Search results

This study examines how the effects of three predictors, namely left–right political orientation, generalized trust and political trust, on fossil fuel taxation attitudes vary between post-communist and other European countries.

By using European Social Survey (ESS) Round 8 data and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, this paper studied the effects of the hypothesized predictors on fossil fuel taxation attitudes across post-communist and other European countries. The countries were analyzed both in group and individually.

The results showed that stronger left-wing orientation, higher generalized trust and higher political trust predict more support for fossil fuel taxation at the country group level in both post-communist and other Europe. However, the effects were generally speaking less consistent and significant in the countries of the post-communist Europe. By and large, the effect of political trust was the most significant and universal.

The findings contribute to the understanding how left–right political orientation and generalized trust have somewhat distinct effects on fossil fuel taxation attitudes in different European country contexts, while the effect of political trust is more universal across the continent.

This paper examines the political budget cycles in emerging and developing countries using a sample of 91 countries from 1992 to 2019.

This paper employs a pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) model with clustered standard errors at the country level. To address endogeneity issues, the authors also employ a two-step system generalized methods of moments model.

The authors find clear evidence of political budget cycles in emerging and developing countries. The authors consistently find that incumbents increase total government spending, particularly in economic affairs, public services and social welfare, in the year before an election and the election year. In contrast, they contract spending in the year after an election.

Policymakers should be aware of the political budget cycles during election years. Promoting control of corruption and democracy helps to alleviate the effects of the political budget cycles in emerging and developing countries.

The authors are among the first to explore the political budget cycles in emerging and developing countries by focusing on the total government spending and its main compositions, including expenditures on economic affairs, public services and social welfare. Besides, the authors also explore the conditioning effects of control of corruption, political ideology and democracy.

There exist long-term fluctuations in the process of capital accumulation. The economic long wave is an essential part of research into non-mainstream western economics. After the Second World War, the capitalist world experienced the fourth long wave of expansion and then entered into a downward phase of the long wave in the 1970s. Regarding to whether a new long wave of expansion took place in the 1980s, left-wing scholars hold different viewpoints. The purpose of this paper is to focus on this issue.

First, based on the review of the long wave history, this paper discusses three kinds of long wave theories with significant influence and puts forward the theoretical framework of analyzing the long wave of capitalist economy. Next, under the guidance of this theoretical framework and in combination with the actual development and evolution of the capitalist economy, the issue of whether the fifth long wave of the capitalist economy began to emerge in the 1980s is discussed deeply.

This paper argues that, from the early 1980s to 2007, the US-dominated developed countries experienced a new long wave of expansion driven by the information technology revolution, the adjustment of the neoliberalism system and the economic globalization. However, the financial-economic crisis of 2008–2009 led to a new phase of long wave downswing.

This paper does not agree with the single-factor analysis of the intrinsic formation mechanism of economic long wave and sticks to the multi-factor analysis centering on the fluctuation of accumulation rate. It is pointed out that the evolution of the long wave of capitalist economy depends on the combined influence of technology, institutions and market. The study of the long wave of the economy will help us to correctly understand the historical stage and characteristics of the current world capitalist economy in the long-term fluctuations, so that we can make an appropriate and positive response.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, tremendous changes have taken place in the US economy – the economic growth in the whole year of 2020 was negative, and though it enjoyed a significant rebound for the first half of 2021, the growth rate began to decline rapidly by the third quarter, and inflation suddenly rises rapidly, which after came the all-time highs of the “misery index” consisted of the inflation rate and unemployment rate. All signs indicate that the US economy will likely enter a “stagflation” crisis.

This paper analyzes the institutional and social contradictions in the United States during the neoliberal era from the perspectives of domestic social structure of accumulation (SSA) and international SSA based on the SSA theory.

The current risk of stagflation in the US economy is a concentrated outbreak of the long-term accumulated contradictions in neoliberal SSA under the impact of the epidemic, which is the product of the irreconcilable contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production.

Based on this analysis, the paper points out that with the deepening of the crisis, the neoliberal SSA is likely to end and a new SSA will be established gradually.

The study aims at examining the level of financial transparency of local governments in a sub-Saharan African country and how financial transparency is affected by democracy in the sub-region.

The study applied a panel regression model to data collected from public accounts of 43 local authorities in Ghana from 1995 to 2014. Financial transparency was measured using a transparency index developed based on the Transparency Index of Transparency International and the information disclosure requirements of public sector entities under the International Public Sector Accounting Standards.

The study finds the low level of financial transparency among the local governments in Ghana, creating information asymmetry within the agency framework of governance. Further, evidence from the study suggests a strong positive relationship between democracy and financial transparency in the local government.

Deepening democracy is necessary for promoting the culture of financial transparency in local governance in sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps in entire Africa.

There is a need for the local governments and governments, in general, to deepen democracy to ensure proactive disclosure of the financial information to the citizens to improve participation trust and eventual reduction in corruption. Effective implementation of the Right to Information Act would also help promote financial and other forms of transparency in the sub-region.

The study contributes to the public sector accounting literature by linking democracy to financial transparency in the local government. Hitherto, studies concentrate on how entity level variables impact on the level of financial information flow in the local government without considering the broader governance infrastructure within which local governments operate.

Under the circumstance that the development of developing countries is a major issue that has long been of concern to Marxist scholars, the research is focused on the category of development benefit, which Xi Jinping has mentioned many times.

Based on the Marxist theory of international value, the authors of this paper indicate that development benefit is the result of developing countries' consistently increasing labor productivity, reducing squandering in labor and transforming more labor into real value, and thus the fundamental cause of unequal development in international economics turns from the field of circulation to the area of production.

Also, the authors summarize China's experience of obtaining the development benefit and China's development path featuring common development and criticized the comparative advantage of mainstream Western economics, revealed the path of dependency development represented by mainstream Western economics.

Finally, the authors analyze the essence of the economy and trade conflict between China and the US and the respective strategic goals of the two countries and provide an outlook on the contest between the two roads of development and the evolutionary trend of the relationship between developed and developing countries.

The paper presents a study on whether citizens’ immigration attitudes shape their attitudes towards social welfare in three Nordic countries.

The main analysis was performed using linear regression analysis. Data were retrieved from the eighth round of the European Social Survey (2016). The data cover the Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish respondents (N = 5,021).

The analyses indicate that citizens’ immigration attitudes are associated with their social welfare attitudes. The more positive the attitudes towards immigration are, the more positive the attitudes toward social welfare will be. Further, people in the political Left have more positive attitudes towards social welfare compared to those in the political Right; but, the immigration issue is more divisive of the political Left’s opinion than that of the Right.

Public opinion research has its limitations because behind an individual’s opinion there are many hidden factors. An individual may also have different opinions depending on the dimensions of the welfare state.

If the immigration issue reduces the support for social welfare among the political Left, it may reduce the legitimacy of the Nordic social policy because the support of the political Left has traditionally been in favour of the universal principles of the welfare state.

The association of the immigration issue and social welfare attitudes has been broadly studied; but, the interaction of the immigration issue and political opinion on social welfare attitudes is less studied.

The aim of this paper is to explore whether and how external, political, financial and governance factors influence capital expenditure deviations in the Swedish municipal water and sewerage sector and to capture the consequences of municipal organisational fragmentation.

Panel data analysis of 238 municipalities and 1,190 observations of capital expenditure deviations over five years (2013–2017).

Apart from a low overall on average execution rate of 69%, the Swedish municipal water and sewerage sector seems generally sensitive to external stakeholder pressure for budget compliance, but not to the political power situation. Further, political signalling incentives generally do not influence capital expenditure deviations in the contexts of municipal corporations and cooperations, which supports the idea that these governance forms insulate the organisation from general stakeholder pressure and political control.

The practical implication is that large and constant capital expenditure deviations call for change in regulation and governance of the municipal sector. However, in countries such as Sweden, where externalising services to municipal corporations and cooperations is significant, this discussion needs to address the consolidated level of the municipality. Otherwise, a large share of the investment budget will be unscrutinised. More closely related to the Swedish water and sewerage sector, the risks associated with a constantly low execution rate should be analysed and addressed.

First, this paper contributes to the knowledge of aggregated capital expenditure deviations in general and specifically within the municipal water and sewerage sector. Second, analysing the municipal governance landscape adds further insights and suggestions on why budget performance varies. The results especially highlight that the governance forms of corporations and cooperations change the relation to political signalling incentives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how contemporary fact-checking is discursively constructed in Swedish news media; this serves to gain insight into how this practice is understood in society.

A selection of texts on the topic of fact-checking published by two of Sweden’s largest morning newspapers is analyzed through the lens of Fairclough’s discourse theoretical framework.

Three key discourses of fact-checking were identified, each of which included multiple sub-discourses. First, a discourse that has been labeled as “the affirmative discourse,” representing fact-checking as something positive, was identified. This discourse embraces ideas about fact-checking as something that, for example, strengthens democracy. Second, a contrasting discourse that has been labeled “the adverse discourse” was identified. This discourse represents fact-checking as something precarious that, for example, poses a risk to democracy. Third, a discourse labeled “the agency discourse” was identified. This discourse conveys ideas on whose responsibility it is to conduct fact-checking.

A better understanding of the discursive construction of fact-checking provides insights into social practices pertaining to it and the expectations of its role in contemporary society. The results are relevant for journalists and professionals who engage in fact-checking and for others who have a particular interest in fact-checking, e.g. librarians and educators engaged in media and information literacy projects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the volatility transmission between migration policy uncertainty indices (MI) of France, Germany, UK and the USA, and respective stock markets of these countries. Therefore, the author’s major intention is to understand whether MI is a critical factor affecting company valuations and investor sentiment.

The author proxies volatility via EGARCH (1,1) for all series and employs Diebold–Yilmaz (2012) methodology to test the spillover, which is a simple yet very intuitive procedure. This method allows one to analyze the numerical amount of spillover, as well as the direction.

Findings propose that volatility transmission is from migration index to stock markets for the UK and US markets, but similar findings are not applicable for France and Germany. However, when cross-market transmissions are analyzed, it is observed that migration policy uncertainty of US spills significant volatility to all European stock markets. Hence, the findings underline the central role of US markets.

Given the increasing worries about migration across the USA and Europe, the author tries to cast light on whether investor sentiment alters by migration policies. The literature is recently building and best of the author’s knowledge; the paper is the first to investigate the cross-country spillover between MIs, which has not been performed before.