Partisanship of state governors affects the efficacy US federal fiscal policy. Using close election data, we find partisan differences in marginal propensity to spend intergovernmental transfers: Republican less than Democratic governors. Correspondingly, Republican-led states have lower debt, (delayed) taxes, and initially economic activity. A New Keynesian model a monetary union implies sizab...

In a headed tree, each terminal word can be uniquely labeled with a governing word and grammatical relation. This labeling is a summary of a syntactic analysis which eliminates detail, reflects aspects of semantics, and for some grammatical relations (such as subject of finite verb) is nearly uncontroversial. We define a notion of expected governor markup, which sums vectors indexed by governor...

We explore the US states’ evolving policy responses to COVID-19 pandemic by examining governors’ decisions begin easing five types of social distancing policies after initial case surge in March–April 2020. Applying event history models original data on state policies, we test relative influence health, economic, and political considerations their decisions. find no evidence that differences ec...

Legally independent central banks leave elected politicians with little direct control over monetary policy. The most important indirect channel of influence for governments thus consists in appointing ‘responsive’ central bank officials and removing ‘hostile’ ones. This premise is tested by examining the effect of partisan ties between central bank governors and governments or presidents in 30...

I combine newly digitized personnel and public finance data from the British colonial administration 1854-1966 to study how patronage affects the promotion and performance of governors. Governors are more likely to be promoted to higher salaried colonies when connected to their superior during the period of patronage. Once allocated, they provide more tax exemptions, raise less revenue, and inv...

Information about urban land cover and land use changes concerns many groups of people, such as the local governors, urban planners, environmentalists and decision makers. They need up-to-date change information to manage the land effectively and revise development plans. A case study was conducted over Beijing, China. Two multispectral satellite images (ASTER and SPOT PAN) collected in 2001 an...