Political Yardstick Competition, Economic Integration, and Constitutional Choice in a Federation

This paper investigates the behavior of rent-seeking politicians in an environment of increasing economic integration. The focus of the paper is on the implications of globalization-induced political yardstick competition for constitutional design with a view to the current discussion in the European Union. In contrast to the established literature, we carefully portray the double-tiered government structure in federal systems. The number of lower-tier governments and the allocation of policy responsibilities to the two levels of government are subject to constitutional choice.Economic Integration, Federalism, Political Economy, Yardstick Competition

High quality political institutions are a precondition for a strong civil society

Strengthening civil society is often assumed to be a mechanism for promoting improved governance. Thilo Bodenstein assesses this perspective using comparative data on the strength of civil society across different regions. He finds that the single biggest factor leading to a strong civil society is the presence of high quality political institutions within a given country. Crucially, however, this effect only appears to operate in one direction: high quality political institutions help create a strong civil society, but a strong civil society alone is unlikely to lead to significant improvements in the quality of a country’s institutions

Can US monetary policy fall (again) into an expectation trap?

We provide a tractable model to study monetary policy under discretion. We restrict our analysis to Markov equilibria. We find that for all parametrizations with an equilibrium inflation rate of about 2 percent, there is a second equilibrium with an inflation rate just above 10 percent. Thus, the model can simultaneously account for the low and high inflation episodes in the United States. We carefully characterize the set of Markov equilibria along the parameter space and find our results to be robust, suggesting that expectation traps are more than just a theoretical curiosity

Hadronic Contribution to the muon g−2g-2 factor

The lowest order hadronic contribution to the $g-2$ factor of the muon is analyzed in the framework of the operator product expansion at short distances, and a QCD finite energy sum rule designed to quench the role of the $e^+ e^-$ data. This procedure reduces the discrepancy between experiment and theory, $\Delta a_\mu \equiv a^{EXP}_\mu - a^{SM}_\mu$, from $\Delta a_\mu = 28.7 (8.0) \times 10^{-10}$ to $\Delta a_\mu = 19.2 (8.0) \times 10^{-10}$, i.e. without changing the uncertainty.Comment: Revised version with additional paragraph

Hadronic contribution to the muon g-2: a theoretical determination

The leading order hadronic contribution to the muon g-2, $a_{\mu}^{HAD}$, is determined entirely from theory using an approach based on Cauchy's theorem in the complex squared energy s-plane. This is possible after fitting the integration kernel in $a_{\mu}^{HAD}$ with a simpler function of $s$. The integral determining $a_{\mu}^{HAD}$ in the light-quark region is then split into a low energy and a high energy part, the latter given by perturbative QCD (PQCD). The low energy integral involving the fit function to the integration kernel is determined by derivatives of the vector correlator at the origin, plus a contour integral around a circle calculable in PQCD. These derivatives are calculated using hadronic models in the light-quark sector. A similar procedure is used in the heavy-quark sector, except that now everything is calculable in PQCD, thus becoming the first entirely theoretical calculation of this contribution. Using the dual resonance model realization of Large $N_{c}$ QCD to compute the derivatives of the correlator leads to agreement with the experimental value of $a_\mu$. Accuracy, though, is currently limited by the model dependent calculation of derivatives of the vector correlator at the origin. Future improvements should come from more accurate chiral perturbation theory and/or lattice QCD information on these derivatives, allowing for this method to be used to determine $a_{\mu}^{HAD}$ accurately entirely from theory, independently of any hadronic model.Comment: Several additional clarifying paragraphs have been added. 1/N_c corrections have been estimated. No change in result

Political Yardstick Competition, Economic Integration, and Constitutional Choice in a Federation

This paper investigates the behavior of rent-seeking politicians in an environment of increasing economic integration. The focus of the paper is on the implications of globalization-induced political yardstick competition for constitutional design with a view to the current discussion in the European Union. In contrast to the established literature, we carefully portray the double-tiered government structure in federal systems. The number of lower-tier governments and the allocation of policy responsibilities to the two levels of government are subject to constitutional choice