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Presidential elections are often seen as referendums on the health of the economy; however, little evidence exists on the president's ability to influence gross domestic product (GDP). This study examines the effect of the incentive to be reelected and the resulting increase in presidential effort on GDP growth. Growth is found to rise in reelection years for first-term presidents after 1932 and to fall in election years before 1932, when reelection was uncommon, and for second-term presidents generally. This effect is largest for high-quality presidents--who probably have the highest return to effort--and is spread across multiple sectors of the economy. (JEL D78, D72, E32, J24), I. INTRODUCTION Presidential election is often seen as a referendum on the performance of the economy. Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 with a campaign that asked the question, [...]

Because individual listing data for Airbnb typically are not publicly available, private companies have emerged to estimate the performance of Airbnb listings. The implicit assumption of a growing number of academics, policymakers, and consultants is that Airdna's performance measures are directly comparable with those of STR. We argue that Airdna's measures of Occupancy, Average Daily Rate (ADR), and Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) do not conform to industry standards and exhibit significant bias. We expand available evidence by explicitly quantifying the sources and magnitude of the biases for Airdna's performance measures for Airbnb listings. Using Airdna's individual listing data for Virginia between the first quarter of 2015 and the 4th quarter of 2019, we find, on average, Airdna's performance measures for Occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR were biased upward by 60 percent, 78 percent, and 179 percent, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fiscal decentralization may indeed have a direct impact on economic growth but the theoretical underpinnings for this relationship remain largely undeveloped. A fair summary of the empirical search for a direct relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth is that it remains an open question. Much less attention has been devoted in the literature to the indirect channels through which fiscal decentralization may affect economic growth. We argue that much work remains to be done before policy advisors and decision makers can formulate and implement decentralization programs on the basis of improving the rate or economic growth. Key words--fiscal decentralization, economic growth

Much of the interest in dual-stage microactuation for hard disk drives centers on control system design methodology, error rejection improvements, and optimal division of the control effort between the coarse and fine actuators. The authors, instead, place the emphasis on evaluating the secondary actuator mechanics from the point of view of the control system. The effective performance of the mechanical plant can be better assessed when combined with a 'target' compensator than it can as a raw mechanical transfer function or frequency response function alone. Index Terms--Dual stage servo, frequency response function microactuators, resonance.

Establishment-level data supports the idea of a segmented labor market in the United Kingdom. This segmentation relates to pay and employment stability, and is more complex than the traditional dualistic representation of core and periphery workers. UK research has tended to use aggregated data. Using establishments as units of study is a more fruitful method. Organizations may locate some types of employment in some establishments, while other types of employment may be concentrated in other establishments.

This article argues that the field of organization studies may learn from closer study of decision-making and behaviors in military organizations. It describes some of the intellectual roots of organizational studies within a strategic, military context; discusses some recent characteristics of strategic competition that organization scholars may find fruitful to study; and view some of the key contemporary challenges in military organizations through the lens of strategic organization design, a framework the builds on, and integrates, several streams of research in organizational behavior that have implications for, and influence, how organizations make strategic decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the impact of civil war on military expenditure. We employ two measures of military expenditure: the share of military expenditure in general government expenditure and the logarithm of military expenditures. We would reasonably expect a priori that military expenditure as a share of general government expenditure increases during a civil war and that such increases would taper off over the duration of a civil war. We also explore whether the termination of a civil war induces a decline in the share of military expenditure as a share of the general government expenditure in the short-run. We find evidence the of share of military expenditure increases during a civil war and falls in the year succeeding the end of a civil war, and, in particular, if a war ends in a peace treaty. The level of military expenditures, however, rises during civil wars and does not appear to decline in the short-term after the end of a civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airbnb is an Internet-based firm that connects potential short-term renters with hosts who own or control rental properties. Its rapidly expanding activities are tracked by Airdna, an independent firm that generates seemingly conventional performance metrics describing Airbnb. These metrics include occupancy rates, average daily rates, and revenue per available room. However, Airdna does not adhere to long-established STR definitions for these variables. Using data from Virginia Beach, Virginia, we demonstrate that Airdna's performance metrics exhibit notable upward biases vis-á-vis STR's metrics. Potential rental hosts, hoteliers, tax collectors, and investors are at risk if they act on the assumption that Airdna's metrics are comparable with widely understood measures used by STR and tourism experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A receding time horizon linear quadratic optimal control approach is formulated for multi-axis contour tracking problem. The approach employs a performance index with fixed weights on quadratic contouring error, tracking error, and control input over a future finite horizon. The problem is then cast into a standard receding horizon LQ problem with time varying weighting matrices, which are functions of the future contour trajectory within the horizon. The formulation thus leads to a solution of time varying state feedback and finite preview gains. Stability is proven for the linear trajectory case. Experimental and simulated results for an X-Y motion control problem are presented, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the control scheme and the effects of the key controller design parameters. [S0022-0434(00)01202-8]

The literature on decentralization has long asserted that decentralized governance increases public sector allocative efficiency. We offer an indirect test of this hypothesis by examining how decentralized governance affects revealed preferences for public goods. Specifically, we examine the relationship between expenditure decentralization and the functional composition of public expenditures. We hypothesize that higher levels of expenditure decentralization induce agents to demand increased production of publicly provided private goods. We test this hypothesis using an unbalanced panel data set of forty-two developed and developing countries over twenty-two years. Using system Generalized Methods of Moments and Quasi-Maximum Likelihood estimators, we find that expenditure decentralization positively, significantly, and robustly influences the share of education expenditures in consolidated government budgets. We also find evidence to suggest that expenditure decentralization positively influences the share of health expenditures in consolidated government budgets. Decentralized governance appears to alter the composition of public expenditures toward publicly provided private goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines whether the aging of a fleet affects operational availability and operating cost using a unique data-set on the 117 47-foot Motor Lifeboats (MLBs) of the United States Coast Guard (USCG). Procured from 1997 to 2003, the 47-foot MLB is the standard lifeboat of the USCG and all 117 MLBs remain in service. The aging of the MLB fleet has resulted in higher annual operating costs and lower operational availability, although the nature of this relationship remains unclear. Our estimation strategy utilizes an error components estimator to examine these issues. We employ three variants of the dependent variables (i.e. the standard logarithmic transformation as is most commonly seen in the literature, inverse hyperbolic sine [IHS], and level outcomes). The point estimates from the standard logarithmic model finds operational availability for the MLBs decreases at a rate between 0.83 and 1.8% per year and cost increases at a rate between 0.33 and 7.81% per year. Similar effects are shown with the IHS and level outcome specifications. In terms of nonlinearity effects, we find the most pronounced changes in operational availability and cost occur for MLBs aged 15 years or more (in comparison to younger MLBs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]