Thomas Plümper

The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981-2002

Abstract Natural disasters do not affect people equally. In fact, a vulnerability approach to disasters would suggest that inequalities in exposure and sensitivity to risk as well as inequalities in access to resources, capabilities, and opportunities systematically disadvantage certain groups of people, rendering them more vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters. In this article we address the specific vulnerability of girls and women with respect to mortality from natural disasters and their aftermath. Biological and physiological differences between the sexes are unlikely to explain large-scale gender differences in mortality rates. Social norms and role behaviors provide some further explanation, but what is likely to matter most is the everyday socioeconomic status of women. In a sample of up to 141 countries over the period 1981 to 2002 we analyze the effect of disaster strength and its interaction with the socioeconomic status of women on the change in the gender gap in life expectancy. We find, first, that natural disasters lower the life expectancy of women more than that of men. In other words, natural disasters (and their subsequent impact) on average kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men. Since female life expectancy is generally higher than that of males, for most countries natural disasters narrow the gender gap in life expectancy. Second, the stronger the disaster (as approximated by the number of people killed relative to population size), the stronger this effect on the gender gap in life expectancy. That is, major calamities lead to more severe impacts on female life expectancy (relative to that of males) than do smaller disasters. Third, the higher womens socioeconomic status, the weaker is this effect on the gender gap in life expectancy. Taken together our results show that it is the socially constructed gender-specific vulnerability of females built into everyday socioeconomic patterns that lead to the relatively higher female disaster mortality rates compared to men.

Democracy, Government Spending, and Economic Growth: A Political-Economic Explanation of the Barro-Effect

The paper develops a political economicargument for the recently observed inverseu-shaped relation between the level ofdemocracy and economic performance. A modelis constructed that shows why and howpolitical participation influences thespending behavior of opportunisticgovernments that can choose an optimalcombination of rents and public goods toattract political support. If the level ofdemocracy remains comparably low,governments rationally choose rents as aninstrument to assure political support.With increasing democratic participation,however, rents become an increasinglyexpensive instrument while the provision ofpublic goods becomes more and moreefficient in ensuring the incumbentgovernments survival in power. As a consequence, an increase in democracy tends toraise growth rates of per capita income.However, the beneficial impact of democracyon growth holds true only for moderatedegrees of political participation. If –in semi-democratic countries – politicalparticipation increases further,governments have an incentive toover-invest in the provision of publicgoods. This model allows to derive and testthree hypothesis: Firstly, based on asimple endogenous growth model, weempirically substantiate our hypothesis ofa non-linear, inverse u-shaped relationbetween the level of democracy and growthof per capita income. Secondly, we showthat the impact of government spending oneconomic growth is higher in moredemocratic countries. Thirdly, wedemonstrate that the level of democracy andgovernment share of GDP are correlated in au-shaped manner.

Regulatory competition and international cooperation

Recent research has shown that regulatory competition does not necessarily lead to downward pressures on regulation, but may at times also push the level of regulation upwards. Extending David Vogels California effect argument, this paper shows that such upward pressure may not only result directly from the dynamics of the competitive process but also from international cooperation. Evidence from two case studies on international capital market regulation is used to identify the conditions under which cooperation in the shadow of regulatory competition is likely to succeed or fail. The successful multilateral standardisation of banking capital requirements in the BIS is compared to failed attempts to harmonise interest taxation across EC member states.

The political economy of natural disaster damage

Abstract Economic damage from natural hazards can sometimes be prevented and always mitigated. However, private individuals tend to underinvest in such measures due to problems of collective action, information asymmetry and myopic behavior. Governments, which can in principle correct these market failures, themselves face incentives to underinvest in costly disaster prevention policies and damage mitigation regulations. Yet, disaster damage varies greatly across countries. We argue that rational actors will invest more in trying to prevent and mitigate damage the larger a countrys propensity to experience frequent and strong natural hazards. Accordingly, economic loss from an actually occurring disaster will be smaller the larger a countrys disaster propensity – holding everything else equal, such as hazard magnitude, the countrys total wealth and per capita income. At the same time, damage is not entirely preventable and smaller losses tend to be random. Disaster propensity will therefore have a larger marginal effect on larger predicted damages than on smaller ones. We employ quantile regression analysis in a global sample to test these predictions, focusing on the three disaster types causing the vast majority of damage worldwide: earthquakes, floods and tropical cyclones.

Bringing Putnam to the European regions : on the relevance of social capital for economic growth

One of the most influential contributions to the study of political culture of the 1990s was Robert D. Putnam’s book on the positive impact that interpersonal trust supposedly has on economic welfare and the effectiveness of political institutions in Italy. Making Democracy Work showed in bivariate correlations that progress depends largely on the social capital manifest in the Italian regions. We evaluate this hypothesis in a wider sample of regions by analysing quantitatively the role that political culture has on economic growth in the regions of the European Union (EU). We first develop a neoclassical growth model and incorporate political culture variables into this framework. Our cross-sectional regression results cast some doubts on the generalizability of Putnam’s bold claims. The analysis particularly shows, in accordance with standard models of economic growth, that economic rather than cultural factors are the most forceful determinants of growth in the European regions. Only one dimension of political culture, the intensity of social communication, has the expected positive impact.

Conditional Spatial Policy Dependence Theory and Model Specification

The authors discuss how scholars can bring theories of spatial policy dependence and empirical model specifications closer in line so that the empirical analysis actually tests the theoretical predictions. Comprehensive theories of spatial policy dependence typically suggest that the jurisdictions receiving spatial stimuli systematically differ in their exposure to such signals as a function of the intensity of their interaction with other jurisdictions. Similarly, theories often predict that governments also differ in their responsiveness to any given spatial stimulus as a function of the institutional, political, economic, or social context in which they operate. In other words, theories typically postulate that spatial dependence is conditional on exposure and responsiveness, neither of which is accounted for in the standard empirical practice of estimating one single common coefficient for a row-standardized spatial lag variable. The authors show how scholars can adequately model both forms of heterogeneity with properly specified interaction effects models.

Foreign Terror on Americans

Americans are a major target of international terrorism. Yet, terrorists from some countries are much more likely to attack American citizens than terrorists from other countries. Similarly, anti-American terrorism from a specific foreign country is much more prevalent during certain periods than others. This article develops a rational theory of international terrorism, which argues that attacking foreign nationals is of strategic value to terrorists even if they ultimately aim at gaining political influence in their home country. Attacking foreigners is the more attractive to domestic terrorists the more the terrorists’ home government depends on military support from the foreign country. Applied to the US case, our theory predicts that more anti-American terrorism emanates from countries that receive more US military aid and arms transfers and in which more American military personnel are stationed, all relative to the country’s own military capacity. Estimations from a directed country dyad sample over the period 1978 to 2005 support the predictions of our theory for both terrorist incidents involving Americans and terrorist killings of Americans as dependent variables. These results are robust to a wide range of changes to the empirical research design.

The analysis of policy convergence, or: how to chase a black cat in a dark room

Political science research on policy convergence has largely remained inconclusive. While many studies found support for the convergence hypothesis, an almost equally large number of studies rejected it. Convergence thus could be a less general phenomenon than many theorists believe. This article identifies a second possible explanation. The variance approach, which dominates political science research on policy convergence, is likely to lead to wrong inferences. Analysing various artificially generated convergence processes, we find that neither the variance approach nor the coefficient of variation detects convergence when it is conditional or when theoretically unidentified convergence clubs exist. Our analysis suggests that researchers should estimate rather than measure convergence. By estimating convergence researchers may (a) test the causal relationship, (b) account for conditional convergence, (c) control for the existence of convergence clubs, and (d) examine convergence to an equilibrium level of a policy.

The Internal Value of External Options

Most of the literature has treated EU enlargement and the transition of Central and Eastern Europe, two of the most memorable events in recent history, as separate events. We argue that such separation is not warranted; it obfuscates an important fact, namely that the reform process in many Central and East European countries has taken a sui generis turn precisely because of the external EU option. We offer a formal model that explains how and why the EU membership option drives regulation in applicant countries beyond their equilibrium level of regulatory quality. We derive a series of hypotheses from our model and test these hypotheses employing standard panel methods. Empirical results support our model and suggest that approximately 40% of the variance in regulatory quality among transition countries is explained by EU conditionality in the enlargement process.

Government Spending and Taxation in Democracies and Autocracies

The paper develops a theoretical rationale for a non-linear relationship between the level of democracy and government spending. A model is presented showing why and how political participation influences the spending behavior of opportunistic governments that can choose an optimal combination of rents and public goods to attract political support. If the level of democracy remains low, governments rationally prefer rents as an instrument to assure political support. With increasing democratic participation, however, rents become an increasingly expensive (per unit of political support) instrument while the provision of public goods becomes more and more efficient in ensuring the incumbent governments survival in power. As a consequence, an increase in democracy, which drives a country from a pure autocracy to a semi-participatory system, tends to reduce government spending, while an increase in political participation from a semi-participatory country to a full democracy tends to raise the size of the public sector.