Determinants of Government Membership at the Subnational Level: Empirical Evidence from Large Cities in Germany (1999–2016)

Coalition governments prevail at the European subnational level. Although some studies explain the formation of subnational government coalitions, we know little about the determinants of individual parties' likelihood of joining such coalitions. This article aims to fill this gap in empirical and theoretical ways. It shows that an important institutional constraint matters for political actors' strategies when forming subnational coalitions: the party affiliation of the directly elected head of the executive. Being the party of the head of the executive or being ideologically close to that party significantly increases a party's likelihood of joining a coalition. The empirical evidence results from multinomial choice models using a novel data set on subnational parties' likelihood of joining 92 coalition governments at the local level in Germany between 1999 and 2016. The findings have substantive implications for subnational institutional settings resembling ‘mixed’ political systems (i.e. neither purely presidential nor purely parliamentarian).

Financial Stress and Health Considerations: A Tradeoff in the Reopening Decisions of U.S. Liberal Arts Colleges during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper presents empirical evidence on factors influencing choices made by members of the Annapolis Group of Liberal Arts colleges regarding whether to operate primarily in-person, primarily online or some flexible alternative during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. This paper examines the tradeoff between public health risks and financial standing that school administrators faced when deciding reopening plans. Because in-person instruction at colleges and universities had large effects on COVID-19 case rates, it is critical to understand what caused these decisions. We used binary and multinomial probit models to evaluate an original data set of publicly available data as well as data from the College Crisis Initiative. Binary and multinomial choice model estimates suggest that conditional upon the prevailing level of COVID-19 in their county, financially distressed colleges were approximately 20 percentage points more likely to opt for primarily in-person operations than less financially distressed colleges. These choices highlight an important potential tradeoff between public health and financial concerns present in the higher education sector and emphasize the need for public spending to mitigate adverse health outcomes if a similar situation occurs again.

Multinomial Choice with Social Interactions: Occupations in Victorian London

We study the importance of social interactions on the occupational choice in Victorian London using a multinomial choice model within an incomplete social network. Individuals form heterogeneous rational expectations about their peers' behaviors taking into account their characteristics and the strength of their ties. We show the conditions under which the endogenous, exogenous and correlated effects can be identified and a unique equilibrium can be established. Using a novel dataset, we proxy social groups by parish boundaries and strength of ties by geographic distances. Our results show the importance of the endogenous effects and reveal distinct effects by occupation.