Disgust has been described as the most primitive and central of emotions. Thus, it is not surprising that it shapes behaviors in a variety of organisms and in a variety of contexts--including homo sapien politics. People who believe they would be bothered by a range of hypothetical disgusting situations display an increased likelihood of displaying right-of-center rather than left-of-center pol...

One of the main features Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) is that certain products are excluded from tariff concessions. But why do some receive more protection than others in FTAs? In this paper, we use disaggregated agricultural product data and a political economy analytical framework to examine determinants exclusions reductions China’s FTAs. Taking into account costs incumbent government, our ...

An explanation for the political processes leading to the sudden collapse of empires and states would be useful for understanding both historical and contemporary political events. We examine political disintegration across eras, cultures and geographical scale to form a simple hypothesis that can be expressed verbally yet formulated mathematically. Factions within a state make choices describe...

Article history: Received 7 August 2014 Received in revised form 20 June 2015 Accepted 29 June 2015 Available online 9 July 2015 This study investigates whether a firm with strong corporate governance (CG) requires political connections (PCs), that is, we examine whether CG and PC substitute for or complement each other. Using 71,069 individual bank loan contracts from Taiwan, we examine how lo...

Previous theoretical and empirical studies suggest that CEOs' political connections are valuable to firms. We examine whether such connections become entrenched if the expected political capital fails to materialize and the firm lacks other types of political power. Using a sample of listed non-SOEs in China, we show that politically connected CEOs have a lower probability of turnover and cause...

This paper examines the nexus between political instability and economic growth in 10 CEE countries in transition in the period 1990-2009. Our results support the contention that political instability defined as a propensity for government change had a negative impact on growth. On the other hand, there was no causality in the opposite direction. A sensitivity analysis based on the application ...