Refereed Articles

The Missing Politics of Central Banks  

PS: Political Science and Politics, forthcoming.

Political scientists should be puzzled that the political economy of monetary policy so often ignores the politics that happens within central banks – arguably the most systematically important actors in economic policy making. Two persistent blindspots have led political economists to divorce the study of central banks from broader political science questions: first, the misconception that central bankers are neutral technocrats, instead of political actors with varied motivations and beliefs (Adolph, 2013) and second, the presumption that an optimal monetary policy can be selected without worrying about the distributional consequences of that choice (Jacobs and King, 2016). Reintegrating central banks into the study of politics reveals the overlooked political dimensions of central bank behavior, including: (1) the turn to quantitative easing policies that dynamically enhance the power of banks, (2) an asymmetric concern for inflation that risks ratcheting up the gap between rich and poor over successive economic cycles, and (3) heightened monetary policy powers and independence that save elected governments from the hard fiscal choices – and redistributive opportunities – that crises would otherwise generate. Combined with declining public trust in central banks like the Fed, these examples suggest central banks may be more deeply enmeshed in – and vulnerable to – the politics of inequality than previously thought.

In the media: “Do African exports to China hurt labor rights? Here’s what we found.” Washington Post Monkey Cage, 3 March 2017

To investigate whether Africa’s exports to China influence labor practices in Africa, we reconsider the debate over trade’s influence on regulatory standards in exporting countries. The first generation of trade–regulation scholars asked whether high levels of exports influenced regulatory standards of exporting countries, with inconclusive results. The second generation of scholarship focused not on how much a country exported but to whom it exported, identifying a “California Effect” by which firms and consumers in (mostly developed) importing countries projected their high regulatory standards on less developed export partners. Structural change – especially the rise of China as a major importer – poses a challenge to these optimistic findings. Drawing on insights from the analysis of compositional data, this paper introduces a third generation of trade–regulation research, which suggests examining not only with whom a country trades, but also how the composition of markets in a country's export basket reshuffles over time. Specifically, we explore the possibility of a “Shanghai Effect” whereby African countries begin to reflect the lower labor standards of China, which has emerged as a major destination for their exports. We show that when a country increases exports to China, the net effect on domestic labor standards depends critically on the labor practices of other export destinations compositionally displaced by China exports. Our analysis of a panel of 49 African countries for the period 1985–2010 produces a small continent-wide estimate of China’s negative influence on African labor practices. In-sample simulation at the country level uncovers a moderate Shanghai Effect for a handful of countries only.

Government organizational structure related to health varies greatly across states and is somewhat dynamic. When Medicaid and public health functions are consolidated in the same stage agency, public health does not “lose” in terms of its share of the state budget. However, this could change as Medicaid costs continue to grow and with the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

To establish what we do and do not know about how the protection of labor rights contributes to the developmental value of jobs (through living standards, productivity and social cohesion), we review the available literature and evidence. We provide available quantitative and qualitative evidence on how improvements in rights contribute positively to economic development; on the whole, our conclusion is that they do.

Although many study the effects of different allocations of health policy authority, few ask why countries assign responsibility over different policies as they do. We test two broad theories: fiscal federalism, which predicts rational governments will concentrate information-intensive operations at lower levels, and redistributive and regulatory functions at higher levels; and “politicized federalism,” which suggests a combination of systematic and historically idiosyncratic political variables interfere with efficient allocation of authority. Drawing on the WHO Health in Transition country profiles, we present new data on the allocation of responsibility for key health care policy tasks (implementation, provision, finance, regulation, and framework legislation) and policy areas (primary, secondary and tertiary care, public health and pharmaceuticals) in the 27 eu member states and Switzerland. We use a Bayesian multinomial mixed logit model to analyze how different countries arrive at different allocations of authority over each task and area of health policy, and find the allocation of powers broadly follows fiscal federalism. Responsibility for pharmaceuticals, framework legislation, and most finance lodges at the highest levels of government, acute and primary care in the regions, and provision at the local and regional levels. Where allocation does not follow fiscal federalism, it appears to reflect ethnic divisions, the population of states and regions, the presence of mountainous terrain, and the timing of region creation.

Replication:  Data and code to reproduce the main results can be found here.

Spectacular economic growth in China suggests the ruling Chinese Communist Party (ccp) has somehow gotten it right. A key hypothesis across both economics and political science is that the ccp’s cadre evaluation system, combined with China’s geography-based governing logic, has motivated local administrators to compete with one another to generate high growth. We raise a number of theoretical and empirical challenges to this claim. Using a new biographical database of Central Committee members, a previously overlooked feature of ccp reporting, and a novel Bayesian method which can estimate individual-level correlates of partially observed ranks, we find no evidence strong growth performance was rewarded with higher party ranks at any of the post-reform party congresses. Instead, factional ties with various top leaders, educational qualifications, and provincial revenue collection played substantial roles in elite ranking, suggesting promotion systems served the immediate needs of the regime and its leaders, rather than encompassing goals like economic growth.

Replication:  Data and code to reproduce the main results can be found here.

Sage Award for Best Article in European Union Politics in 2008

What effects do interest groups have on the democratization and legitimacy of the European Union (eu)? Interest groups can democratize the eu only to the extent that they do not replicate inequalities. We use a newly constructed database to look for inequalities: Are the big organizations in Brussels the same as the ones in the eu member states? Are some member states’ lobbies more active than others? And does the structure of eu lobbying create insiders and outsiders itself? We find representative biases in favor of powerful incumbents, groups from some member states and well-resourced groups.

Replication:  Underlying data can be found here.

Since Herron and Shotts (2003a), Adolph and King (2003), and Herron and Shotts (2003b), the four of us have iterated many more times, learned a great deal, and arrived at a consensus on this issue. This paper describes our joint recommendations for how to run second-stage ecological regressions, and provides detailed analyses to back up our claims.

We take this opportunity to comment on Herron and Shotts (2003) because of its interesting and productive ideas and because of the potential to affect the way a considerable body of practical research is conducted...

Other Articles

Visual Interpretation and Presentation of Monte Carlo Results  

The Political Methodologist, 2003, Vol. 11 (2): 31—35.

Monte Carlo experiments test models on artificial datasets with known properties to assess the likely performance of an estimator in empirical work. Although the increasing savvy of political methodology has brought more and better Monte Carlo work, it is not always presented clearly or thoroughly. In particular, Monte Carlo results often appear in unwieldy tables rather than elegant graphics. I propose five guidelines for Monte Carlo graphics. I also define five graphic styles which help show the comparative performance of models over the parameter space, even when the models and parameters are many.

Party Schools  

American Prospect, December 18, 2000, 16—17.

A comparison of the parties' school finance record in the states reveals stark differences.