scholarly journals Does receiving a basic income encourage citizens to turn out to vote? Evidence from mayoral and general elections in Brazil

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Araújo
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Quantitative Assessment ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Cash Payment ◽  
General Elections

Political theorists and enthusiasts of basic income programs advocate that receiving an unconditional, periodic, and nonwithdrawable cash payment can encourage voter turnout by freeing citizens' time, energy, and cognitive bandwidth. This paper provides the first quantitative assessment of this argument by studying Renda Básica de Cidadania (RBC) -- currently the largest basic income program in Latin America. RBC pays a monthly transfer equivalent to 15% (R$170 approx. US$35) of the national minimum wage to 42,000 (25%) of individuals living in Maricá, Brazil. Estimates from a difference-in-differences design show a substantive increase in voter turnout after the adoption of the basic income. Besides turnout, the RBC is also associated with a reduction of invalid votes -- which tends to signal voters' lack of information about candidates or their dissatisfaction with the candidate pool. These effects appear in local and general elections and are robust across different models.

Was it worth it? The impact of the German minimum wage on union membership of employees

2021 ◽  
pp. 0143831X2110358
Author(s):  
Simon Ress ◽  
Florian Spohr
Keyword(s):  
Propensity Score ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Propensity Score Matching ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
German Trade ◽  
The Impact

This contribution scrutinises how introducing a statutory minimum wage of EUR 8.50 per hour, in January 2015, impacted German employees’ decision with regard to union membership. Based on representative data from the Labour Market and Social Security panel, the study applies a logistic difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach on entries into and withdrawals from unions in the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB). The results show no separate effect on withdrawals from or entries into unions after the minimum wage introduction for those employees who benefited financially from it, but a significant increase of entries overall. Thus, unions’ campaign for a minimum wage strengthened their position in total but did not reverse the segmentation of union membership patterns.

scholarly journals Exploiting the Irish Border to Estimate Minimum Wage Impacts in Northern Ireland

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McVicar ◽  
Andrew Park ◽  
Seamus McGuinness
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Research Design ◽  
The Other ◽  
Living Wage ◽  
Employment Rate ◽  
Small Decrease ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Hours Worked ◽  
The Uk

AbstractThis paper examines the impacts of the introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) in 1999 and the introduction of the UK National Living Wage (NLW) in 2016 in Northern Ireland (NI) on employment and hours. NI is the only part of the UK with a land border where the NMW and NLW cover those working on one side of the border but not those working on the other side of the border (i.e., Republic of Ireland). This discontinuity in minimum wage coverage enables a research design that estimates the impacts of the NMW and NLW on employment and hours worked using difference-in-differences estimation. We find a small decrease in the employment rate of 22–59/64-year-olds in NI, of up to 2% points, in the year following the introduction of the NMW, but no impact on hours worked. We find no clear evidence that the introduction of the NLW impacted either employment or hours worked in NI.

scholarly journals International risk of yellow fever spread from the ongoing outbreak in Brazil, December 2016 to May 2017

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (28) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilaria Dorigatti ◽  
Arran Hamlet ◽  
Ricardo Aguas ◽  
Lorenzo Cattarino ◽  
Anne Cori ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Quantitative Assessment ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Eastern Brazil ◽  
Local Transmission

States in south-eastern Brazil were recently affected by the largest Yellow Fever (YF) outbreak seen in a decade in Latin America. Here we provide a quantitative assessment of the risk of travel-related international spread of YF indicating that the United States, Argentina, Uruguay, Spain, Italy and Germany may have received at least one travel-related YF case capable of seeding local transmission. Mitigating the risk of imported YF cases seeding local transmission requires heightened surveillance globally.

scholarly journals The Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-Wage Jobs*

2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 1405-1454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doruk Cengiz ◽  
Arindrajit Dube ◽  
Attila Lindner ◽  
Ben Zipperer
Keyword(s):  
Minimum Wage ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minimum Wages ◽  
Wage Distribution ◽  
Employment Effect ◽  
Hourly Wage ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Bottom Part ◽  
Demographic Groups

Abstract We estimate the effect of minimum wages on low-wage jobs using 138 prominent state-level minimum wage changes between 1979 and 2016 in the United States using a difference-in-differences approach. We first estimate the effect of the minimum wage increase on employment changes by wage bins throughout the hourly wage distribution. We then focus on the bottom part of the wage distribution and compare the number of excess jobs paying at or slightly above the new minimum wage to the missing jobs paying below it to infer the employment effect. We find that the overall number of low-wage jobs remained essentially unchanged over the five years following the increase. At the same time, the direct effect of the minimum wage on average earnings was amplified by modest wage spillovers at the bottom of the wage distribution. Our estimates by detailed demographic groups show that the lack of job loss is not explained by labor-labor substitution at the bottom of the wage distribution. We also find no evidence of disemployment when we consider higher levels of minimum wages. However, we do find some evidence of reduced employment in tradeable sectors. We also show how decomposing the overall employment effect by wage bins allows a transparent way of assessing the plausibility of estimates.

Presidential Institutions and Electoral Participation in Concurrent Elections in Latin America

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Carreras
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Electoral Participation ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Concurrent Elections

Previous studies of voter turnout in Latin America have found weak and inconsistent evidence for the link between political institutions and electoral participation. In this article, I use data from an expanded dataset of voter turnout in Latin America (1980–2016) to show that institutions do have an impact on citizens’ decisions on whether or not to participate in concurrent elections. Whereas previous studies analyzed the effect of legislative institutions on voter turnout, this article estimates a series of models that demonstrate the impact of presidential institutions and the political context surrounding presidential elections on electoral participation. The findings suggest that when first-order (presidential) and second-order (legislative) elections take place concurrently, electoral participation is influenced primarily by presidential institutions (term length, presidential powers, and electoral rules) and the electoral context in which the presidential elections take place (effective number of presidential candidates).

Weather and Voter Turnout: Kentucky Primary and General Elections, 1990-2000

2002 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay D. Gatrell ◽  
Gregory D. Bierly
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
General Elections

The Performance of Rational Voter Models in Recent Presidential Elections

1983 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 678-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carroll B. Foster
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
State Level ◽  
Pooled Data ◽  
Dummy Variable ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Statistical Studies ◽  
Voter Models ◽  
Rational Voter ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cost Of Voting

In An Economic Theory of Democracy, Downs hypothesized that rational, utility-maximizing citizens would calculate the benefits from voting (as opposed to abstaining altogether) and then vote if this expected benefit exceeded voting cost. This hypothesis is logically derived from economic principles of rational behavior, but is counterintuitive: even if the utility increment is plausibly large, the probability of casting a pivotal, tie-breaking vote in any sizable polity is minute. Hence the expected benefit will be less than the time cost of voting, and no rational person will vote. Nevertheless, a number of statistical studies have found that voter turnout does respond to differences in the probability of casting a decisive vote, even though that probability may be small.This article uses data gathered at the state level from the 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1980 general elections to reestimate the relationship between voter turnout and the probable closeness of the election. Pooled data Least Squares Dummy Variable (LSDV) regressions are used whenever preliminary tests indicate that such pooling is permissible. The empirical results suggest that the relationship between closeness and turnout is weak, unstable, or nonexistent in all of the models tested.

scholarly journals Who is 'New Zealand'? Publics in Aotearoa/New Zealand General Election Discourse

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ian Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Right

<p>2011 saw the lowest voter turnout in Aotearoa/New Zealand since women won the right to vote (Vowles, 2014). This decline in participation aligns with trends elsewhere in the Anglosphere (Ailes, 2015; Hansard, 2015). This organic crisis poses new questions for notions of the ‘public sphere’ and ‘publics’ – the forms of political engagement with citizens in a mass-mediated society. Fraser (1990) contends that in theorising the “limits of actually existing late capitalist democracy” (p. 57), we need a notion of pluralised and contesting ‘publics’ (ibid). The project asks how political parties named the 'public' (or publics) in the 2011 and 2014 Aotearoa / New Zealand General Elections. In order to consider the dominance of these political articulations, research will also consider whether these invocations of 'the public' found coverage in the national press. This is not intended as a sociological examination of actually existing publics, but an examination of dominant encoding (Hall, 2001). This analysis tests the thesis that dominant cross-partisan electoral discourses defined the 'public' in terms of dual identification with productive work and capital, in opposition to named subaltern publics. This formulation suggests that workers are called to identify with capital, following from Gramsci’s (2011) theorisation of bourgeois hegemony. Research begins with a content analysis of party press releases and mainstream coverage during the 2011 & 2014 General Elections, when official discourses hailing 'the public' are intensified. Content analysis quantifies nouns used for publics – for example, 'taxpayer', 'New Zealander', or even 'the public'. From this content analysis, the project proceeds to a critical discourse analysis, which seeks to historically contextualise and explain the patterns in content. Reworking Ernesto Laclau's (2005a) theorisation of populism to factor in the left/right axis (which Laclau considered outmoded), this critical discourse analysis considers what 'public' alliances are articulated, and what political programmes these articulations serve.</p>

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