{"title":"Don’t blame the government!? An assessment of debt forecast errors with a view to the EU Economic Governance Review","authors":"Alena Bachleitner , Doris Prammer","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102524","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In view of the increased importance of debt developments in the EU governance framework, this paper investigates the accuracy and the main economic causes of forecast errors in (government) debt projections. We find a positive average debt forecast error for European Union member states, which increases with the projection horizon. Underestimation of debt growth is particularly relevant for countries with high government debt. The main drivers of the debt forecast errors seem to be partly outside direct government control: Wrongly projected overall GDP developments and stock flow adjustments - a factor which has not been considered in the literature so far. Moreover, the high uncertainty in debt forecasts is also inherent in the European Commission’s benchmark forecasts: only their now-cast remains unbiased.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140332765","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}
Patrick Hirsch , Lars P. Feld , Ekkehard A. Köhler , Tobias Thomas
{"title":"“Whatever It Takes!” How tonality of TV-news affected government bond yield spreads during the European debt crisis","authors":"Patrick Hirsch , Lars P. Feld , Ekkehard A. Köhler , Tobias Thomas","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102511","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Were government bond risk premia affected by the media in addition to the effects of major events? Revisiting the European debt crisis, we analyze the role of television news in the rise and re-convergence of GIIPS bond spreads vis-à-vis Germany from 2007 to 2016. We use a dataset of more than one million human-coded news items from leading newscasts worldwide to identify over 25,000 news on the Eurozone and country-specific economic topics. Our findings emphasize the relevance of the tonality of news, such that an increasing share of positive (negative) news correlates with a decrease (increase) in spreads. Content-based endogenous clustering of news highlights the importance of news about institutions providing stability and “international financial support” to distressed countries in reducing bond spreads. Moreover, weekend news enables us to establish a causal link between country-specific news coverage and changes in spreads on the subsequent trading day.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024000132/pdfft?md5=591aca625c557fb398fd35762c78a402&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268024000132-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140095864","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}
Andrea Celico , Martin Rode , Ignacio Rodriguez-Carreño
{"title":"Will the real populists please stand up? A machine learning index of party populism","authors":"Andrea Celico , Martin Rode , Ignacio Rodriguez-Carreño","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102529","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102529","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The existing literature on populism has seen numerous attempts to empirically quantify this somewhat ambiguous concept. Despite notable advances, continuous measures of populism with a clear theoretical background and a considerable coverage are still hard to come by. This paper proposes a novel approach to measuring party populism by combining several different expert-surveys via supervised machine learning techniques. Employing the random forest regression algorithm, we greatly expand the geographical and temporal coverage of two well-known populism indicators, which are based on the discursive and the ideational approach, respectively. The resulting multidimensional measures capture party-level populism on a continuous 0–10 scale, covering 1920 parties in 169 countries from 1970 to 2019. Our measures accurately replicate both definitions of populism, although the indicators may be more suitable for predicting populist outcomes in Western countries, as compared to non-Western ones.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024000314/pdfft?md5=8fdc0e3f4b789cf3e020b431b7cdcc0f&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268024000314-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140274870","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}
Andre Briviba , Bruno Frey , Louis Moser , Sandro Bieri
{"title":"Governments manipulate official Statistics: Institutions matter","authors":"Andre Briviba , Bruno Frey , Louis Moser , Sandro Bieri","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102523","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Many governments have been reported to systematically manipulate official statistics. However, scholarly research has not extensively dealt with the determinants of data manipulation, beyond the effect of autocracy. We extend the literature by including institutional factors hypothetically affecting data manipulation. Regressing the gap between GDP – predicted by night-time lighting data – and „official“ GDP on these institutional factors suggests that economic openness and democracy decrease manipulation, while decentralization increases manipulation. Political openness decreases manipulation for countries under-reporting GDP and increases manipulation for countries over-reporting GDP. Surprisingly, no effects are found for press freedom and the independence of the statistical office.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024000259/pdfft?md5=868d66b78c5ebff2ea9cc0c34a26e5c3&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268024000259-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140347368","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":"Transitive delegation in social networks: Theory and experiment","authors":"Sang-Hyun Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102531","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102531","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper presents a model of delegative democracy, wherein each voter has the choice to either directly vote or delegate their vote, along with any votes delegated to them, to another voter. I examine the incentives for delegation and how this affects the quality of collective decision-making. Specifically, by assuming the delegation network to be a ring network, I analyze symmetric Nash equilibria both with and without the delegation option. A key finding is that when the delegation network is sufficiently ideologically homogeneous and large, voters are inclined to delegate their votes, even in situations where they lack knowledge about who knows what or who knows whom. Furthermore, I demonstrate that delegation facilitates improved collective decision-making. Theoretical predictions are corroborated by laboratory data.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140345440","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":"Logistic hubs and support for radical-right populism: Evidence from Italy","authors":"Liliana Cuccu , Nicola Pontarollo","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102522","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102522","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Increasing discontent and the associated growing support for populist parties have been attributed to several drivers, including globalization, technological change, and migration waves. We analyse a phenomenon that encompasses a mix of economic and cultural grievances — the logistic revolution. The Italian logistics industry is characterized by a heavy reliance on low-paying and precarious contracts, it employs a large number of foreign workers, and is dominated by multinational corporations. The construction of large logistic hubs can increase the feeling of economic insecurity and trigger cultural backlash against foreign workers and large corporations. This, in turn, can create a favourable environment for populist radical right-wing parties that portray themselves as protectors of traditional values and national identity, and as defenders of the working class against the perceived threats posed by globalization, immigration, and large corporations. Through an IV and a DiD approach, we provide evidence that the support for Lega, a populist radical-right party, grew in Italian municipalities where new logistic hubs have been built.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140088197","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":"Subnational public debt sustainability in Mexico: Is the new fiscal rule working?","authors":"Ernesto del Castillo , René Cabral","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102512","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In 1997, after a costly bailout, the central government of Mexico passed legislation intending to improve subnational finances through fiscal decentralization. As a result, many states rapidly began to accumulate debt during the following decade. Subnational public debt grew threefold between 1996 and 2006. The global financial crisis only aggravated the debt accumulation problem, which increased by 320% between 2006 and 2016. In response, a new law with a set of fiscal rules for subnational governments was enacted in 2016, namely, the Law of Fiscal Discipline (LDF) for states and municipalities. This study evaluates the impact of the fiscal rule alert system on the levels of debt accumulation across Mexican states. Using a quarterly panel dataset comprising the period 2013–2020 and employing difference-in-differences techniques, we observe a significant reduction of 4% in public debt between treated and untreated states and 5.8% in debt per capita. Moreover, we document that even after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the new fiscal rule effectively reduced the pace of subnational public debt in Mexico.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024000144/pdfft?md5=26c7f9c854f74d5771c33a4730897c65&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268024000144-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140163857","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":"Discretion and public procurement outcomes in Europe*","authors":"Bernard Hoekman , Bedri Kamil Onur Taş","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102525","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Public procurement regulations aim to ensure the state minimizes contract award prices by specifying the processes to be used in issuing calls for tenders and award of contracts. Cost minimization goals may be complemented by ancillary objectives such as supporting small firms or disadvantaged groups. Recent theory suggests procurement regulations and practices constraining the ability to exercise discretion in awarding contracts may increase average procurement costs. Using detailed data on procurement awards in 33 European countries, we find that restrictions on exercise of discretion are associated with higher average contract prices, and that increases in prices are greater in countries with above average government effectiveness. We also show that realizing price-reducing benefits from exercising greater discretion, where permitted by law, reduces the probability small firms win contracts and continue to do so. Our findings point to a tradeoff between the potential to lower prices by exercising discretion and policies that aim to increase the likelihood SMEs are awarded contracts.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024000272/pdfft?md5=9df56d5c7bcbbeb2a3c68327ea06c820&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268024000272-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140121843","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":"Why do voters elect criminal politicians?","authors":"Abhinav Khemka","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102527","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102527","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Voters across the world are often complicit in electing bad-quality legislators to political office. This problem is particularly salient in India, where candidates accused of criminality often succeed at the polls. Why do voters show a willingness to cast their ballots for candidates accused of wrongdoing? Using primary individual-level voter survey data from the Bihar 2020 state assembly elections, this paper examines whether ethnic voting can explain this surprising voter behavior. Contrary to voter preference theory, I find that voters exhibit a stronger negative response to candidates accused of criminality when they belong to their preferred ethnic party. Voter support for the non-ethnic falls by 89.2% for violent charges. Coethnicity further reduces electoral support by 67% for violent criminals. This pattern holds regardless of the voters’ level of news consumption, political knowledge, education status, and income. These findings suggest that the electoral success of criminal politicians could be attributed to other factors such as a lack of proper institutions or lower state capacity rather than the voters’ underlying ethnic preferences.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024000296/pdfft?md5=6545c2047de44b1dbe88e3bc7312317f&pid=1-s2.0-S0176268024000296-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140182209","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}
Pedro Bação, Joshua Duarte, Melissa Pereira, Marta Simoes
{"title":"Social expenditure composition and inequality: A dynamic panel threshold analysis for OECD countries","authors":"Pedro Bação, Joshua Duarte, Melissa Pereira, Marta Simoes","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102510","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the relationship between inequality and public social spending for an overall sample of 28 OECD countries spanning 1997 to 2017. We add to the literature by dissecting social expenditure according to nine programs and allowing for the existence of a non-linear relation in the context of a dynamic panel threshold model. The analysis reveals a positive contribution of old-age pensions to the Gini index of disposable income distribution, the most often used indicator of inequality, supporting the need to rethink old-age pension systems in this group of countries. The results for the other social expenditure components vary with the inequality measure used and country groups under analysis, highlighting the problems that may be associated with panel data even when a set of countries with many characteristics in common is used. Our results also stress the relevance of accommodating nonlinearities when explaining inequality, paving the way to a better understanding of its behaviour.","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140004172","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}