We construct an n-period, constrained optimization model where the authoritarian ruler maximizes expected rents subject to budget constraint of available surplus. We show that the larger state capacity is in the previous period, the worse environmental quality will be in the next period: while infrastructural investment and environmental protection increase with state capacity, the former increases at a faster rate which enlarges the gap between the two—the environmental investment gap. Given infrastructural public goods typically damage the environment, the larger this gap is the worse the environmental quality would be. This follows from rulers’ optimizing logic of equating marginal returns once we assume the declining marginal productivity of factors of production of surplus. We model three types of air and water pollutants in autocracies as a function of state capacity and other relevant variables. State capacity is associated with higher levels of all three types of pollutants.
Yiran Li
Shared posts
State Capacity and the Environmental Investment Gap in Authoritarian States
Yiran Li文章认为在威权国家中,这段时间如果国家实力比较强的话(尤其是以投资到公路等基础设施建设上),就容易导致下一阶段更加严重的环境污染。作者的implication部分写的特别好,指出对于民主的研究表明强国家实力导致好的环境保护但是威权正好相反。这与威权的本质是一致的,同时也援引了中国这个例子,表明其政策可行性。
Culture and Institutions -- by Alberto Alesina, Paola Giuliano
Yiran Li这篇文章是关于文化与制度各自的定义,measurement, interactions的文献综述。非常棒。
After the Drought: The Impact of Microinsurance on Consumption Smoothing and Asset Protection -- by Sarah A. Janzen, Michael R. Carter
Yiran Li文章主要研究了小额保险在自然灾害时对于家庭消费行为的影响,通过对于肯尼亚的研究发现,干旱过后,有了小额保险之后,对于那些家底比较丰厚的家庭,即原本更倾向于卖家产度过灾害的家庭,小额保险减少了64%的可能去卖家产;而对于收入较少的极爱他能够来说,小额保险降低了他们43%的几率去减少食物摄取量。表明小额保险对于救灾有影响,并且对不同家庭背景的,不同代际的人都有影响。
Internal Geography, International Trade, and Regional Specialization -- by A. Kerem Cosar, Pablo D. Fajgelbaum
Yiran Li作者发展了一个理论主要研究在一个国家中国际贸易与经济活动地理分布的关系。Locations within a country differ in access to international markets and congestion forces deter economic activity from concentrating in a single point.
在模型中,国际贸易区分了商业融合程度高的沿海城市与内陆城市,国内国际贸易costs的降低导致了移民。作者用中国市一级的产业数据test他们的理论,发现在中国,如果中国本身自己有比较优势的产业更容易坐落在靠近海洋的地方,即那些在中国来说对于国际贸易更有利的地方。
Democracy, Redistribution and Inequality -- by Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo, James A. Robinson
Yiran Li赞一个,必读文献,无话可说啊~
Social Esteem and Participation in Contentious Politics: A Field Experiment at an LGBT Pride Rally
Yiran Li本文讨论了为什么一个人会参加抗争的集体行为。作者考虑了ingroup中给出社会地位(尊重)等的承诺的作用,认为这是一种非常有效的incentive去说服大家参加集体活动。可以理解为跟着大哥干,先许诺将来的金银财宝地位,这样大家才会被此所吸引,卖命干活。
What motivates individuals to participate in contentious, political forms of collective action? In this article, I consider the possibility that the promise of social esteem from an ingroup can act as a powerful selective incentive for individuals to participate in contentious politics. I conducted a field experiment—the first to my knowledge to take place in the context of a political march, rally, or social-identity event—to isolate this esteem mechanism from others. Using measures of intent to attend, actual attendance, and reported attendance at a gay and lesbian pride event in New Jersey, I find evidence that the promise of social esteem boosts all three measures of participation. The article offers new theoretical and practical implications for the study of participation in nonvoting forms of collective action.
Making It Personal: Regime Type and Nuclear Proliferation
Yiran Li既往研究认为政权的类型与一个国家是否要发展核武器没有关系。作者修正了这一claim, 他们认为之前的理论将regime type分成民主和非民主,这样的分类方法忽视了非民主国家政体形式的差异。作者认为在那些中央集权的,更加“personalistic"的独裁制政体中,统治者会更偏向发展核武器,原因是因为发展核武是一个对于国家安全很好的解决方法,并且他们的决定相对于其他国家,缺少监督,更容易实现(感觉就是说没有制度制约,统治者能够一言九鼎,说发展就发展。)
Study after study has found that regime type has little or no effect on states’ decisions to pursue nuclear weapons. We argue, however, that conventional approaches comparing the behavior of democracies to that of nondemocracies have resulted in incorrect inferences. We disaggregate types of nondemocracies and argue that leaders of highly centralized, “personalistic” dictatorships are particularly likely to view nuclear weapons as an attractive solution to their concerns about regime security and face fewer constraints in pursuing nuclear weapons than leaders of other types of regimes. Combining our more nuanced classification of regime type with a more theoretically appropriate empirical approach, we find that personalist regimes are substantially more likely to pursue nuclear weapons than other regime types. This finding is robust to different codings of proliferation dates and a range of modeling approaches and specifications and has significant implications for both theory and policy.
Crisis and Commitment: Inflation Credibility and the Vulnerability to Sovereign Debt Crises -- by Mark Aguiar, Manuel Amador, Emmanuel Farhi, Gita Gopinath
The Rise of a Chinese House Church: The Organizational Weapon
Yiran Li现在的基督教传教与早期共产党传播有很大的相似之处。
Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia
Yiran Liadministrative and fiscal decentralization improve perceptions of accountability, while political decentralization does not.
Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual-level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization, controlling for participation, political knowledge, confidence in government, education, and income on perceptions of accountability. Our results indicate that administrative and fiscal decentralization improve perceptions of accountability, while political decentralization does not.
The effects of growth: The long view
Yiran Li经济达到一定程度之后反而有益于biodiversity
Quality Over Quantity: Amici Influence and Judicial Decision Making
Yiran Li这篇文章主要探讨了利益集团通常喜欢通过法官顾问的简报来影响美国最高院法官的判决,作者通过对1946-2001年最高院的cases的分析,希望回答利益集团是否真的能影响司法判决这一问题。作者用network position去测量利益集团的power(即每个利益集团的egocentric networks, 每个阶段都能有个排序). 发现在双方有明显差距的情况下,利益集团发挥不了太大作用。但是当双方实力相当,即简报的数量相当的情况下,利益集团的力量就显得十分重要。 同时作者发现法官的意识形态缓和了自由派利益集团的力量。文章证实了既有研究中对于法官的顾问简报有很重要作用的说法。并且加深了我们对于在何种情况下利益集团起作用的理解,即质量和名声对于利益集团更重要。
Research Articles JANET M. BOX-STEFFENSMEIER, DINO P. CHRISTENSON, MATTHEW P. HITT, American Political Science Review, Volume 107 Issue 03, pp 446-460 Abstract |
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China's Defence Industrial Base in 1985
Yiran Li1964-1985年中国军工的发展状况,把军工分成两类,一种是国家控股的直接与军事武器生产等相关的企业,一种是间接与军工相关的,指出当时八千多个大中型企业中,有将近两千个大中型企业是军工。之后说明了当时的工人数量,军工所占的比率,在各省的情况等等,总体来说是描述型研究,但是数据很有价值。
Exogenous Shocks and Democratic Accountability: Evidence From the Caribbean
Yiran Li针对加勒比海政府accountability的研究, 认为不同于以往研究认为自然灾害会造成选民惩罚执政者等等的观点,文章认为没有证据显示选民选举的时候会有短视,选民的偏好取决于national independence an political scale.
This study attempts to contribute to the growing debate over democratic accountability by focusing on the electoral impact of natural disasters and economic crises in the Caribbean. Although largely ignored by political science, the polities in the region share a long history of democratic governance as well as extreme vulnerability to adverse weather conditions and global economic fluctuations. The Caribbean thus offers unusually fertile opportunities for research on the capacity of voters to make rational electoral decisions. Two key questions are addressed. First, to what extent do citizens of the Caribbean punish incumbents for exogenous economic and climatic shocks? Second, what factors, if any, help to insulate democratic leaders from blame for conditions largely outside their control? Contrary to recent research on natural disasters and economic downturns in other contexts, the analysis provides no evidence that voting in the Caribbean has been characterized by systematic attribution errors or electoral myopia. The pattern of citizen attribution of responsibility to policy makers, however, has varied significantly with national independence and political scale.
Autocracies and Terrorism: Conditioning Effects of Authoritarian Regime Type on Terrorist Attacks
Yiran Li一党专政的威权政府比民主制以及军事统治的威权政府经历更少的国内国际恐怖袭击。,因为一党专政的国家有更强有力的coercion手段以及吸收聚合策略用来压制犯罪以及异见者。
Although empirical research has generally demonstrated that democracies experience more terrorism than autocracies, research suggests that this depends upon complex institutional differences that go beyond the democracy-autocracy divide. This study examines these differences, linking institutions to strategies of coercion and co-optation. Using zero-inflated negative binomial regression estimations on Geddes’ (2003) autocratic regime-type data for 161 countries between 1970 and 2006, we find that single-party authoritarian regimes consistently experience less domestic and international terrorism relative to military autocracies and democracies. This finding is robust to a large number of specifications, underscoring the explanatory power of regime type for predicting terrorism. Our explanation for these findings is that party-based autocracies have a wider range of coercion and co-option strategies that they can employ to address grievance and dissent than do other, more strategically restricted, regimes.
Why Do Some Regions in Europe Have a Higher Quality of Government?
Yiran Li对于领导人约束的路径依赖对于其后形成的政府performance差异之间的因果关系。
Nicholas Charron, Victor Lapuente,
The Journal of Politics, FirstView Article(s),
Abstract
Group Segregation and Urban Violence
Yiran Li文章研究的问题是——在城市地区,那些让不同的族群聚集在一起的measure到底是加大了还是抑制了种族之间的冲突?一般性的族群冲突是可以通过分而治之还是更加融合来得到抑制?作者建立了相关的模型,并且通过对于耶路撒冷的研究证明了问题的答案更多取决于social distance. 不同种族聚居的空间上的形态决定了发生暴力事件的分布与程度,种族之间的tension能够有效缓解他们之间的关系。因此作者认为一个制度上的小改变就可以缓解族群之间的矛盾——比如抑制耶路撒冷旧城中犹太人的扩张,提高巴勒斯坦人的生活条件,在巴勒斯坦人聚居地以及周边地区提高就业率以及基础设施建设,能够促进种族间的和平相处。而减少种族之间的interaction,比如隔离或者减少种族之间人口的流通这样的城市措施也能够be expected to 减少现在发生暴力事件的程度。
How does segregation shape intergroup violence in contested urban spaces? Should nominal rivals be kept separate or instead more closely integrated? We develop an empirically grounded agent-based model to understand the sources and patterns of violence in urban areas, employing Jerusalem as a demonstration case and seeding our model with microlevel, geocoded data on settlement patterns. An optimal set of parameters is selected to best fit the observed spatial distribution of violence in the city, with the calibrated model used to assess how different levels of segregation, reflecting various proposed “virtual futures” for Jerusalem, would shape violence. Our results suggest that besides spatial proximity, social distance is key to explaining conflict over urban areas: arrangements conducive to reducing the extent of intergroup interactions—including localized segregation, limits on mobility and migration, partition, and differentiation of political authority—can be expected to dampen violence, although their effect depends decisively on social distance.
Disgorging the Fruits of Historical Wrongdoing
Yiran Li文章主要写了对于过去的错误,通常有几种典型的弥补手段,关注点不同,比如有些是着重补偿,compesation and restitution,还有的是redistributive punishment. 本文作者详细讨论了另一种方法,即disgorgement,作者认为disgorge与其他的补偿措施的不同是它着重考虑“做错事的人放弃了什么”上,可以认为disgorge是一种corrective justice 的手段,作者用两个例子,一个是奴隶制,一个是圈地运动来说明,之后跟这两个运动有关的政府团体等都会资助受害人等等,来表明disgorge的方式。Disgorge比其他方式优越在于,由于我们往往不能有准确的信息知道谁是受害人,因此选择“放弃”什么更便捷,比如那些纳粹的人 在战后支持集中营幸存的人一样,这就是一个典型的disgorge的例子。 作者只是说明disgorge是一种比较有效的方法,对于清算历史,建立政权等合法性方面有成效。其表现方式多种多样,用现金或者其他方式,他的优越性在于即使不能准确的知道被害人,重新分配税收(也可以视为disgorge的一种方法)等也可以调整人们的心态,使之放在一个可忍受的范围内。
The Equations Underlying Cities
Yiran Li介绍了城市发展的理论,主要是针对城市的大小,为决策者urban planning提供了政策性意见。A theory explaining how the attributes of cities scale with city size may help to inform urban planning. His argument turns on associating the trade-off between the positive feedback associated with social interactions generating more than proportionate increases in resources and the negative feedbacks resulting from mixing of populations over ever larger areas as cities get bigger. These negative feedbacks include those associated with travel and congestion. 用城市的电网和the ratio of income to the total power 来measure social interactions。表明他们与城市的大小有极大的关系。
中国邮政有多牛?
冰山一角,再窥中国地下互联网世界(续)
Yiran Li第二页关于五毛党写得好~
关于大学生找工作建议
本来已经不想写了,因为年纪越大,越懒得动笔,不过看到各种各样的帖子之后,很想跟所谓的新人和非新人,写点东西,算是共勉吧。
对于刚参加工作的人,我最想说的一个词是煎熬,如果你有上进心或者有责任心的话,这个词,其实很形象,许多刚参加工作的人,可能最早碰到的感觉就如同煎熬一般,非常的不适应工作的状态,当然现在也有很多人,一进入工作中,就一点也没有这种感觉,因为他们不在乎,什么事情都无所谓,自然也就不会有煎熬
Innovation, Reallocation and Growth -- by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Nicholas Bloom, William R. Kerr
How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression
Yiran Li不容错过的大数据啊~
GARY KING, JENNIFER PAN, MARGARET E. ROBERTS,
American Political Science Review,FirstView Article(s),
Abstract
Rubbery Numbers for Chinese Aid to Africa
I've been getting a lot of emails asking what I think of this study.
Sigh.
I've already provided my comments to the authors in an earlier draft, and warned them about the pitfalls of this approach. Here's my conclusion: this number is way off. Yes, it's a start, and yes, the goal is a good one, but the approach, and the publication of this data at this early stage, is a problem, for several reasons.
First, reliance on media reports for data collection on Chinese finance is a very dicey methodology. I elaborate below.
Second, as with the land grab databases, publishing the database before it has been adequately cleaned will solidify what look like rubbish numbers. Data-driven researchers won't wait around to have someone clean the data. They'll start using it and publishing with it and setting these numbers into stone. Yet with errors of the order of magnitude of those I describe below, what kind of results will they be getting and what kind of conclusions will they be drawing?
Methodology: We saw this early on with the Warner School student project on Chinese aid to Africa, which was used by the Congressional Research Service. This project defined all state-related activities as aid, collected media reports, and then produced the (preposterous) estimate of $18 billion in aid from China for 2007 alone. We have also seen this with media reports of Chinese "land grabs" in Africa, which created the false impression that the Chinese were very active in land acquisitions in Africa. (Outside of Zambia, where Chinese companies and individuals have been investing since 1990, and a handful of former state-farm aid projects, now privatized with Chinese involvement, there is very little Chinese farming investment in Africa). We've also seen it with media-based data collection on Chinese involvement in hydropower dams in Africa (click here for my take on these efforts).
So, how does this latest effort fare? Not so well, I'm afraid. The main problem is that the teams that have been collecting the data and their supervisors simply don't know enough about China in Africa, or how to check media reports, track down the realities of a project, and dig into the story to find out what really happened. You can start with media reports, but it is highly problematic to stop there.
Mega-errors. Table 2 in the paper provides a good example of the problems. It contains 20 Chinese "megadeals" totaling over US$38 billion. But only 6 of these 20 projects -- less than a third -- reflect actual deals (Ghana $3 bn CDB credit; Equatorial Guinea $2 bn credit; Angola Phase 1 $1.5 bn, CDB loan to Angola for agriculture $1.2 bn; Cameroon Memve'ele Dam $674 million; Nigeria light rail $673 million). That's around $9 billion.
Thirteen of the other "deals" never happened, are mistakes, or shouldn't be in the list. Some were under discussion but at least so far, have never happened or were cancelled. Others are simply mistakes of some magnitude. China and South Africa signed a vague agreement on economic cooperation and discussed investments worth $2.5 billion, this was not a loan. China's agricultural demonstration station in Mozambique is listed with a value of $700 million (it was actually 55 million RMB, or about US$ 8 million). China is listed as the financier of the Merowe dam in Sudan. Wrong. It was built by a Chinese company, but financed by a consortium of Arab banks. Debt cancellation did happen but shouldn't be counted as new finance, or a "megadeal" as this is double counting. And so on.
According to this database, the top recipients of Chinese finance have been Ghana, Nigeria, and Mauritania. Yes, Mauritania. Anyone who knows something about China in Africa -- which these researchers do not pretend to -- would be surprised to see Angola missing from this list. My own data (supplemented by field research) suggest that the top three recipients of firm Chinese financial commitments have been Angola, the DRC, and Ethiopia, with Sudan closely following. Mauritania? Not even in the top fifteen. Nigeria? About the same as Niger.
Bottom Line: The authors are striving for a database that can be replicated by anyone. But that's the problem. This is not research that can be done by just anyone, and especially not by only looking at media reports. That's why two teams -- both lightly criticized by the AidData authors -- have produced better results: Derek Scissors and Kevin Gallagher, Amos Irwin, and Katherine Koleski. Their methodologies are eclectic, but they know that there is no substitute for painstaking, informed, expert, bi-lingual investigative research and digging into the cases.
Post script: These numbers, as I expected, are already being "spun" in media reports as "Chinese aid to Africa". For a kindred commentary on this, see Philippa Brant's blog post at the Lowy Institute. The controversy was discussed by Eric Voeten at the Monkeycage blog. A story on it appeared at Think Africa Press, and a lively podcast from the China Africa Project. The Witts China in Africa Reporting Project has a collection of many of the links for this debate.
Overseas investment: Nice to see you, EU
Banyan: Can’t buy me soft power
The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions, Commitment, and Power-Sharing in Dictatorships
Yiran Li为什么独裁制要建立限制独裁者的机制?作者argue认为institutions能够通过power-sharing促进独裁制的survival.具体说来就是:类似于政党,国会,议会等机制能够缓和威权政府因为不透明而引发的commitment and monitoring problem。因为威权的power-sharing 只在独裁者及其同盟有credible threat的时候才能成功(我对此的理解是说统治阶级分权成功的条件就是他们有一个共识,保持政权稳定,也就是说他们认识到共同的敌人是rebellion的时候,他们有次共识,才会power-sharing成功相安无事,不会因为内斗造成分裂或者不稳定),所以这些制度在权力分配不均衡的时候就会ineffective or break down. 作者而后通过实证证明了他们的观点。
Carles Boix, Milan W. Svolik,
The Journal of Politics, FirstView Article(s),
Abstract
The Foreign Policy Consequences of Trade: China’s Commercial Relations with Africa and Latin America, 1992–2006
Yiran Li用九十年代到06年的数据证明与中国trade越多的国家,越会遵照中国的foreign policy(convergence, 收敛的意思)。
Gustavo A. Flores-Macías, Sarah E. Kreps,
The Journal of Politics, FirstView Article(s),
Abstract
这所学校被称作是编程培训界的哈佛商业学院
(原文来自Business Insider,虎嗅编译)
熨斗学校(直译,The Flatiron School)是一家学期为12周的全日制编程培训机构,专门教授普通人如何写代码,完全不需要任何经验。在课程那个结束后,结业学员将成为完全称职的Web程序员。
熨斗学校在纽约被看作是编程学习领域的哈佛商业学院,因为其申请过程十分严格。只有10%的报名者可以被录取,但是100%的学员毕业后都可以找到工作。该学校教授像教授创意写作一样教授编程课程,与传统的培训项目有所区别。
这个学校的课程学费是一万美元,但是在结束了12周的紧张学习之后,结业学员通常可以获得高达7万美元起薪的待遇。如果学员愿意接受熨斗学校的职位推荐,将获得4000美元的学费返还,而且还有为少数团体和女性提供的奖学金。
2012年7月,阿维(Avi Flo... ... 查看更多