Dennis P. Quinn

• Professor (Full) at Georgetown University

We present two newdatabases we have constructed to explore the electoral consequences of structural economic policy reforms. One database measures reforms in domestic finance, external finance, trade, product, and labor markets covering 90 advanced and developing economies from 1973 to 2014. The other chronicles the timing and results of national e...

Intense debate surrounds the effects of trade on voting, yet less attention has been paid to how fluctuations in the real exchange rate may influence elections. A moderately overvalued currency enhances consumers’ purchasing power, yet extreme overvaluation threatens exports and economic growth. We therefore expect exchange rates to have a conditio...

This paper assesses the potential impacts of services trade liberalization for a sample of African countries. The focus is on the relationship between labour productivity of manufacturing sectors and two types of services trade‐related policies – restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) in services and restrictions on international payments...

International trade directly influences US presidential elections. We explore the electoral implications of the increasing tradability of services and the large US surplus in services trade. Our paper builds on prior work showing that job insecurity from import competition in manufacturing diminishes political support for incumbents. We construct n...

Does increasing economic globalization influence aggregate policy mood toward the role and size of government in the United States? Drawing on insights from international political economy scholarship, this article suggests that the impact of trade on aggregate preferences will depend on citizens’ exposure to trade. It hypothesizes that employees o...

We apply insights from “new, new” trade theory to explain a puzzling decline in US firm antidumping (AD) filings in an era of persistent foreign currency undervaluations and increasing import competition. Firms exhibit heterogeneity both within and across industries regarding foreign direct investment (FDI). We propose that firms making vertical or...

Although the benefits of high status are well documented, in this research we explore the potential hazards associated with high status that have increasingly been implicated in recent studies. Organizational research suggests two such hazards: (1) opportunistic behaviors by elites that eventually lead to sanctions and (2) the targeting of elites b...

We apply insights from “new, new” trade theory to explain a puzzling decline in U.S. firm antidumping (AD) filings in an era of persistent foreign currency undervaluations and increasing import competition. Firms exhibit heterogeneity both within and across industries regarding foreign direct investment. We propose that firms making vertical, or re...

We examine firm participation in global supply chains to help explain a puzzling decline in protectionist demands in the U.S. despite increased import competition and ongoing currency undervaluation. To explain firm responses to undervaluation, we rely on advances in the international trade literature that uncover intraindustry heterogeneity in fir...

This paper analyzes the extent to which the degree of international economic integration, both financial and trade, affects corporate tax rates. It explores this issue in the context of strategic behavior by countries, taking into account other global and domestic political economy factors. Tax rates are analyzed using a unique tax dataset for adva...

The effects of inequality and financial globalization on democratization are central issues in political science. The relationships among economic inequality, capital mobility, and democracy differ in the late twentieth century for financially integrated autocracies vs. closed autocracies. Financial integration enables native elites to create diver...

Researchers have available to them numerous indicators of financial openness and integration, many of which have yielded substantially differing results in past research, for example, on the relationship of financial openness or integration with economic growth. This article reviews the main indicators and finds that de jure vs. de facto indicators...

Using a new dataset on capital account openness, we investigate why equity return correlations changed over the last century. Based on a new, long-run dataset on capital account regulations in a group of 16 countries over the period 1890-2001, we show that correlations increase as financial markets are liberalized. These findings are robust to cont...

Business cycles in different regions of the United States tend to synchronize. This study investigates the reasons behind this synchronization of business cycles and the consequent formation of a national business cycle. Trade between regions may not be strong enough for one region to "drive" business cycle fluctuations in another region. This stud...

Introduction: Scholars have long argued that the spread of ideas and values matters for the adaptation and reform of government policies. (See, for example, the essays in Hall 1989.) In this chapter, we investigate whether and how either liberal or restrictive international financial policies on capital account regulation spread globally, both thro...

We test whether capital account liberalization led to higher economic growth using de jure measures of capital account and financial current account openness for 94 nations, from 1950 (or independence) onward. We argue that measurement error, differing time periods used, and collinearity among independent variables account for conflicting results i...

Business cycles in different regions of the United States tend to synchronize. This study investigates the reasons behind this synchronization of business cycles and the consequent formation of a national business cycle. Trade between regions may not be strong enough for one region to "drive" business cycle fluctuations in another region. This stud...

We propose that the global spread of ideas affects international economic openness policies, and that to omit ideology as an explanatory variable for economic globalization is to risk omitted variable bias. Using voting data, we create measures of global ideology regarding economic openness and propose that changes in both global and domestic ideol...

An indicator of financial openness spanning the period 1890-1999 is used to evaluate policies towards the capital account of the balance of payments. Findings include that: financial globalization was deeper in 1890-1913 than subsequently; countries with liberal capital account policies recovered more quickly from the Great Depression than countrie...

Democracies differ from autocracies in that democracies produce stable, not high or low, growth in national income. We analyze the likely risk/ return preferences of voters and hypothesize that the underlying causal mechanism generating democratic stability is that democracies more accurately reflect the risk aversion of ordinary citizens. We test...

We propose that U.S. corporate taxation revenue, 1981-1998, responded to political and economic forces in ways consistent with a partisan and organizational view of politics, but inconsistent with a structural dependence view. We employ Vector Error Correction (VEC) models to examine our hypotheses, and offer a new method for generating impulse-res...

With which political and economic variables is change in international financial regulation robustly associated? I undertook multivariate regression analysis of this question using a quantitative measure of the regulation of international financial transactions. The measure was created by coding the laws of 64 nations. The associations between chan...

Theory: We assess the determinants of the national regulation of international finance, or the comparative degree of national financial openness or closure. Hypotheses: Partisanship interacts with a nation's factor endowments to account in part for different international financial policies by governments of the same partisan hue. Methods: We offer...

We develop a philosophical perspective on the moral obligations of managers, which we call agent morality, by examining the moral implications of agency theory. Our view is grounded in noninstrumental ethics, which we argue is logically superior to instrumental ethics. We show that the principal-agent model of the firm, once properly considered, re...

What conditions led the One Hundredth Congress of the United States to enact fair trade and strategic trade policies into law during 1987-88? Political partisanship is an important force, with Democrats supporting and Republicans opposing all types of trade intervention. Otherwise, the coalitions of support for and opposition to the various trade p...

What were the conditions that led to the enactment of fair and strategic trade policies during the 100th Congress of 1987-88? To suggest answers to this question, we use logistic regression analysis to study the fifty contested congressional votes on trade-related bills and amendments. The results indicate that political partisanship is an importan...

Success in the global marketplace increasingly requires that firms develop capabilities in innovation. In this paper we argue that firms can use employment and compensation practices to foster innovation and support for innovation by employees. Conversely, some employment and compensation systems will inhibit innovation. A system that allows gain s...

We examine contending views about the forms and mechanisms of business power in U.S. politics by estimating time series models explaining taxation and redistribution. Taxation and redistribution constitute strong cases for theories about business and class power, since all firms have an interest in reducing taxation. We find that changes in corpora...

We reformulate the partisanship thesis in light of four claims leveled against it. The reformulated version, ideological partisanship, is based upon the theory that similar rates of economic growth may follow from the different use of policy instruments. Owing to their role as determinants of investment and growth, interest rates, business taxation...

We examine the extent and effect of an interest rate-based industrial policy in Japan, France, Great Britain, and West Germany while using the United States as a control case. We argue that some governments have undertaken industrial policies that achieve a "below-competitive market" interest rate, thereby allowing the redirection of financial flow...

Soule for extensive and thoughtful comments. Juan Carlos Zepeda-Molina ran many of the model specification tests, and Jose Arrellaga-Ferrer provided research assistance. I have nobody but myself to blame for errors.

Using a new dataset on policy measures of financial openness, we investigate the determinants of equity return correlations. In a dataset of 10 developed countries for the period 1890-2000, we show that diversification benefits decline as financial markets open up to international capital flows. Diversification benefits disappear as investors chase...

Abstract will be provided by author.

Does democracy affect national economic performance? Previous analyses of democracy's effecton economic performance generally begin with an unsound assumption--voters demand the highest rate ofeconomic growth. From an analysis of the likely risk/return preferences of voters, this paper develops thehypothesis that democracies differ from dictatorshi...