In this paper, we investigate the idea whether democracy has a direct effect on economic growth. We use a system GMM framework that allows us to model the dynamic aspects of the growth process and ...control for the endogenous nature of many explanatory variables. In contrast to the growth effects of institutions, regime stability, openness, geography and macro-economic policy variables, we find that measures of democracy matter little, if at all, for the economic growth process.
Before 1941, U.S. regulatory bodies were unrestricted. By 1946, several states and the federal government had imposed restrictions. It further took 40 years for every state to enact an Administrative ...Procedures Act (APA), a law that dictates how regulatory agencies promulgate regulations. Despite being overlooked, APAs significantly impact states in often missed or ignored ways. We analyzed each state's rulemaking procedures at four different points in time to see if they've increased or decreased restrictions on regulatory agencies. We created two indexes: a Restrictiveness index, a summative index, and another derived from multiple correspondence analysis. We studied how legislative professionalism, interest group constraint, citizen ideology, and government partisanism affect APA restrictions.
Sunset provisions are clauses embedded in legislation that cause a piece of legislation or a regulatory board to expire on a certain date unless the legislature takes affirmative action to renew the ...legislation or board. Supporters and legislators offer several reasons why sunset laws are valuable and useful. An article by Baugus and Bose (2015), reported on the king‐and‐council model of Congleton (2001), suggests that sunset laws are a key tool legislatures use in asserting themselves against an executive branch that often dominates state government. We investigate this possibility using empirical analysis, which suggests that part‐time legislatures, specifically, a form of part‐time legislature referred to as hybrid legislatures, are more prone to use sunset legislation as a tool to keep the executive preferences in check.
We study the impact of social networks on housing tenure choice in Indonesia. Since the homeownership decision is often associated with a change of location—and social networks in large part being ...tied to the physical location—studying the impact of social networks on tenure choice in isolation of the mobility decision may not be meaningful. Addressing the issue of potential endogeneity of social networks in the joint mobility–tenure choice decision, we estimate the effect of social networks on homeownership. We find the effect to be positive.
This dissertation consists of three essays examining the micro- and macro-determinants of economic development. In the first essay, focusing on a panel of Indonesian households, we study whether ...social capital improves household welfare by enabling families to smooth consumption, increase levels of consumption and allow them to insure themselves against adverse shocks. Several measures of social capital, different economic shocks and several categories of consumption expenditures are examined in the study. With regard to consumption smoothing, we find that households that increased their stock of social capital over time are often able to smooth their consumption against various economic shocks. We also find that social capital increases consumption in nearly all cases and that many point estimates are statistically significant. In addition, the joint effect of social capital and its interaction with various shock measures is often significant indicating that social capital has an additional role to play in mitigating the impact of adverse shocks. The second essay employs a panel data approach to examine the impact of institutions, trade and geography on per capita income. Our approach enables us to account for unobserved heterogeneity across countries, an issue that cannot be addressed in a cross-section framework. Moreover, employing the Hausman & Taylor (1981) approach allows us to obtain direct estimates on parameters of time invariant explanatory variables like geography or many institutional measures. We find that the quality of institutions and openness to trade have positive and statistically significant coefficient estimates throughout most specifications, while geography has negative estimates that are often, but not always statistically significant. In terms of their economic impact, institutional measures appear to have the strongest impact, followed by openness to trade and geography, respectively. The results thus provide an interesting as well as encouraging outlook: Institutions and trade matter for development and their joint, positive impact far outweighs any geographical disadvantage a country may have. The third essay investigates the consequences of religion for economic development. In particular, we examine whether religious attitudes, beliefs, participation and preference contribute to differences in per capita income across countries. Using a large scale international survey on values and religious behavior, we estimate both cross-section and panel data models, controlling for the "deep determinants" of development: Institutions, geography and trade. Our results indicate that religion plays an important role in economic development, but mostly in a non-linear manner. Countries with moderate religious values and behavior tend to have higher income levels than countries on both ends of the religious spectrum.
Thesis (Ph.D. in Economics)--S.M.U.
Title from PDF title page (viewed July 9, 2007). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-05, Section: A, page: 1833. Adviser: Thomas Osang. ...Includes bibliographical references.
A number of recent papers study the impact of institutions, trade and geography known as “deep determinants” of economic development using cross-section data. This paper instead employs a panel data ...approach to examine the impact of these three determinants on per capita income. Our approach enables us to account for unobserved heterogeneity across countries, an issue that cannot be addressed in a cross-section framework. Moreover, employing the Hausman and Taylor (1981) approach allows us to obtain direct parameter estimates of the time invariant explanatory variables like geography or some institutional measures, making our results comparable to the existing cross-section iterature. Also, by using lagged explanatory variables whenever possible we can account for contemporaneous correlation between these variables and the idiosyncratic error term. We find that the quality of institutions and openness to trade both have positive and statistically significant coefficient estimates throughout most specifications, while geography, captured by malaria ecology measure, has negative estimates that are often, but not always statistically significant. In terms of their economic impact, institutional measures appear to have the strongest impact, followed by openness to trade measures. In comparison, geography measures have rather small elasticity estimates.
This paper investigates the consequences of religion for economic development. In particular, we examine whether religious attitudes, beliefs, participation and preference contribute to differences ...in per capita income across countries. Using a large scale international survey on values and religious behavior, we estimate both cross-section and panel data models, controlling for the “deep determinants” of development: Institutions, geography and trade. Our results indicate that religion plays an important role in economic development, but mostly in a non-linear manner. Countries with moderate religious values and behavior tend to have higher income levels than countries on both ends of the religious spectrum.
Tebentafusp is a first-in-class bispecific fusion protein designed to target gp100 (a melanoma-associated antigen) through a high affinity T-cell receptor (TCR) binding domain and an anti-CD3 T-cell ...engaging domain, which redirects T cells to kill gp100-expressing tumor cells. Here, we report a multicenter phase I/II trial of tebentafusp in metastatic melanoma (NCT01211262) focusing on the mechanism of action of tebentafusp.
Eighty-four patients with advanced melanoma received tebentafusp. Treatment efficacy, treatment-related adverse events, and biomarker assessments were performed for blood-derived and tumor biopsy samples obtained at baseline and on-treatment.
Tebentafusp was generally well-tolerated and active in both patients with metastatic uveal melanoma and patients with metastatic cutaneous melanoma. A 1-year overall survival rate of 65% was achieved for both patient cohorts. On-treatment cytokine measurements were consistent with the induction of IFNγ pathway-related markers in the periphery and tumor. Notably, tebentafusp induced an increase in serum CXCL10 (a T-cell attractant) and a reduction in circulating CXCR3
CD8
T cells together with an increase in cytotoxic T cells in the tumor microenvironment. Furthermore, increased serum CXCL10 or the appearance of rash (likely due to cytotoxic T cells targeting gp100-expressing skin melanocytes) showed a positive association with patient survival.
These data suggest that redirecting T cells using a gp100-targeting TCR/anti-CD3 bispecific fusion protein may provide benefit to patients with metastatic melanoma. Furthermore, the activity observed in these two molecularly disparate melanoma classes hints at the broad therapeutic potential of tebentafusp.
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