Is enterprise value affected by political nominations for a regulatory agency's presidency?

Economists have argued that regulation is the appropriate approach to maintain output in its economically efficient level in a natural monopoly, and that can be achieved by submitting these companies to regulatory agencies’ decisions. The autonomous agencies are, however, not free in an absolute sense, and it is important to ask what the priorities of the new administration are. One answer is that it is designed to give leeway and powers of discretion to unbiased professionals with expertise in their field. In practice, however, professional experts might often be politically motivated. The objective of this study is to investigate whether political nominations to the presidency of regulatory agencies, rather than technical appointments, affect the level of regulatory risk. In order to achieve this purpose, an event study was performed, where the regulatory risk in a political nomination will be compared to a technical nomination, in terms of abnormal return.

Constituição, poder constituinte e bolivarianismo: Bolívia, Equador e Venezuela e as estratégias presidenciais

Esta dissertação estuda os países andinos Bolívia, Equador e Venezuela que recentemente, sob a liderança de Presidentes com forte respaldo popular e discurso de renovação política, aprovaram novas constituições. Todo o processo de elaboração das novas constituições nos três países foi realizado buscando-se o respaldo popular, com consultas para saber, no voto, se de fato Assembleias Constituintes deveriam ser convocadas até a posterior aprovação do texto final via plebiscito realizado nacionalmente. Para analisar de forma crítica o que ocorreu na Bolívia, no Equador e na Venezuela foi realizada uma revisão bibliográfica do conceito de constituição e poder constituinte, estudando-se também o processo de elaboração de constituições, conforme entendido pela literatura. A compreensão teórica aliada aos três casos práticos estudados no texto permitem identificar uma tendência de direcionamento da vontade popular para a implementação de projetos políticos dos líderes eleitos, que atuam para, com maior ou menor facilidade, conseguir controlar todas as instâncias políticas do país. E as novas Constituições, observar-se-á, são parte fundamental nesse projeto de poder.

Gender stereotypes in politics: what changes when a woman becomes the local political leader?

This study documents how the presence of a woman in an executive political role affects the gender stereotype of women in politics. We use Brazilian electoral data and restrict our focus to close mayoral races (using an RDD design) in which the top two candidates are of opposite sexes. Our most important result was a reduction in the number of candidates and votes for female mayoral candidates after a woman is elected, regardless of her eligibility status for reelection. This negative result is linked only to the position of mayor and not to other political positions (councilor, state or federal deputy). In addition, our results may be interpreted as evidence that voters do not use their update on women as local leaders to change their beliefs on women’s ability to run for other political positions. Finally, female mayors do not appear to have a role model effect on younger cohorts of women. We also note that our results are not influenced by differences in mayoral policies (generally and specifically for women), which could influence voters’ gender stereotypes.

As conferências nacionais de política para as mulheres e os sentidos atribuídos á deliberação

Esta dissertação tem como problema de pesquisa analisar o perfil normativo das Conferências Nacionais de Política para Mulheres a partir dos sentidos atribuídos à deliberação pelas representantes governamentais e não governamentais que organizaram e/ou participaram desses processos de Conferências, entrevistadas para esta pesquisa. A relevância do problema se dá pelo diagnóstico de que o perfil dessas Conferências, marcado por discursos históricos que buscam firmar o compromisso político do governo federal com a Política para as mulheres, não está claro, por um lado. Mas também se justifica pelos debates em torno de propostas de Sistemas de Participação que buscam trabalhar com a complementaridade de modelos de democracia, por outro. No arcabouço teórico está a noção de “momentos deliberativos” presente na literatura brasileira sobre efetividade da participação e as noções jurídicas de ato administrativo discricionário e vinculativo presentes no ramo do Direito Administrativo, como tentativas de compreender o perfil a partir das categorias analíticas consultiva e deliberativa presentes na literatura brasileira sobre participação. As categorias, contudo, se mostram limitadas para se compreender os diversos sentidos da deliberação que indicariam seu perfil.

The role of media networks in compensating political biases: evidence from radio networks in Brazil

A central question in political economy is how to incentivize elected socials to allocate resources to those that need them the most. Research has shown that, while electoral incentives lead central governments to transfer fewer funds to non-aligned constituencies, media presence is instrumental in promoting a better allocation of resources. This study evaluates how these two phenomena interact by analyzing the role of media in compensating political biases. In particular, we analyze how media presence, connectivity and ownership affect the distribution of federal drought relief transfers to Brazilian municipalities. We find that municipalities that are not aligned with the federal government have a lower probability of receiving funds conditional on experiencing low precipitation. However, we show that the presence of radio stations compensates for this bias. This effect is driven by municipalities that have radio stations connected to a regional network rather than by the presence of local radio stations. In addition, the effect of network-connected radio stations increases with their network coverage. These findings suggests that the connection of a radio station to a network is important because it increases the salience of disasters, making it harder for the federal government to ignore non-allies. We show that our findings are not explained by the ownership and manipulation of media by politicians.

Implicit corporate political activity and elite formation

Nesta tese, analisamos como a elite empresarial progressista criou a organização da sociedade civil Rede Nossa São Paulo (RNSP), alcançando mudanças institucionais significativas, permitindo assim a consolidação da elite na esfera política. A pesquisa resultou em três artigos. O primeiro artigo discute como a RNSP se tornou um forte ator político na cidade de São Paulo e também no Brasil. Para abordar esta questão, mostramos como a RNSP usou a história retórica para se tornar um ator central na esfera política. No segundo artigo, propomos o conceito de atividade política corporativa implícita (ICPA), complementar a atividade política corporativa. Conceituamos ICPA como elites empresariais em conjunto com organizações da sociedade civil agindo para influenciar o governo. Com os limites entre o governo, as empresas e organizações da sociedade civil difusos; entendemos que este conceito é extremamente importante para chamar a atenção e criar novos caminhos para a pesquisa sobre a influência das empresas no governo. No último artigo, mostramos os micro fundamentos da ICPA. Especificamente, como as elites empresariais e corporações influenciam a RNSP e, indiretamente, o governo. Concluindo, contribuímos para a literatura sobre a influência das empresas no governo e na esfera pública indiretamente, por meio de organizações da sociedade civil. Teoricamente, estendemos a literatura de teoria institucional, história e poder

Political budget cycles in a fiscal federation : the effect of partisan voluntary transfers

This article first presents an econometric study suggesting that intergovernmental transfers to Brazilian municipalities are strongly partisan motivated. In light of that stylized fact, it develops an extension to Rogoff (1990)’s model to analyze the effect of partisan motivated transfers into sub-national electoral and fiscal equilibria. The main finding is that important partisan transfers may undo the positive selection aspect of political budget cycles. Indeed, partisan transfers may, on one hand, eliminate the political budget cycle, solving a moral hazard problem, but, on the other hand, they may retain an incompetent incumbent in office, bringing about an adverse selection problem.

Rent dissipation, political viability and the strategic adoption of free trade agreements

This paper studies the political viability of free trade agreements (FTAs). The key element of the analysis is the “rent dissipation” that these arrangements induce: by eliminating intra-bloc trade barriers, an FTA reduces the incentives of the local firms to lobby for higher external tariffs, thereby causing a reduction of the rents created in the lobbying process. The prospect of rent dissipation moderates the governments’ willingness to participate in FTAs; they will support only arrangements that are “substantially” welfare improving, and no FTA that reduces welfare. Rent dissipation also implies that the prospects of political turnover may create strategic reasons for the formation of FTAs. Specifically, a government facing a high enough probability of losing power may want to form a trade bloc simply to “tie the hands” of its successor. An FTA can affect the likelihood of political turnover as well. If the incumbent party has a known bias toward special interests, it may want to commit to less distortionary policies in order to reduce its electoral disadvantage; the rent dissipation effect ensures that an FTA can serve as the vehicle for such a commitment. In nascent/unstable democracies, the incumbent government can use a free trade agreement also to reduce the likelihood of a dictatorial takeover and to “consolidate” democracy – a finding that is consistent with the timing of numerous accessions to and formations of preferential arrangements.

Signaling in political budget cycles: How far are you willing to go?

This paper analyzes how heterogeneity in two dimensions, competency and character, a¤ects political budget cycles. Competency is the e¢ciency in running the government. Character is the degree of opportunism. In this expanded space, previous results in the literature on the separating nature of the signaling equilibrium hold if heterogeneity in opportunism is low. With high heterogeneity in opportunism, no separating equilibrium exists. Rather, the equilibrium is partially pooling: only extreme types can be distinguished.

Reelection incentives and political corruption : evidence from Brazil’s municipal audit reports

This paper uses a unique dataset of political corruption, constructed from municipal audit reports obtained from Brazil’s randomized anti-corruption program, to test whether reelection incentives affect the level of rent extraction of incumbent politicians. In order to identify reelection incentives, we use the existence of a term limit in Brazil’s municipal elections. We find that in municipalities where mayors are in their second and final term, there is significantly more corruption compared to similar municipalities where mayors are in their first-term. In particular, in municipalities with second-term mayors there is, on average, R$188,431 more diversion of resources and the incidence of irregularities is 23% higher. We also find more pronounced effects where the costs of rent-extraction are lower (municipalities without media and judicial presence), and the density of pivotal voters is higher (more political competition). Finally, we show that first-term mayors, while less corrupt, have a larger incidence of poor administration suggesting that there may exist a trade-off between corruption and quality in public good provision.

2014 World Cup live blog: political protestor invades field at US vs Belgium

Retirado do Vice News.