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We estimate the elasticity of U.S. farm exports to U.S. farm subsidies using a gravity model of statelevel farm exports to 100 major trading destinations for the period 1999 to 2011. Our identification strategy exploits the within-state variation that is free of endogeneity bias in the levels and trends of farm subsidies and farm exports. We find that a 1% decrease in farm subsidies would reduce U.S. farm exports by 0.40% per annum. This equivalently means that the complete abolishment of the farm subsidy program would reduce U.S. farm exports by approximately $15.3 billion per year. Importantly, we document robust evidence that amber box subsidy programs such as countercyclical payments and marketing loan gains have the strongest effect on farm exports, while green box subsidy payments, such as direct payments have negligible effects. Finally, subsidy payments affect exports only in agricultural commodities, not in livestock. Our subsidy elasticity estimates are statistically significant, stable, and economically meaningful, and are vitally needed by U.S. and global policymakers in the face of critical domestic and international developments.

Despite a sizeable theoretical and empirical literature, no firm conclusions have been drawn regarding the impact of political democracy on economic growth. This article challenges the consensus of an inconclusive relationship through a quantitative assessment of the democracy-growth literature. It applies meta-regression analysis to the population of 483 estimates derived from 84 studies on democracy and growth. Using traditional meta-analysis estimators, the bootstrap, and Fixed and Random Effects meta-regression models, it derives several robust conclusions. Taking all the available published evidence together, it concludes that democracy does not have a direct impact on economic growth. However, democracy has robust, significant, and positive indirect effects through higher human capital, lower inflation, lower political instability, and higher levels of economic freedom. Democracies may also be associated with larger governments and less free international trade. There also appear to be country- and region-specific democracy-growth effects. Overall, democracy's net effect on the economy does not seem to be detrimental.

Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC research has shown that the true costs of disasters are typically greater than what the direct damage estimates suggest.

The extreme hunger and deprivation that recurs every year in the lean season in northern Bangladesh, locally known as the Monga, is mainly due to the malfunctioning local labor and credit markets. Using data covering 5600 extreme poor households in the Monga-prone region, we investigate in detail the role of social capital in securing employment and obtaining informal loans. Correcting for the endogeneity of social capital by the heteroscedasticity-based method proposed by Klein and Vella (J Econom 154:154–164, 2010) and also by the standard IV method for a robustness check, we document that social capital plays an important role in obtaining both wage- and self-employment. We also document a weak negative effect of social capital on obtaining informal loans. We explain our results in terms of the role of horizontal and vertical components of our measures of social capital in influencing different outcomes.

Using a new dataset of extreme rainfall covering 130 countries from 1979 to 2009, this paper investigates whether and how extreme rainfall-driven flooding affects democratic conditions. Our key finding indicates that extreme rainfall-induced flooding exerts two opposing effects on democracy. On one hand, flooding leads to corruption in the chains of emergency relief distribution and other post-disaster assistance, which in turn impels the citizenry to demand more democracy. On the other hand, flooding induces autocratic tendencies in incumbent regimes because efficient post-disaster management with no dissent, chaos or plunder might require government to undertake repressive actions. The net estimated effect is an improvement in democratic conditions.

For a \"genuine\" small open economy that has experienced both dictatorship and democracy, we find support for the predictions of the Grossman- Helpman (1994) \"Protection for Sale\" model. In contrast to previous studies, we use various protection measures (including tariffs, the direct measure of the theoretical model) and perform both single-year and panel regressions. Using Turkish industry-level data, the government's weight on welfare is estimated to be much larger than that on contributions. More importantly, we find that this weight is generally higher for the democratic regime than for dictatorship.

When bushfires ripped through the heart of Victoria on a scorching Saturday a decade ago, the impact was likened to 1500 Hiroshima-style bombs exploding across the state.

Do earthquakes trigger political transitions? Using a rich panel dataset of 160 countries observed over 1950–2007, we find that earthquake shocks, measured in terms of the effect of ground-motion amplitude on death toll, have two contradicting effects on political change. On the one hand, earthquakes drive transitions into democracy due to an affective shock, which we interpret to be the reaction of citizens by which they hold the incumbent government responsible for earthquake damages. On the other hand, earthquakes indirectly hasten transitions into a less democratic regime because they increase the income level contemporaneously, possibly due to short-term emergency response and recovery expenditures, and thus, raising the opportunity cost of contesting the incumbent government. Overall, we show that, while not leading to a full-fledged regime transition, earthquake shocks open a new democratic window of opportunity, but this window is narrowed by improved economic conditions.

Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC research has shown that the true costs of disasters are typically greater than what the direct damage estimates suggest.

Using a panel dataset of privatized cement firms in Turkey, this paper models and finds support for the simultaneous relationship between privatization and firm performance. It is found that favorable short-run performance, weak market potential, higher employment, lower socio-economic development, concentrated voter preferences, and weaker representation of right-wing parties in the firms' locality delay the timing of privatization. The paper also finds that privatization increases output in the medium-term by reducing the labor stock and promoting the adoption of more advanced technology, such that production shifts from constant to decreasing returns to scale.