We examine the impact of conventional and unconventional ECB monetary policies on the Swiss stock market. Our results show that Swiss stock returns respond significantly to conventional and unconventional monetary policy measures, with conventional monetary policy having an impact only before the financial crisis. The response to unconventional policy shocks is less strong after the introduction of a minimum exchange rate regime by the Swiss National Bank (SNB). Our results are robust to simultaneity and endogeneity problems.

We conduct a unique test of the efficiency of property rights in major league baseball. The rights to the services of players are resources that can be possessed by the clubs or by the players themselves. This right was effectively reassigned from the club to the individual player when free agency was introduced in 1976. Players, however, only qualify for free agency after 6 years of service, and until that time a temporary property right is possessed by the club. In the absence of efficient bargaining, clubs that possess only a temporary right do not bear the full risk of injury or disability associated with using pitchers. Clubs in this situation can therefore have an incentive to overuse star pitchers. This theoretical prediction is supported by the statistical inferences of our econometric models.

State and local governments have used targeted incentives to recruit businesses for decades. The relationship between incentives and business formation, employment, and economic growth has been studied in detail. This paper extends this literature by examining the relationship between development incentives and economic freedom – where economic freedom refers to the ability of individuals and firms to enter into contracts and use their property as they see fit without permission from government (Gwartney, Lawson, and Hall, 2016). Optimal tax theory assumes an exogenous government revenue constraint, suggesting that taxes not collected from some businesses result in higher taxes on others, which may negatively impact economic freedom. By contrast, tax breaks could diffuse across firms and thus positively affect economic freedom. The paper investigates this relationship with state-level panel data between 1994 and 2013. We find an economically and statistically significant negative relationship between incentives and freedom, which are robust to several specifications.

State and local governments have used targeted incentives to recruit businesses for decades. The relationship between incentives and business formation, employment, and economic growth has been studied in detail. This paper extends this literature by examining the relationship between development incentives and economic freedom – where economic freedom refers to the ability of individuals and firms to enter into contracts and use their property as they see fit without permission from government (Gwartney, Lawson, and Hall, 2016). Optimal tax theory assumes an exogenous government revenue constraint, suggesting that taxes not collected from some businesses result in higher taxes on others, which may negatively impact economic freedom. By contrast, tax breaks could diffuse across firms and thus positively affect economic freedom. The paper investigates this relationship with state-level panel data between 1994 and 2013. We find an economically and statistically significant negative relationship between incentives and freedom, which are robust to several specifications.

The use of targeted economic development incentives—or selective financial and regulatory incentives to encourage particular firms to relocate or expand—has proliferated in recent decades. However, the relationship between these targeted incentives and another approach to economic development, economic freedom, has not been studied. This article reviews several new studies assessing this relationship, and provides a review of academic literature evaluating how targeted incentives affect communities as a whole, including those firms and industries not receiving subsidies from government. It concludes by discussing areas for future work.

Desire for mastery is an important human motive distinct from the profit motive. In business, mastery involves a product or service, and validation occurs through comparison with other entrepreneurs' products. Consumers' choices validate entrepreneurs' performance. We term an entrepreneur's intrinsic desire to produce a good product mastery seeking, and we contrast mastery seeking with profit seeking. Success often coincides with profit, but the two motives are different and can diverge. We explore mastery seeking's implications for the economics and politics of government privileges and favors for business. Crony polices can disrupt the consumer choice process and the validation of performance. Crony policies may increase profit but reduce realized performance for entrepreneurs, reducing the labor supply of entrepreneurs motivated by competition. A nation's level of cronyism could affect the types of individuals who become entrepreneurs, with a high level of government intervention pushing success seekers to pursue mastery in other endeavors, with adverse implications for innovation and growth in the economy.

Medicaid was established in 1965 as a joint state and federal program to provide medical insurance to Americans who are poor and have disabilities, and it has grown from 1percent to 3 percent of GDP. The source of Medicaid’s growth over the past 50 years must inform efforts to reform the program and slow spending. The literature on the political economy of Medicaid provides strong evidence of interest group and political ideological influence, enabled by the open-ended federal match for state spending. The strongest support for political influence, interest group influence, and matching grants as drivers of growth emerges from studies on Medicaid’s discretionary coverages and populations in contrast to the program’s mandatory components. Evidence also exists that increases in populations that are already eligible may lead to offsetting reductions in reimbursement rates, thus suggesting that increased medical need (the cost of adequate care for the poor) has not been a primary driver of growth.

Most economists agree that the price system offers the best method for allocating scarce resources among competing ends. Yet, churches, nonprofits, governments, and corporations in disaster-stricken communities, often under voluntary or mandated price freezes, must often rely on nonprice responses to meet short-term, localized shifts in demand. Evidence suggests that the private sector outperforms the public sector at this task. This paper explores how private sector organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit, learn about and respond to community needs in the aftermath of disasters. We explain and demonstrate how organizations observe credible signals of shifts in demand without the aid of prices. Our findings expand our understanding of why public sector disaster recovery efforts tend to be less effective than private sector efforts. We also find that price gouging laws have additional negative consequences beyond the standard economic account.

I treat two cases of what I believe can be characterized as research propaganda attributable to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The first concerns the extent to which Americans are mindful of energy efficiency in their cars, appliances, homes, and machinery. The second concerns the mandating of the use of renewable fuels in electricity production. I contend that the DOE-based research is unsound and that the unsoundness rises to the level of propaganda.

The enormous impact that economic freedom can have on economic outcomes makes an understanding of the factors or forces affecting its level paramount. To what extent do citizen preferences regarding the role of government in the economy drive the level of or changes in economic freedom? We explore this question using a new index of voting in the U.S. Congress constructed consistent with the Fraser Institute indices of economic freedom. We use voting on national legislation to examine state‐level economic freedom to clearly separate the measurement of preferences from policies that at least partly reflect these preferences. We find that Congressional votes, both from the House and Senate, are related to increases in state economic freedom, and that the result is generally statistically and economically significant, and robust to inclusion of a variety of socioeconomic control variables. ( JEL D72, H10, H50)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that entrepreneurs are motivated not only by the desire to maximize profits but also by the desire for mastery. It then attempts to analyze the implications of mastery seeking for the economics and politics of government privileges and favors for businesses. Design/methodology/approach – Using the existing psychological literature on mastery as motivation the paper first attempts to conceptualize how the desire for mastery manifests itself in the context of entrepreneurship. Next, it attempts to clarify the implications of this for the existing literature on the effects of government policies promoting cronyism. Findings – The paper argues that in business mastery involves producing a good product or service, and validation of the performance occurs via the choices of sovereign consumers. Mastery is thus achieved through participation in a process of competition that is free from government favors. Given that crony polices can disrupt the consumer choice process and consequently the validation of performance, they can therefore affect the types of individuals who become entrepreneurs, with a high level of government intervention pushing success seekers to pursue mastery in other life endeavors, with adverse implications for innovation and growth in the economy. Originality/value – The exploration of implications of a plausible but underexplored motive for entrepreneurs and the interaction between this motive and the effects of various policies fostering cronyism or rent seeking are potential contributions of the paper.

Abstract This paper surveys the literature on the value of current and potentially improved hurricane forecasts from the National Hurricane Center. Research on the societal impacts of hurricanes demonstrates that forecasts are likely generating substantial benefits to society in a variety of uses, including saving lives in the U. S. and across the Carribean and Eastern Pacific, reducing the cost of evacuations, improving supply chain management, and in the transportation and energy production and distribution sectors. The existing literature, however, fails generally to quantify the benefits with rigor sufficient for an academic quality benefit-cost analysis of hurricane forecasts. The paper offers several suggestions for future research to more precisely estimate the benefits attributable to current or improved forecasts.

We give an overview of classical liberal ideas and their proponents in India over the last century. The liberal movement in India, especially during the postcolonial era, was defined by the socialist ideas it opposed. We detail the different stages of central planning in India and the liberal opposition to the planning apparatus. The liberal movement consisted of three components. First, dissent from the ideology of planning emanated from the halls of academia. This dissent was led in the 1950s almost singlehandedly by B. R. Shenoy, who was followed in later decades by other expatriate academics. Second, there has been an anti-planning movement in politics and civil society. And third, liberal voices have emerged recently in the media.

The 2011 tornado season resulted in 553 deaths, the most in a year in the United States since 1925. Natural events and human vulnerability combine to produce natural disasters, and so this work explores whether extreme weather-the number and strength of tornadoes-or extreme societal vulnerability drove the 2011 tornado death toll. The main analysis uses out-of-sample predictions for 2011 from a regression model of tornado fatalities. Generally, 2011 fatalities were in line with expectations based on the pattern of fatalities in the United States over the period 1990-2010, although the deadliest tornado over this period resulted in 36 deaths. The best regression models predict a season death toll of around 500 and a single tornado with 150 deaths. Recent ratios of injuries and property damage to fatalities also support the conclusion that extreme weather drove the 2011 tornado death toll. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.

We explore the impact of tornado watches on tornado casualties. The time needed to take shelter for a tornado can be as little as a few minutes, but because warning lead times averaged less than 15 minutes in 2004, a watch could alert residents to be ready to receive and respond to a later warning. We find that casualties per tornado are greater for tornadoes occurring within a tornado watch, although this difference vanishes when controlling for tornado, warning, and path characteristics in a regression analysis. We find no evidence that watches reduce casualties, either directly or by increasing the effectiveness of tornado warnings. Tornadoes occurring within watches are more often warned for and warnings reduce casualties, so watches do contribute to lives saved through the warning process.

History provides innumerable examples of society’s resilience in the face of natural disasters, through neighbors helping neighbors, organized philanthropy, and public sector assistance. Recently assistance has begun to be channeled through websites and social media. Peer-to-peer assistance, like much disaster relief, is provided outside of the confines of the price system. This paper examines the generation of trust in such virtual communities, specifically, the trustworthiness of requests for assistance. The lack of face-to-face interaction and the non-repeated nature of disaster assistance create an inhospitable setting for reputation and trust. Virtual assistance establishes trust through three channels, transfer of credibility from existing organizations, traditional and virtual due diligence, and forms of crowd sourcing. The relationship of virtually coordinated peer-to-peer assistance to traditional philanthropic disaster relief and its policy implications are also discussed. 1

An EF-5 Tornado struck Joplin, MO on May 22, 2011, leaving a twenty mile long path of destruction in its wake. An estimated 7,500 homes and over 500 businesses were damaged or destroyed, with damage estimated at up to $3 billion. Joplin has seen a rapid recovery despite the extensive damage. The Joplin tornado provides a valuable opportunity to determine if findings from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina apply to other major natural disasters. This study uses interviews with various government officials, church leaders, charities, business owners, and homeowners, as well as conventional data, to examine the response and recovery efforts in Joplin. We argue that Joplin's rapid recovery is a result of Federal, state and local officials letting the voluntary sector, including businesses, national charities, churches, and local community groups, lead the response and recovery.