"85 ","pages":"Article 102598"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142660067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The perceived impact of immigration on native workers’ labour market outcomes","authors":"Bernd Hayo , Duncan H.W. Roth","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102610","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102610","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A sizeable literature analyses how immigration affects attitudes towards migrants and discusses differences between socio-economic groups and their potential correlation with perceived concerns about labour market competition. Against the background of the large-scale influx of refugees into Germany between 2015 and 2016, this paper uses data from a unique and representative survey of the German population to assess whether respondents express fears of job loss due to immigration. We focus on the importance of perceptions of migrants' ability to do one's job in relation to these fears. Moreover, we compare concerns about refugees with those about EU migrants and propose several hypotheses. Our findings indicate that: (i) Respondents are more likely to view EU migrants as potential competitors in the labour market. (ii) Workers in blue-collar occupations and without tertiary education are more likely to view migrants as potential competitors on the labour market. (iii) The perception of potential competition from migrants strongly predicts fear of job loss. Once we control for this perception, occupation and skill levels are no longer significantly related to the probability of reporting fear of job loss. Moreover, there are no longer significant differences between the two migrant groups. (iv) Anti-migrant sentiments are also associated with concerns about job loss.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"85 ","pages":"Article 102610"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024001125/pdfft?md5=976ce8c143b6fd3cd05a57ada3f83648&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268024001125-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142229446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michal Krawczyk , Andrea Blasco , Tomasz Gajderowicz , Marek Giergiczny
{"title":"Support for temporary protection of displaced populations in the EU: A conjoint experiment","authors":"Michal Krawczyk , Andrea Blasco , Tomasz Gajderowicz , Marek Giergiczny","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102601","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102601","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Millions of people were forced to flee Ukraine after Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022, one of the fastest displacements in decades. Citizens' response in EU countries (where most displaced Ukrainians arrived) has been considerably more positive than in past refugee crises. This study investigates several possible drivers of this difference. We conduct a large conjoint experiment in six EU Member States, eliciting willingness to provide temporary protection to hypothetical groups of future migrants whose characteristics we manipulate systematically. We find that all of the experimental variables make a difference. We observe a greater support for protecting groups consisting of relatively many children and many women rather than men. The region of origin and the religious affiliation play a major role. Finally, we see greater support for people fleeing a war rather than poverty or the adverse consequences of climate change. While all these effects are identified consistently across different groups of respondents (e.g., the respondent's religion played a limited role), effect sizes vary considerably between countries. Finally, we randomly manipulate which aspect of temporary protection (social housing, access to the labour market) is emphasised in our communication to the participants. We find this manipulation to have a limited effect on the public support for the policy.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"85 ","pages":"Article 102601"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142150209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assessing the ethics of prison policies to ensure human rights compliance: Suicides and self-inflicted critical events in Italian prisons","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2023.102428","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2023.102428","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Considering self-inflicted critical events (suicides, attempted suicides, self-harm acts, hunger strikes) in Italian prisons as indicators of the respect of inmates' human rights, this study examines their relationship with the characteristics of the Italian prison system between 2016 and 2021, using a unique prison-level dataset covering the 188 national prisons. Both individual panel regressions and seemingly unrelated regressions show that reducing prison overcrowding reduces critical events. The same result is achieved by increasing mandatory treatments (restraint acts) performed discretionally by prison staff. Because the former policy is politically sensitive and difficult/costly to implement, policymakers may prefer to rely on the latter as a “death-avoidance strategy”, despite the greater likelihood of violating inmates’ human rights. These findings may help explain the increasing use of acts of restraint in Italian prisons in recent times.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"84 ","pages":"Article 102428"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268023000721/pdfft?md5=d2a0e93a6bba2d09a1e33ed69ad1ef22&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268023000721-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48044324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Politically induced uncertainty and asset-market valuation","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2023.102427","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2023.102427","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We study the consequences of politically induced asset-market uncertainty. Our data are from Poland, where the imposition of a new resource tax<span> was vaguely announced in a single sentence by the prime minister in November 2011. The tax concerned a single company, one of the world's leading copper and silver producers. We show how the announcement, besides imposing losses as expected on shareholders, introduced uncertainty into asset-market valuation.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"84 ","pages":"Article 102427"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46443921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coherence of output gaps in the euro area: The impact of the COVID-19 shock","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2023.102369","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2023.102369","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Using the measures proposed by Mink et al. (2012), we reexamine the coherence of business cycles in the euro area using a long sample period. We also analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business cycle coherence and examine whether our measures for business cycle coherence indicate a core versus periphery within EMU. Our results suggest that business cycle coherence did not increase monotonically. The COVID-19 pandemic made that the signs of the output gaps of euro area countries became more similar, but we find large differences in the amplitude of the output gaps across countries.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"84 ","pages":"Article 102369"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9969753/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9707076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}