Browsing by Subject "Political economy"
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Item Essays in dynamic political economics(2009-05) Konno, Kazuki; Corbae, Dean; Azzimonti-Renzo, MarinaThe focus of my research is dynamic political economy in macroeconomics. The first chapter of my dissertation studies the fact that Countries in the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) vary widely in their ratio of capital tax rates to labor tax rates. This chapter’s motivation is the strong negative correlation between the capital/labor tax ratio and old dependency ratio (defined as the ratio of population older than 65 years old to population between 20 and 65 years old) among 21 OECD countries. I study a parsimonious overlapping generations (OLG) majority voting model. In equilibrium, the retired households and relatively old working households hold a large amount of capital and vote for a low capital tax rate (implying a high labor tax rate), while relatively young working households hold a small amount of capital and vote for a high capital tax rate (implying a low labor tax rate). As a result, the model implies that countries with more old people have relatively lower capital taxes. The model takes the old dependency ratio as given and delivers a capital/labor tax ratio chosen by the median voter. The calibrated model presented here can generate not only this negative correlation, but also the tax ratios for the 21 OECD countries studied. In the second chapter, I extend the first chapter and study the Japanese economy and taxation for the past three decades. Population aging is a serious social issue in Japan. This chapter also shows that demographics is an important variable to explain the time series data of capital and labor tax rates. Interestingly, the model predicts that a benevolent or utilitarian government would set a capital tax rate to be zero as in many standard tax models. This result emphasizes the importance of modeling a political economy, as opposed to a standard social planning economy that has been extensively used previously. Finally, the third chapter focuses on US immigration policy. Illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States has been a hot topic to academic researchers and policy makers. This study quantitatively investigates the welfare effects of illegal immigration to native households in the US. More specifically, I simulate the model economy when the government deports every illegal immigrant. The simulation shows that the social welfare increases by 0.01 percent on average, and the poorest households’ welfare increases by 0.1%. Although, initially, there is a decrease in the interest rate and the unemployment rate as well as an increase in the wage, these variables in the no-illegal-immigrant steady state are almost identical to the initial steady state which is calibrated to the US economy.Item Essays on political competition(2013-05) Roeder, Oliver Kelly; Wiseman, Thomas E., 1974-The three branches of American government---judicial, legislative, and executive---serve important governmental roles, and present their own interesting political questions. We answer three here. First, what are the differences between judges and politicians, and how does this inform the formers' selection? Second, how do senators behave to satisfy their political preferences and the electorate's? Third, what is the optimal strategy for a candidate in the Electoral College? American states select judges in various ways. In Chapter 1, we analyze "merit selection." Typically, a nonpartisan commission culls applicants for judgeships, and an appointee is selected by the governor. Then, periodically, this judge undergoes a retention election: an up-or-down vote by the state's electorate. We contribute a microeconomic model to analyze these elections. We compare this institution, in welfare terms, to others used to appoint and retain judges. Finally, we analyze a recent and ongoing phenomenon: these elections are transforming from historically rubber stamp formalities into contested, politicized contests. The politicization of issues brought before courts increases the likelihood of judges being ousted. In Chapter 2, we explore the behavior of legislators in the U.S. Senate, and of the voters who elect them. We examine shifts in incumbent senators' espoused political positions over time, as the reelection campaign approaches. We introduce novel game theoretic models of incumbent-challenger interaction. We find, through empirical analysis of senators' roll call votes, that senators moderate their positions over time, as potential reelection approaches. Moreover, this moderation accelerates. This is explained by the behavior of voters: the moderation is mirrored by the attention paid by voters. Also, the identity of an incumbent's challenger plays an important role in the amount of moderation exhibited by the incumbent. In Chapter 3, we consider a highly adaptable game theoretic model of competition in the Electoral College. It takes the form of a repeated game. Candidates make allocation decisions to persuade voters. Candidates get utility from winning office, and disutility from expending resources. We characterize optimal campaign strategy, and present comparative statics. We show, inter alia, that a candidate with an inherent advantage may prefer a longer campaign.Item Macroeconomics, politics, and policy: The determinants of capital flows to Latin America(2007-08) Huggins, Caitlin Elizabeth; Biglaiser, Glen; Thames, Frank; Patterson, DennisSince the “lost decade” of the 1980’s Latin America has attracted several forms of capital from abroad. Extensive studies about the effects of capital have found mixed results about their effects, but that these emerging markets are constantly seeking out foreign monies. Despite unresolved debates over these effects, policy makers desire to understand the determinants of capital inflows—specifically foreign direct investment (FDI), portfolio investment (PI), and remittances. Although determinants of FDI have been extensively studied, portfolio investment and remittances, which make up a combined three-fourths of capital inflows for many of these nations, have been mostly ignored. In this study, I investigate the different factors and dynamics that determine these three different forms of capital inflow. I argue that the factors (macroeconomic, political, and domestic) that help determine each of these types of capital inflows are different across inflow type. I find that PI remains the most unpredictable form of capital to the region, but that remittances and FDI demonstrate important similarities that policy makers should consider. My findings about remittances also have substantial implications for future research of migrants’ decision to remit as well as a states’ ability to stimulate these flows with implications for capital control policy.Item The political economy of literacy in the 'post-racial' era : the common core state standards and the reproduction of racial inequality in the United States(2015-05) Williams Barrón, Courtney Elizabeth; Thompson, Shirley Elizabeth; Treisman, Uri; Marshall, Stephen H.; Browne, Simone A.; Brown, Keffrelyn D.This dissertation contextualizes The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects within the racialized neoliberal “post-civil rights” United States. It begins with an introduction to the standards, including an overview of the existing criticism surrounding the content, processes, and potential effects of the standards in practice. It then historicizes the standards’ brand of literacy within the context of literacy in U.S. history, including its discursive ambiguity and its potential as both a tool and a weapon for social control, rulership, and revolution. This is followed by an examination of the standards’ authority on the national conception of literacy, illiteracy, the literate, and the illiterate, including the definition of personal traits and characteristics for the literate person of the 21st century. The standards, fashioned within the larger national narrative of racial progress in conjunction with the social narrative of educational decline, seek to re-center the idea that higher, measurable standards will rationalize the inequalities of race and class. This project examines the political economy of literacy in a “post-racial” era, by historicizing the standards as a 21st century racial and cultural imperative. Appealing to individuals and communities across the political, economic, and cultural spectrum, the standards were initially adopted by as many as 46 states, Washington DC, and three U.S. territories. By investigating the origins, evolution, and implications of this literacy policy, we can see that the conception of literacy lends credence to aggressive capitalist ventures through the terms of race and class. The effect is a new politics of equality based on the consumption of literacy skills. Literacy, newly defined and valued as a commodity in the “knowledge economy,” is a political intervention into the pedagogies of citizenship for the 21st century, and currently serves as a primary mechanism for policing the boundaries of property, personhood, and privilege in the 21st century.Item The political economy of neighborhood change and public housing (re)development in Austin, Texas(2014-05) Martinec, Matthew Clayton; Mueller, Elizabeth J.; Wilson, Barbara B. (Barbara Brown)The aim of this thesis is to explore the evolving relationship between neighborhood change and public housing in the historically black neighborhood of Rosewood in Austin, Texas. In October 2010, the Housing Authority of the City of Austin was awarded a grant to begin the process of redeveloping one of the nation’s oldest federally funded public housing facilities – Rosewood Courts. As the once segregated public housing complex is slated for redevelopment, community members representing an assortment of interests have engaged in a series of heated exchanges and elevated discourse surrounding the legacy of public housing in Austin, Texas. At the same time, the Rosewood Neighborhood has witnessed a dramatic transformation in recent decades, losing much of its long-standing black community to an ever emergent gentrifying population. This research evaluates the relationship between neighborhood change and public housing (re)development, highlighting the position of Rosewood Courts within larger processes of policy and political economy transformation.Item The political economy of remittances : emigration, social insurance provision, and political behavior in Mexico(2010-08) Germano, Roy; Weyland, Kurt Gerhard; Freeman, Gary P.; Greene, Kenneth F.; Sassen, Saskia; Galbraith, James K.Why do international migrants send money home? What are the implications of these monetary flows for developing countries? Long debated by economists and sociologists, these questions have received very little attention in the political science literature. This dissertation argues, however, that remittances—money sent home or “remitted” by international migrants—have significant implications for the study of politics. My main contention is that international migrants assume a more significant welfare burden when their home government’s commitment to social insurance provision is in decline. Remittances, in other words, flow to compensate non-emigrating citizens for state retrenchment and the absence of a robust welfare state. I argue that this “transnational safety net” makes remittance recipients (RRs) less vulnerable to economic instability than neighbors who do not receive this money. All else equal, RRs should be more contented with their economic circumstances and have fewer economic grievances with which to politicize. The income-stabilizing and insurance effect of remittances, then, should reduce public pressure on the state, leaving RRs less motivated to mobilize against and punish incumbents for a poor economy when public safety nets are weak. Evidence comes from an original survey of 768 Mexican households, field interviews, and time-series data published by the Bank of Mexico. Statistical tests reveal that Mexicans abroad remit more to families that do not receive social benefits and send roughly $2.5 million more home for every $10 million reduction in spending on social programs by the Mexican government. Analyses furthermore reveal that despite being very poor on average, RRs tend to enjoy higher levels of income stability, are less likely to identify an economic matter as “the most important problem facing Mexico,” and make more positive and optimistic assessments of the national economy and their own financial circumstances. In the 2006 Mexican presidential election, I find that RRs were up to 15 percent more likely to stay home on election day at the expense of the primary opposition party and significantly less likely to punish the incumbent party with a vote for either of the major opposition parties if they did vote.Item The political economy of U.S. alternative press : case studies of The nation and The Texas observer(2010-05) Guo, Lei, active 21st century.; De Uriarte, Mercedes Lynn; Stein, LauraThroughout the history, U.S. alternative press has published against the grain of mainstream media and politics and on tight budgets. In fact, it remains the political economic dilemma for any critical media project that the financial resources it needs are in the same capitalism society it criticizes. Using a political economy approach, this thesis examined how political economic factors including ownership models, means of support and the government role influence the balance between the editorial goals and business performance of the two alternative or independent publications: The Nation, a privately-owned newsmagazine providing critical opinions and investigative journalism on nationwide issues, and The Texas Observer, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit biweekly covering stories ignored by the mainstream press in the state of Texas. Through in-depth interviews with staffers of the two publications and primary and second sources analysis, this thesis demonstrates the tension between editorial ideals and financial needs that are affected by several political economic factors. It also shows that both alternative papers are committed to democratic altruism and watchdog journalism whenever they deal with political economic pressures.Item Political economy, geographical imagination, and territory in the making and unmaking of New Granada, 1739-1830(2016-05) Afanador-Llach, Maria José; Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge; Deans-Smith, Susan; Del Castillo, Lina; Appelbaum, Nancy; Hunt, BruceThis dissertation interrogates the intersections between political economy and territoriality during the transition from colony to republic in New Granada—modern day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panamá. It proposes a framework to analyze the discursive and on-the-ground impacts of early-modern political economy in pre-, and post-colonial politico-geographic debate. This dissertation sheds light on the territorial shifts and political debates between 1739 and 1830. First, it traces the imperial reform that led to the establishment of the viceroyalty of New Granada in 1739 and its territorialization over the course of the eighteenth century. Second, it analyses the fragmentation of New Granada into autonomous sovereign states starting in the 1810s. Third, it studies the Spanish military recovery of New Granada during the Reconquista wars. Lastly, it explores the unification of the Gran Colombian republic and its separation in 1830. To fully comprehend the political and territorial outcomes of the era, it is essential to understand that the coexistence of different spatial conceptions within colonial territories shifted both along geopolitical contingencies and spatial political economies that were long in the making. The rearrangement of territories from the eighteenth century to the republican era implied negotiations among often opposing ideas and interests over how to economically and politically organize and connect different spaces. Geographical imagination and ideas about nature played a central role in these processes. Throughout the eighteenth century and beyond, this tradition informed debates involving rights over municipal, imperial, and national spaces advancing conceptions of territory that shaped political debate. Because of its distinctive position, New Granada provides a useful perspective from which to explore key themes in the history of eighteenth-century imperial reform, the revolutionary period, and the early republican era.Item Three essays in macroeconomics(2011-05) Talbert, Matthew Alan; Azzimonti-Renzo, Marina; Corbae, Philip; Freitas, Kripa; Rothert, Jacek; Mastronardi, NickChapters one and two of the dissertation investigate the effects of political disagreement on macroeconomic outcomes. I introduce a model of governments with heterogeneous preferences over the composition of consumption between private and public goods alternating in power. Unable to commit to future policies, the party in power has incentive not only to shape consumption according to their preferences but also to manipulate the future state faced by successive governments to influence the decisions of future policy makers. Alternating governments give rise to political business cycles; fluctuations in economy-wide variables due to the political system. Political business cycles help explain the divergence in outcomes of economic variables across countries with different levels of political disagreement and political stability. The first chapter adapts a real business cycle model to include political shocks in addition to the productivity shocks. This is motivated by a key puzzle in the business cycle literature: for emerging economies the volatility of consumption is higher than the volatility of output, a feature of the data that is not explained by standard theory. The goal of this chapter is not only to replicate the data but to understand how consumption responds to political shocks differently than shocks to productivity. This model is also able to recreate endogenously the high level of volatility in government expenditure observed in the data. The model can explain up to 29% of the variation in the relative volatility of consumption across countries. Chapter two focuses on a similar model in the presence of debt instead of capital to develop a positive theory for fiscal policy (debt, expenditure, and deficits) over the business cycle to compare to historical observation. I find that political shocks are important to understand observed U.S. data moments. Chapter three investigates the welfare effects of tax-deferred retirement accounts (similar to Traditional IRAs in the US). I find that such accounts increase aggregate welfare as well as increasing economy-wide inequality. I find from an aggregate welfare perspective the optimal contribution limit for IRAs is to not have a contribution limit.Item Toward a storytelling systems analysis model : a situational analysis of three global crowdsourced documentary media projects(2016-05) Moner, William Joseph; Strover, Sharon; Doty, Philip; Frick, Caroline; Stein, Laura; Straubhaar, JosephThis study investigates three participatory documentary projects that emerged in the 2011 to 2012 time period. Each project utilized crowdsourcing to generate primary source material for their respective endeavors. The projects — Life in a Day (2011), One Day on Earth (2011), and 18 Days in Egypt (2012) — are analyzed through situational analysis, a qualitative analytical framework that builds from grounded theory method, social worlds/arenas theory, and actor-network theory (ANT) to analyze the relationships between human actors, non-human actants, spatial and temporal components, and political economic factors within a situation. Using this method, I created a situational map for each documentary system, finding that each emerges from a distinct economic system where value is determined through different treatments of the “crowd” and its contributed media, data, and stories. Subsequently, using political economy of communication theory (Mosco, 2009) and the concepts of structuration, spatialization, and commodification, I identified several control mechanisms apparent in each of the projects. These control factors – commodity control, spatial control, and structural control – and their subcategories – content and labor control (commodity), technological, temporal, and circulatory control (spatial), and contractual and organizational control (structural) – draw from the analysis of three very different economic systems and storytelling intents. The study offers a preliminary framework for a participatory systems analysis approach to grapple with technological and economic concerns in shared media production spaces.