O53 - Economywide Country Studies: Asia including Middle EastReturn

This paper examines the effect of vote buying on the vote shares of multiple parties using maximum likelihood estimation of a Dirichlet distribution in a panel of 23 counties of Taiwan over the period of 1998-2008. We find that vote buying significantly influences the vote shares of multiple parties in Taiwan parliamentary elections. In particular, we find that vote buying reduces the likelihood of Chinese National Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) votes by 10% and 11%, respectively. Our results provide strong evidence that vote buying decreases the probability of electoral success. We conclude that vote buying does not ensure victory in Taiwan parliamentary elections, and, therefore, emphasize that vote buying is ineffective and counterproductive practice. We offer several possible explanations for why candidates use scarce resources for this illegal practice during election campaigns. These results are robust to group logit model with seemingly unrelated regressions.

This paper attempts to assess how compatible China is with respect to its dollar-based exchange rate regime. Assessment is made in terms of the real convergence criteria suggested by the optimum currency areas (OCA) theory. In light of the endogenous problem in OCA analysis and this view of convergence criteria, the relevant features of China are evaluated against economies implementing rigid dollar standard in practice, namely Hong Kong, Macau, and Panama. Findings suggest that economic conditions in China broadly conform to those prevailing in these economies which maintain strong links to the US dollar.

Moral hazard agency problems take place when risky debt is issued. The dominant shareholders have opportunities to make decisions which effect wealth transfer. In several recent theories, debt-equity choice, which deals with agency problems assumes that financing and investment decisions are separable. These studies have been criticized due to the fact that both decisions are interdependent. The purpose of the presented paper is to test empirically the moral hazard problem of debt-equity choice in Indonesia. This study provides evidence that the level of debt is not secured by the sufficient collateral and is also not supported by growth opportunities. It seems that Indonesian companies use debt also to finance operations and not only for real investment.