infonet-economy

Studying the outcomes of social movements is important if we want to elucidate the role of collective action in society. While most works have addressed aggregate-level political outcomes such as changes in laws or new policies, a relatively small but substantial body of literature deals with the personal and biographical consequences of social movements at the micro-level, that is,...

This article discusses the methodological challenges of legislative surveys. Following an overview of different types of survey biases, the article argues that self-selection and misreporting are the most critical problems for legislative surveys. In order to identify the self-selection and misreporting biases, we compare the answers to a survey from Swiss members of parliament with...

This research note presents an innovative dataset of Swiss MPs’ interest ties between 2000-2011. The longitudinal analysis shows that the average number of interest ties per MP has more than doubled: from 3.5 in 2000 to 7.6 in 2011. Since the mid-2000s, public interest groups have accounted for approximately one out of two ties between MPs and interest groups, showing the strongest...

This dissertation takes up a theoretical problem that prejudices justifications of multiculturalism. If we understand multiculturalism as a position holding that cultures are valuable entities that deserve respect and recognition, we must not only show that there indeed are such things as cultures, but also that culture is the right kind of entity to possess value. However, these...

This dissertation examines the reasons for the selection of roll call votes and their effects on legislators' voting behavior in democratic legislatures. First, the dissertation shows that legislators have an incentive to facilitate the use of roll call votes when they expect that their policy preferences are aligned with those of important actors outside the legislature....

La capacité d'action des gouvernements locaux augmente-t-elle lorsqu'une ville se trouve dans un contexte de croissance et diminue-t-elle en cas de déclin ? Certains auteurs répondent par l'affirmative, d'autres estiment que ce facteur n'est pas déterminant. Cet article souhaite élargir ce débat en analysant comment les gouvernements locaux peuvent mobiliser...

This thesis delivers a new framework for the robust parametric estimation of random fields and latent models through the use of the wavelet variance. By proposing a new M-estimation approach for the latter quantity and delivering results on the identifiability of a wide class of latent models, the thesis finally delivers a computationally efficient and statistically sound method to...

Generalized linear models (GLM) and generalized additive models (GAM) are popular statistical methods for modelling continuous and discrete data both parametrically and nonparametrically. In this general framework, we consider the problem of variable selection by studying a wide class of penalized M-estimators that are particularly well suited for high dimensional scenarios where the...

We study private communication between jury members who have to decide
between two policies in a majority vote. While interests of all agents are perfectly aligned, only some agents ("experts") receive a private noisy signal about which policy is correct. Each expert can, but need not, recommend a policy to her audience of "non-experts" prior to the vote. We...