Browsing by Author "Malesky, E"

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Open Access
“Consultation and Selective Censorship in China"
(Journal of Politics) Gueorguiev, Dimitar; Malesky, E
Open Access
Disaggregated defense spending: Introduction to data
(Journal of Peace Research, 2024-01-01) Becker, J; Benson, S; Dunne, JP; Malesky, E
Theoretical and empirical research on causes and consequences of defense spending is plentiful. Most of this research uses ‘top line’ defense spending data, either as a share of GDP or as a raw monetary figure. Empirical research has been limited, however, by the ‘blunt’ nature of this data, which does not help to explain what countries are spending on. We introduce a dataset that provides information on disaggregated defense spending from 35 NATO and EU members over as many as 51 years. We discuss the main features of this data in the paper, and the replication files will enable other scholars to automate accessing it in the future. In addition to automating the extraction of NATO and European Defence Agency data on overall military expenditures, we make data on equipment, personnel, operating, and infrastructure spending available in a single dataset. We illustrate the utility of the disaggregated defense spending dataset by replicating canonical and newer analyses using both the overall data and its disaggregated components. The findings differ depending on which type of spending is considered. We found that differences in the relationship between national wealth and defense spending depended on the category of spending considered, as did the tendency toward ‘free-riding’. These exercises shed new light on seminal theories on burden-sharing and the political economy of security. Our initial analysis suggests that disaggregating defense spending is likely to improve the analysis of old and emerging research questions of considerable policy importance, and points to several opportunities to do so.
Open Access
Facilitating Development: Evidence from a National-Level Experiment on Improving Bureaucratic Performance in Myanmar
(Journal of Politics, 2023-10-01) Dulay, D; Malesky, E
Despite strong theoretical foundations, randomized evaluations demonstrate that subnational performance assessments have a mixed record in improving governance. We suggest that a key factor influencing this disappointing result has been the omission of facilitation—working with bureaucrats on how to use subnational performance assessments (SPAs) effectively and encouraging collaboration across government agencies. The argument is tested on a nationally represen-tative panel of townships in precoup Myanmar. Facilitation workshops were conducted in 20 randomly assigned townships, bringing together officials from multiple government agencies and introducing them to the results of the Myanmar Business Environment Index (MBEI), an SPA that scored a panel of 60 townships on 92 governance indicators. Results show that businesses in townships where officials attended facilitation workshops ranked their townships twice as high as the businesses in the control group. Variation in MBEI improvements was moderated by the degree of decentralization in bureaucratic agencies.
Open Access
Fish or steel? New evidence on the environment-economy trade-off in developing Vietnam
(World Development, 2021-11-01) Nguyen, Q; Malesky, E
Trade and investment have contributed to the improvement of living standards in developing countries, but have also put severe pressure on natural environments. How do citizens in low-income countries manage this trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection? Using a discrete choice experiment conducted as part of three large, face-to-face nationally representative surveys of Vetnamese citizens (N=>12,500 respondents per wave), we find that prospective economic benefits increase public support for investment projects, whereas potential environmental harm resulting from investment decreases the public appetite for them. When economic and environmental factors are considered jointly, our results point to the existence of an environmental risk threshold. Environmental costs beyond that threshold lead citizens to reject investment projects, even when they generate considerable economic benefits. Our results challenge the theory that individuals in low-income countries prioritize development over environmental protection, and have implications for political leaders in designing their countries’ future investment policies.
Open Access
How do firms feel about participation by their peers in the regulatory design process? An online survey experiment testing the substantive change and spillover mechanisms
(Strategy Science, 2019-06-01) Malesky, E; Taussig, M
This paper examines two concerns with calls for increased participation by firms in the government design of regulations in emerging markets. First, given the profit maximization goals of firms, can the benefits of business participation be realized without weakening the social protections that regulations are meant to offer? Second, can resource-constrained states realistically use consultation programs to influence the behavior of enough relevant firms to achieve a reasonable breadth of social protection? We explore these understudied questions through an online survey experiment involving 121 firm managers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We find that firms prompted to think about worker safety favored regulatory changes that arose from suggestions by other firms over those resulting from suggestions by chemical safety experts even when unaware of the involvement of either source in the design process. By contrast, firms prompted to focus on business success did not express significant support for revisions suggested by either firms or experts. Learning about the participation of fellow firms positively influenced views about the legitimacy of the state's regulatory authority but not of the focal regulation itself.
Open Access
Institutions and inequality in single-party regimes a comparative analysis of vietnam and China
(Comparative Politics, 2011-07-01) Malesky, E; Abrami, R; Zheng, Y
Despite the fact that China and Vietnam have been the world's two fastest growing economies over the past two decades,their income inequality patterns are very different. An examination of the political institutions in the two countries shows that profound differences between these polities influence distributional choices. In particular,as compared to China,elite institutions in Vietnam encourage the construction of broader policymaking coalitions,have more competitive selection processes,and place more constraints on executive decision making. As a result,stronger political motivations exist for Vietnamese leaders to provide equalizing transfers that limit inequality growth among provinces than for Chinese leaders.
Open Access
“Participation, Government Legitimacy, and Regulatory Compliance in Emerging Economies: A Firm-Level Field Experiment in Vietnam.”
(American Political Science Review) Malesky, E; Taussig, Markus
Open Access
Pass the Bucks: Credit, Blame, and the Global Competition for Investment
(International Studies Quarterly, 2014-09) Jensen, NM; Malesky, E; Medina, M; Ozdemir, U
© 2013 International Studies Association. Both countries and subnational governments commonly engage in competition for mobile capital, offering generous incentives to attract investment. Existing economics research has suggested that these tax incentives have a limited ability to affect investment patterns and are often excessively costly when measured against the amount of investment and jobs created. In this paper, we argue instead that the "competition" for capital can be politically beneficial to incumbent politicians. Building off work on electoral pandering, we argue that incentives allow politicians to take credit for firms' investment decisions. We test the empirical implications of this theory using a nationwide Internet survey, which employs a randomized experiment to test how voters evaluate the performance of incumbent US governors. Our findings illustrate a critical political benefit of offering such incentives. Politicians can use these incentives to take credit for investment flowing into their districts and to minimize the political fallout when investors choose to locate elsewhere.
Open Access
Researching Vietnamese PoliticsA Comment on “Malesky vs. Fforde”
(Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 2018-10-31) Malesky, E
Open Access
Single-Party Incumbency Advantage in Vietnam: A Conjoint Survey Analysis of Public Electoral Support
(Journal of East Asian Studies, 2020-03-01) Malesky, E; Schuler, P
© 2020 East Asia Institute. Why do voters in single-party regimes express support for the ruling party in such large numbers? Scholars offer three sets of explanations: 1) Support is manipulated by regime leaders or falsified by frightened voters; 2) Support is due to genuine popularity or performance legitimacy; 3) The incumbent party holds an extreme incumbency advantage due to voters' certainty about their candidates' policy positions or access to state resources. Despite the impressive theoretical development in this literature, these arguments have not been subjected to a research design capable of examining the relative importance of each of these factors. We use a unique survey experiment on nearly 42,000 Vietnamese citizens over three years that reduces the threat of preference falsification and allows us to isolate voter's true preferences as much as possible. While we find some evidence for all three explanations, we find substantial support for incumbency bias. An important subset of Vietnamese voters-those inclined to vote for non-party candidates-sincerely favor the party under conditions of uncertainty about the candidates' policy stances or experience in the legislature.
Open Access
The Continent or the “Grand Large”? Strategic Culture and Operational Burden-Sharing in NATO
(International Studies Quarterly, 2017-03) Becker, J; Malesky, E
© The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. We argue that NATO allies exhibiting more "Atlanticist" strategic cultures allocate a greater share of their defense resources to Alliance priorities than those exhibiting "Europeanist" strategic cultures. Our analysis builds on policy discussions regarding imbalances in burden-sharing in transatlantic security. Scholarship in the fields of international security and political economy offers plausible explanations for these imbalances, but does not address how allies allocate resources within defense budgets and does not statistically test effects of cultural variables on such decisions. Using evidence from 89 national security strategy documents of 24 NATO allies, we argue that the more states' strategic cultures tend toward Atlanticism, the more resources they allocated to military operations during a period in which such operations were the Alliance's top priority. During the height of NATO's "out of area" period from 2000 to 2012, there was a strong, positive correlation between, on the one hand, Atlanticist language in such documents and, on the other, allies' allocation of financial resources to military operations-as opposed to personnel, infrastructure, or equipment.
Open Access
The Danger of Not Listening to Firms: Government Responsiveness and the Goal of Regulatory Compliance
(Academy of Management Journal, 2017-10) Malesky, E; Taussig, M
© Academy of Management Journal. Firms in emerging economies exhibit dangerously low rates of compliance with government regulations aimed at protecting society from the negative externalities of their operations. This study builds on individual-level theories from organizational behavior (procedural justice) and political science (deliberative democracy) to develop new firmlevel theory on the mechanism by which a firm is more likely to comply with a regulation after participating in its design by government. We hypothesize and find supporting evidence that such participation increases the likelihood of compliance by positively shaping the firm's view of government legitimacy, but only if the firm views government as responsive to its input. Without this responsiveness, regulatory compliance is even less likely than if the firm did not participate at all. Our empirical work is novel in its focus on the political activities of firms not only within the authoritarian-ruled emerging economy context of Vietnam, but also through study of a highly representative sample dominated by small and medium sized enterprises. We discuss how our work contributes to nonmarket strategy literatures on corporate social responsibility, self-regulation, and corporate political activity, as well as its implications for public policy.
Open Access
The Effect of Government Repression on Civil Society: Evidence from Cambodia
(International Studies Quarterly, 2022-09-01) Springman, J; Malesky, E; Right, L; Wibbels, E
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are a core component of a robust civil society and operate in a wide variety of sectors, ranging from service delivery to political advocacy. However, research has yet to systematically investigate whether the impact of government repression varies across NGO activities. We hypothesize that advocacy NGOs are more affected by repression than those in service delivery. Surveying 176 employees from 106 NGOs in Cambodia, we employ a conjoint experiment to examine how the level of repression affects a task crucial to NGOs' survival: obtaining funding via grant applications. We find that while increases in the severity of repression appear to have a stronger deterrent effect for advocacy NGOs, repression has a large deterrent effect on service NGOs as well. Interviews and text analysis of open-ended questions suggest that local officials target both advocacy and service delivery NGOs, but for different reasons. Our findings speak to the spread of authoritarianism and the challenges NGOs face in countries with closing civic spaces.
Open Access
The impact of governance and transparency on firm investment in Vietnam
(Economics of Transition, 2015-10) Malesky, E; Mcculloch, N; Nhat, ND
© 2015 The Authors. A large literature asserts a causal relationship between the quality of economic governance and economic performance. However, attempts to establish such a link at an aggregate level have met with considerable methodological criticism. This paper seeks to overcome this limitation. We match a panel of Vietnamese enterprises from 2006 to 2010 with a unique panel dataset measuring sub-national economic governance to estimate a relationship between local governance and private investment. We do not find a significant relationship between investment and most traditional forms of governance. However, there is one important exception - transparency, especially the public posting of planning documents, is strongly associated with higher investment across a range of different specifications. Our results have significant implications for policy, given the prevailing theory that changes in the quality of local economic governance will spur improved economic performance.
Open Access
The impact of local corruption on business tax registration and compliance: Evidence from Vietnam
(Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2020-09-01) Le, DT; Malesky, E; Pham, A
© 2020 Elsevier B.V. This paper studies how corruption affects two fundamental dimensions of a firm's tax compliance: the likelihood of tax registration (possession of a tax ID) and the tax compliance ratio (the ratio between the firm's tax payment and revenue). We explore a census covering all Vietnamese household businesses and leverage the differential exposure to corruption, depending upon which province similarly situated businesses are located within. Comparing household businesses in contiguous commune pairs that straddle provincial borders, we discover two seemingly contradictory results. We find that a household business that operates in a more corrupt province is more likely to possess a tax ID, even though it does not necessarily pay more in taxes. In fact, among firms that possess tax IDs, an increase in corruption is associated with a decrease in the tax compliance ratio. We suggest a plausible explanation for this pattern is that corrupt bureaucrats encourage tax-ID possession, because the registration form provides them with better business information to extract bribes. This mechanism implies that an increase in corruption should be associated with a smaller increase in tax-ID possession among more “visible” businesses. We test and find supporting empirical evidence for this prediction.
Open Access
The Political Economy of Development in China and Vietnam
(Annual Review of Political Science, 2014-05-11) Malesky, E; London, J
Two theories predominate in discussions of why China and Vietnam have, over the past three decades, achieved such rapid economic growth. The first argues that their startling performance can be explained by economic factors associated with late industrialization. The second proposes that China and Vietnam represent novel models of political economic organization that need to be better studied and understood. In this essay we review the voluminous literature on the political economy of China and Vietnam, evaluating the critical debates over the economic benefits of decentralization, experimentation, and state-led development. Although the debate remains unsettled, analysis suggests that growth in the two countries was most robust during periods of state withdrawal from the economy and that current economic difficulties in both countries are now arising from the scale and character of the state's role in both economies. Copyright © 2014 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved.
Open Access
The Single-Party Dictator's Dilemma: Information in Elections without Opposition
(Legislative Studies Quarterly, 2011-11) Malesky, E; Schuler, P
The literature on authoritarian institutions points to nationwide elections as a mechanism for learning about the preferences of citizens. In using elections in this way, however, authoritarians face a trade-off between gathering reliable information and guaranteeing electoral victory. In this article, we explore how single-party regimes manage this trade-off and the particular types of information available to them. Using candidatelevel data from Vietnam, we demonstrate that single-party regimes, in particular, forsake information on overall regime support and strength of opposition in favor of information on the popularity of local notables and the compliance of local officials with central mandates. In addition, we show that ex ante electioneering is less risky than ex post fraud at achieving these goals. © 2011 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa.
Open Access
Vietnam in 2013: Single-party politics in the internet age
(Asian Survey, 2014-01-01) Malesky, E
This essay reviews Vietnamese politics in 2013 through the lens of the constitutional drafting process and the unprecedented confidence vote in the National Assembly. Both events were framed by the country's ongoing economic struggles, elite political contestation, international integration, and a more informed public, fueled by an increasingly active blogosphere. The events foreshadow how future Vietnamese leaders can no longer rely on deep reservoirs of patriotism for legitimacy. Performance matters now more than ever. © 2014 by the Regents of the University of California.
Open Access
Vietnam in 2014: Uncertainty and opportunity in the wake of the HS-981 crisis
(Asian Survey, 2015-01-01) Malesky, E; Morris-Jung, J
© 2015 by the Regents of the University of California. The May 2014 entry of a Chinese deep-water oil rig into Vietnamese waters deeply shocked Vietnam. This yearend article chronicles the impact of the controversial action on (1) power struggles among elite politicians, (2) alterations in foreign policy orientation, and (3) popular opinion regarding economic reforms and emerging inequality.

Browsing by Author "Malesky, E"

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