a political economy model of congressional careers our main goal is to quantify the returns to a career in the united states congress we specify a dynamic model of career decisions of a member of congress and estimate this model using a newly collected dataset given estimates of the structural model we assess reelection probabilities estimate the effect of congressional experience on private and public sector wages and quantify the value of congressional seat moreover we assess how an increase in the congressional wage or the imposition of term limits would affect the career decisions of politicians and the returns from a career in congress

effluent regulation and long run optimality a regulator faced with free entry of firms is concerned not only with the implications of public policy for the discharges from a representative firm but also with the total pollution observed at the long run market equilibrium the regulator must take into account not only the effects of regulations upon the net marginal returns of the firm but must also consider the total profit of the firm and incentives for entry and exit this paper shows that effluent charges and tradeable effluent permits lead to long run optimality with entry of small firms the difference between firm payments and environmental damages is interpreted as the rent accruing to the environmental resource this result applies only to the competitive case with small polluters the analysis presented here allows a comparison and clarification of the literature on small and large polluters in a multi input framework with social damages dependent upon total effluents effluent charges are shown here to result in socially optimal entry confirming an assertion of baumol and oates 2 p 179 fn 161 and the important result of schulze and d arge 15 by taking average as well as marginal damages into account the effluent charge results in optimal firm scale levels and the correct input mix at the free entry market equilibrium the firm subject to an effluent tax will operate above or below the private minimum efficient scale depending upon whether average external costs exceed or are less than marginal external costs since public policy to reduce effluents is often directed at reducing the effluentgenerating activity some policy recommendations include a tax on the final output of the polluting firm in some theoretical analyses a relation between the output of the firm and the effluent level is identified and a pigouvian output tax is applied this approach should not be followed by policymakers since an output tax does not provide firms with the correct incentives for either input substitution or market entry it is shown that while a lump sum transfer is needed to provide correct entry incentives when a pigouvian output tax is applied no such transfer is needed if the tax is correctly applied to effluents contrary to 5 even if optimal firm scale and i thank the referees for helpful suggestions the support of the national science foundation under grant ses 82 19121 is gratefully acknowledged any errors are my responsibility 103

the electoral impact of economic conditions who is held responsible a variety of recent research has dealt with the impact of economic conditions on congressional elections the underlying assumption of this research has been that the effects of economic fluctuations are distributed evenly across members of the president s party by focusing on subgroups of congressional candidates we demonstrate that the importance of economic conditions varies widely specifically we show that the aggregate electoral margins of incumbents are far more responsive to economic conditions than are those for nonincumbents and that among in party incumbents the relationship is stronger among those with higher levels of tenure further we demonstrate that the previous lack of individual level confirmation of the aggregate relationship has been due to a failure to control for the contextual effects implied by our conditional aggregate analysis with controls for district incumbency we find a relationship between retrospective personal financial condition and vote choice that mirrors the aggregate relationship between retrospective performance of the national economy and congressional vote totals

women don t run election aversion and candidate entry to study gender differences in candidate emergence we conduct a laboratory experiment in which we control the incentives potential candidates face manipulate features of the electoral environment and measure beliefs and preferences we find that men and women are equally likely to volunteer when the representative is chosen randomly but that women are less likely to become candidates when the representative is chosen by an election this difference does not arise from disparities in abilities risk aversion or beliefs but rather from the specific competitive and strategic context of campaigns and elections thus we find evidence that women are election averse whereas men are not election aversion persists with variations in the electoral environment disappearing only when campaigns are both costless and completely truthful

fiscal policy outcomes and electoral accountability in american states clear fiscal policy effects appear in american state gubernatorial and legislative elections between 1968 and 1992 independent of the effects of incumbency coattails term limits and macroeconomic conditions the results show that accountability is generally stronger following a period of unified party control than under divided government voter reactions to taxes and spending relative to the state economy are conditional on expectations which differ for each party net of these expectations republican gubernatorial candidates lose votes if their party is responsible for unanticipated increases in the size of the state budget democrats do not and indeed may be rewarded for small increases independent of this the incumbent governor s party is punished in legislative elections for failing to maintain fiscal balance taken together these results show how electoral accountability for fiscal policy outcomes is strong but highly contingent on a complex configuration of party labels partisan control expectations and institutions

legislative professionalism and incumbent reelection the development of institutional boundaries it is well established that legislators from highly professionalized bodies are more likely to win reelection than members of less professionalized legislatures we find that the effect of professionalization on incumbent electoral success is far more pervasive as the level of professionalism of a legislature increases the effects of external political and economic forces such as coattails from higher level elections and national economic conditions on a legislator s chances for reelection diminish in strength this implies that legislative professionalization promotes institutionalization by establishing boundaries that insulate members from external shocks we reach these conclusions by specifying and testing a district level model of state legislative election outcomes using as dependent variable the probability that an incumbent will win reelection the model is estimated with probit using data for more than 42 000 state legislators from 1970 to 1989 w hat determines whether a legislator seeking reelection will win we address this question by paying particular attention to the role of professionalization of legislatures in influencing the electoral success of members we know that american legislators are highly likely to win reelection garand 1991 jacobson 1987 king 1991 we also know that those from highly professionalized institutions have even better odds than those from less professionalized bodies as the former have greater resources for travel to their districts holbrook and tidmarch 1991 for casework cox and morgenstern 1993 1995 king 1991 and for devoting time and energy to campaign activities carey niemi and powell 2000 we maintain however that professionalism does more than boost the electoral prospects of incumbents it changes members relationships with the legislature s political and economic environment in particular professionalization promotes legislative institutionalization by

politics and the new american welfare states federal law allows states to create new welfare policies determining who can receive welfare what types of clients are exempted from new welfare work requirements and the value of cash benefits this project tests nine different theoretical explanations of welfare policy to explain why states have reacted differently to this new authority we test these explanations on temporary aid to needy families tanf policies promulgated between 1997 and 2000 our findings confirm the strong role of race in tanf politics that soss et al 2001 recently reported but we also find that other constituent characteristics and institutions paternalistic goals and state resources have a consistent influence on welfare policy these results indicate that different approaches to welfare are attributable to the unique and very potent combination of political characteristics in each state

the analysis of committee power an application to senate voting on the minimum wage a widely noted empirical regularity of congressional behavior is that standing committees exert disproportionate influence on congressional choices the observed phenomenon has a number of labels committee influence committee power and from the parent chamber s perspective deference to committees and a large body of theoretical and empirical research has sought to determine when and why it exists this paper takes as given only the weakest form the observation namely that committee power exists sometimes it does not directly address the questions of when and why committee power exists although much of the relevant literature is reviewed rather it focuses on a prerequisite to the resolution of disputes about committee power how can committee power be assessed empirically section i reviews three classes of explanations and identifies obstacles to convincing empirical tests of the accounts section ii introduces an econometric approach for analyzing committee power section iii applies the technique to a sequence of votes on minimum wage legislation in the senate in 1977 section iv extends the technique to multi dimensional choice spaces section v is a discussion and summary

constituency opinion and pac contributions a case of the national abortion and reproductive rights action league to test whether interest group politics doharm to a representative democracy thispaper simulates congressionaldistrict level constituency opinion onabortion analyzing the relationshipbetween the constituency opinion andnaral s contributions in the 102nd and103rd congresses this paper presentsempirical evidence that naral scontribution decision is influenced byconstituency opinion the evidence however is mixed constituency opinioninfluences naral s decision on who will getits money constituency opinion however does not influence naral s decision on whowill get more money according to theseresults financial representation byinterest groups does not seriously causeharm to a representative democracy but itcan still bias the representativeness tosome extent an interest group may selectlegislators whose districts support itsposition less strongly and contribute agreater amount of money to the legislators

monetary policy and stagflation in the uk the volatile behavior of inflation output and interest rates in the united kingdom prior to the 1990s helps discriminate between rival explanations for the outbreak of stagflation we examine alternative hypotheses with a new keynesian model of aggregate demand and inflation determination estimated on quarterly uk data for 1959 2000 our model features is and phillips curves based on optimizing behavior and fully incorporates the distinction between detrended output and the output gap stressed by optimizing analysis using simulations of our model as well as information on the real time views of policymakers we test alternative explanations for the outbreak of inflation in the united kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s we find that inaccurate estimates of the degree of excess demand in the economy contributed significantly to the outbreak but we also find a major role for the failure at the time to recognize the importance of monetary policy as opposed to nonmonetary devices in controlling inflation

monetary policy trend inflation and the great moderation an alternative interpretation with positive trend inflation the taylor principle does not guarantee a determinate equilibrium we provide new theoretical results on determinacy in new keynesian models with positive trend inflation and new empirical findings on the federal reserve s reaction function before and after the volcker disinflation to find that i while the fed likely satisfied the taylor principle before volcker the us economy was still subject to self fulfilling fluctuations in the 1970s ii the us economy switched to determinacy during the volcker disinflation and iii the switch reflected changes in the fed s response to macroeconomic variables and the decline in trend inflation jel e12 e23 e31 e32 e52

how do firms form their expectations new survey evidence author s coibion o gorodnichenko y kumar s abstract 2018 american economic association all rights reserved we survey new zealand firms and document novel facts about their macroeconomic beliefs there is widespread dispersion in beliefs about past and future macroeconomic conditions especially inflation this dispersion in beliefs is consistent with firms incentives to collect and process information using experimental methods we find that firms update their beliefs in a bayesian manner when presented with new information about the economy and that changes in their beliefs affect their decisions inflation is not generally perceived as being important to business decisions so firms devote few resources to collecting and processing information about inflation

a natural experiment in proposal power and electoral success does lawmaker behavior influence electoral outcomes observational studies cannot elucidate the effect of legislative proposals on electoral outcomes since effects are confounded by unobserved differences in legislative and political skill we take advantage of a unique natural experiment in the canadian house of commons that allows us to estimate how proposing legislation affects election outcomes the right of noncabinet members to propose legislation is assigned by lottery comparing outcomes between those who were granted the right to propose and those who were not we show that incumbents of the governing party enjoy a 2 7 percentage point bonus in vote total in the election following their winning the right to introduce a single piece of legislation which translates to a 7 increase in the probability of winning the causal effect results from higher likeability among constituents these results demonstrate experimentally that what politicians do as lawmakers has a causal effect on electoral outcomes

the marginals never vanished incumbency and competition in elections to the u s house of representatives 1952 82 the average vote margin enjoyed by incumbent candidates for the u s house of representatives increased sharply during the 1 960s despite this and contrary to assumptions common in the literature on recent congressional elections electoral data show that house incumbents are no safer now than they were in the 1950s the marginals properly defined have not vanished the swing ratio has diminished little if at all and competition for house seats held by incumbents has not declined vote margins increased without adding to incumbent security diminishing competition or dampening swings because the heterogeneity of interelection vote swings increased at the same time

the stages of the policy process and the equal rights amendment 1972 1982 studies of how social movements impact policy outcomes typically treat policy change as a dichotomous phenomenon a governmental unit either adopts or does not adopt a particular policy in a particular time frame this simplistic view of the policy process runs the risk of masking how movements and other factors matter at various stages of the policy process each stage is characterized by different rules and different consequences thus movements and other factors ought to matter differently at each stage the authors examine three stages of policy development with regard to state ratification of the equal rights amendment results show that movements mattered more to legislative decisions in the earlier stages of the policy process but that their effects were eclipsed in later stages by public opinion

divided government fiscal institutions and budget deficits evidence from the states does partisan control of american state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels does divided control affect the government s ability to make hard decisions do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the american states from 1968 to 1987 we conclude that 1 aggregate state budget totals are driven by different factors under democrats and republicans the net result being that democrats target spending and taxes to higher shares of state level personal income 2 divided government is less able to react to revenue shocks that lead to budget deficits particularly where different parties control each chamber of the legislature and 3 unified party governments with restricted ability to carry deficits into the next fiscal year outside the south have sharper reactions to negative revenue shocks than those without restrictions

symposium on the economics of liability son s liability is another s asset hence with every complaint that the u s liability system is imposing a crippling tax on suppliers of risky goods and services there also comes a cry that liability is essential to compensate the victims of accidents widespread visible concern about the liability crisis reached a peak during the mid 1980s without question there was a proliferation of lawsuits by those asserting their rights to recover for damages caused by others malpractice pollution defective products and so on with a consequent restructuring of economic activity as several of the authors in this symposium point out liability insurance premiums skyrocketed even as insurance coverage was reduced many people saw public parks and swimming pools closed for lack of liability insurance coverage less visible were the many decisions continuing to this day to withdraw products or set aside possible new products for fear of liability exposure while liability receives less press attention now than several years ago it remains an area that many suspect is sorely in need of reform and where economists have much to contribute the legal scope of liability has expanded markedly during the past 30 years raising the question of whether liability has become overly broad there are some signs that the pendulum is starting to swing the other way reducing the scope and expense of liability some states have imposed caps on punitive damages or have abolished joint and several liability which makes each defendant in a liability action potentially liable for the entire damages at the

habit formation in consumption and its implications for monetary policy models this paper explores a monetary policy model with habit formation for consumers in which consumers utility depends in part on current consumption relative to past consumption the empirical tests developed in the paper show that one can reject the hypothesis of no habit formation with tremendous condence largely because the habit formation model captures the gradual hump shaped response of real spending to various shocks the paper then embeds the habit consumption specication in a monetary policy model and nds that the responses of both spending and inflation to monetary policy actions are signicantly improved by this modication jel d12 e52 e43

the public as thermostat dynamics of preferences for spending theory democratic accountability requires that the public be reasonably well informed about what policymakers actually do such a public would adjust its preferences for more or less policy in response to policy outputs themselves in effect the public would behave like a thermostat when the actual policy temperature differs from the preferred policy temperature the public would send a signal to adjust policy accordingly and once sufficiently adjusted the signal would stop hypotheses in domains where policy is clearly defined and salient to the public changes in the public s preferences for more policy activity are negatively related to changes in policy methods a thermostatic model of american public preferences for spending on defense and a set of five social programs is developed and then tested using time series regression analysis results changes in public preferences for more spending reflect changes in both the preferred levels of spending and spending decisions themselves most importantly changes in preferences are negatively related to spending decisions whereby the public adjusts its preferences for more spending downward upward when appropriations increase decrease thus consistent with the eastonian model policy outputs do feed back on public inputs at least in the defense spending domain and across a set of social spending domains

party government and the cohesive power of public plunder we argue that party government in the u s house of representatives rests on two pillars the pursuit of policy goals and the disbursement of particularistic benefits existing theories of party government argue that the majority party in the house is often successful in biasing policy outcomes in its favor in the process it creates policy losers among its own members who nevertheless support their party on procedural votes we posit that the majority party creates an incentive for even the policy losers to support a procedural coalition through judicious distribution of particularistic benefits that compensates policy losers at a rate commensurate with the policy losses that they suffer we evaluate our theory empirically using the concept of roll rates in conjunction with federal domestic outlays data for the period 1983 96 we find that within the majority party policy losers are favored in the distribution of pork barrel spending throughout this period

dynamic responsiveness in the u s senate id evelop a theory of dynamic responsiveness that suggests that parties that win elections choose candidates who are more extreme and parties that lose elections choose candidates who are more moderate moreover the size of past victories matters close elections yield little change but landslides yield large rc hanges in the candidates offered by both parties i test this theory by analyzing the relationship between republican vote share in u s senate elections and the ideology of candidates offered in the subsequent election the results show that republican democratic victories in past elections yield candidates wh oa re more less conservative in subsequent elections and the effect is proportional to the margin of victory this suggests that parties or candidates pay attention to past election returns one major implication is that parties may remain polarized in spite of their responsiveness to the median voter

constituency opinion and congressional policy making the reagan defense buildup representatives votes on a series of defense budget roll calls in the first year of the reagan administration s pentagon buildup are related to constituency opinions on defense spending during the 1980 election campaign the strong aggregate constituency demand for increased defense spending in 1980 is estimated to have added almost 17 billion about 10 to the total fiscal year 1982 pentagon appropriation the impact of constituency opinion was largely independent of specific political circumstances differential responsiveness in districts with partisan turnover intense districtlevel competition and strong presidential coattails together accounted for less than 1 billion in additional appropriations with the remaining 16 billion attributable to across the board responsiveness by even the most safely incumbent representatives t he appeal of representative democracy hinges on the responsiveness of elected politicians to the preferences and interests of their constituents given the theoretical and practical significance of the connection between constituents opinions and their representatives legislative activities it is remarkable that the large and in some ways quite sophisticated empirical literature addressing this connection includes so few direct estimates of the relationship between constituency opinion and specific legislative outcomes 1 my aim here is to provide one such estimate the policy issue i have chosen to examine is the level of total pentagon spending in the first fy 1982 defense appropriations bill of the reagan administration that bill the first in a series of annual appropriations resulting in a 40 real increase in defense spending during reagan s first five years in office is of obvious political significance but the issue of defense spending is also especially interesting from a broader theoretical perspective because the strong public demand for a defense spending increase at the beginning of the reagan era provides unusual analytical leverage for assessing the potential impact of public opinion on the making of public policy i shall describe some alternative mechanisms of congressional responsiveness to constituency opinion briefly characterize the politics of defense at the beginning of the reagan era present my analysis of representatives preferences regarding fy 1982 defense appropriations relating those preferences to constituency opinions on the defense spending issue and to other political characteristics of the representatives and their districts extend the analysis of fy 1982 defense appropriations from the individual to the aggregate level in an attempt to estimate the impact of congressional responsiveness on the total level of pentagon appropriations and finally touch upon some of the implications of my analysis for the study of linkages between public opinion and public policy

liability insurance under the negligence rule we analyze the e ciency properties of the negligence rule with liability insurance when the tort feasor s behavior is imperfectly observable both by the insurer and the court e ciency is shown to depend on the extent to which the evidence is informative on the evidentiary standard for nding negligence and on whether insurance contracts can condition directly on the same evidence as used by courts to assess behavior when evidence is not directly contractible the negligence rule with compensatory damages is generally ine cient

the statistical analysis of roll call data modern studies of legislative behavior focus upon the relationship among the policy preferences of legislators institutional arrangements and legislative outcomes in spatial models of legislatures policies are represented geometrically as points in a low dimensional euclidean space each legislator has a most preferred policy or ideal point in this space and his or her utility for a policy declines with the distance of the policy from his or her ideal point see davis hinich and ordeshook 1970 for an early survey the primary use of roll call data the recorded votes of deliberative bodies 1 is the estimation of ideal points the appeal and importance of ideal point estimation arises in two ways first ideal point estimates let us describe legislators and legislatures the distribution of ideal points estimates reveals how cleavages between legislators reflect partisan affiliation or region or become more polarized over time e g mccarty poole and rosenthal 2001 roll call data serve similar purposes for interest groups such as americans for democratic action the national taxpayers union and the sierra club to produce ratings of legislators along different policy dimensions second estimates from roll call analysis can be used to test theories of legislative behavior for instance roll call analysis has been used in studies of the u s congress both contemporary and

changes in the vote margins for congressional candidates a specification of historical trends recent research on house elections has focused on the decline in congressional competition since the mid 1960s however this body of research suffers from three major problems 1 an imprecise specification of the nature of change in the degree of congressional competition 2 its exclusive reliance on a limited time frame which calls into question the generalizability and adequacy of its explanations and 3 its overemphasis on incumbency oriented explanations using a multiple interrupted time series mits analysis of trends in aggregate electoral data from 1824 to 1980 we find that current low levels of congressional competition are not historically unique but instead constitute a continuation of a long term trend established in the mid 1890s in addition and in contrast to the general thrust described in the literature there appears to be a post 1965 trend toward greater competition although the absolute level of competition is lower after the mid 1960s finally a disaggregation of electoral results by incumbency status suggests a growth in the incumbency advantage since the mid 1890s but that lower post 1965 levels of congressional competition are the result of a winners and not an incumbency advantage such findings cast doubt on the adequacy of explanations that focus on post 1965 incumbency oriented factors

competitive corruption factional conflict and political malfeasance in postwar italian christian democracy this article studies the relationship between cartels of politicians and systemic political corruption in a democratic setting some electoral systems including open list systems of proportional representation encourage intraparty competition for office the authors analyze the relationship between intraparty conflict in postwar italy s dominant political party the christian democrats and charges of malfeasance against christian democratic members of the chamber of deputies in the years between the first postwar parliamentary elections of 1948 and the end of the xi legislature in 1994 when the electoral system was substantially modified suspected malfeasance is operationalized as requests by the judiciary to lift parliamentary immunity in order to proceed with an investigation of a member of the chamber of deputies results show a significant statistical relationship between intraparty conflict and alleged corruption on the part of dc deputies starting in the early 1970s these results are interpreted to mean that the dramatic levels of political corruption observed in italy in recent decades were in part an outgrowth of the search for campaign funds by incumbent dc members of parliament in competition with other candidates from the same party electoral competition with other parties did not significantly affect the extent of charges of malfeasance against dc deputies using maps the authors also provide preliminary evidence that italian corruption did not spread from south to north in a process of cultural contagion as is commonly believed instead they find the determinants of corruption appear to be endogenous to institutions of the postwar political system

who lobbies whom special interest politics under alternative electoral systems why do some interest groups lobby politicians and others lobby bureaucrats we theorize lobbying venue choices and intensityasafunctionofcontractenforceabilitywithpolicymakers politicians orbureaucrats wearguethatorganizational structures of interest groups in particular whether they are centralized or decentralized substantially affect their lobbying strategies because they are associated with different ability to monitor and enforce contracts with policy makers and punish them when they fail we further demonstrate that the effect of centralized versus decentralized structure on venue choices is conditional on the types of electoral system majoritarian semiproportional single nontransferable vote sntv or proportional representation systems we test this argument using longitudinal survey data on lobbying which span two decades and cover around 250 interest groups in various sectors and issue areas in japan the results lend strong support to our argument about contract enforceability under alternative electoral systems

win lose or withdraw a categorical analysis of career patterns in the house of representatives 1948 1978 the literature on incumbency advantage has focused on margin as an indicator for electoral security but while electoral margin is a goodex ante measure it is a poorex post measure of security further existing work has not integrated the choice of retirement with changes in the level of security to improve the specification and definition of marginality a multinomial logit model is proposed where the dependent variable is categorical account is therefore taken of all the ways a representative s term in office can end including reelection defeat retirement or pursuit of other office the sample includes all u s representatives elected for the first time between 1948 and 1978 the results indicate that 1 margin in the previous election is a significantex ante proxy for the probability of electoral defeat and 2 while the electoral safety of all incumbents in the house has been increased the increases are greater for members elected for the first time in the period since 1965

preference voting in italy votes of opinion belonging or exchange intraparty preference voting is a potentially important possibility for voters in many proportional representation systems especially the italian system three hypotheses that preference voting is

two moment decision models and expected utility maximization two moment decision models are consistent with expected utility maximization only if the choice set or the agent s preferences are restricted this paper identifies a restriction which is sufficient to ensure this consistency and confirms that it holds in many economic models the implications for economic analysis are then derived two different approaches to representing an agent s preferences over strategies yielding random payoffs are in wide use under the mean standard deviation ms approach the agent is assumed to rank the alternatives according to the value of some function defined over the first two moments of the random payoff while the expected utility eu criterion assumes that the expected value of some utility function defined over payoffs is used instead the fact that there are these two competing approaches has generated a considerable literature some authors are concerned with the advantages and disadvantages of each while others deal with conditions under which the potentially different approaches would yield the same results or at least approximately so space does not

the role of common law in environmental policy comment in a recent contribution to this journal fritz sillner 1994 provides a rather harsh critic of the working of common law in environmental policy and a strict recommendation to rely on statutory law only in this field in this comment i will argue that the distinction of the small versus the large number case which is central to his argument is an oversimplification and misleading moreover i will argue that judge made law does actually play an important role as part of an environmental policy mix s6llner s line of reasoning proceeds as follows if you take a look at the state of the environment in common law countries e g usa or great britain and compare them in this respect to civil law countries e g france or germany you will not find that the former have done better on that account as should be expected following the efficiency hypothesis of common law as proposed by posner 1986 priest 1977 and others a further look will show you that opposed to their naming common law does only play a minor role in the environmental policy of the common law countries this gives according to sallner a strong indication that the alleged tendency of common law towards efficiency does not hold in this particular case he provides two explanations for this finding

aid effectiveness and the politics of personalism this article examines how political institutions that provide an incentive to cultivate a personal vote condition the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth in developing country democracies politicians in aid recipient countries with high levels of personalism are more likely to pursue corruption and target government spending to narrow constituencies because personalism affects these outcomes it provides incentives to use foreign aid for politically motivated spending at the expense of investing foreign aid in growth promoting public goods using panel data from 61 aid recipient democracies from 1961 to 2001 the author finds that aid increases growth in democracies with less personalist institutions but decreases growth in countries with high personalism the author also shows that personalism conditions the relationship between aid and the composition of government spending aid increases spending on public goods relative to narrow particularistic goods in countries with low person

barriers to competition and the effect on political shirking 1953 1992 economists and political scientists have offered a variety of explanations for why legislators might rationally choose to ignore the preferences of their constituents political parties and presidents the broad conclusion of this literature is that there is an element of shirking in congressional voting the objective of this paper is to suggest that the effects of shirking in congressional voting may have increased over time largely in response to the raising of barriers to competition in congressional elections thereby enabling legislators to vote their own preferences without fear of losing reelection we use a quasi experimental design that controls for the effects of party region electoral safety presidential control of the white house and constituency factors in isolating the causal effects of barriers to entry on a continuous series of roll calls regarding the raising of the debt limit between 1953 and 1992 we find that shirking in legislative voting on debt limit legislation is a post 1970s phenomenon

gubernatorial midterm slumps this article studies gubernatorial midterm slumps in u s state legislative elections we employ a regression discontinuity design which allows us to rule out the hypothesis that the midterm slump simply reflects a type of reversion to the mean generated by simple partisan swings or the withdrawal of gubernatorial coattails or anticipatory balancing our results show that the party of the governor experiences an average seat share loss of about 3 5 percentage points we also find evidence suggesting that a large share of the variation in gubernatorial midterm slumps can be accounted for by 1 crude partisan balancing and 2 referendums on state economic performance with approximately equal weight given to each

broad bills or particularistic policy historical patterns in american state legislatures when do lawmakers craft broad policies and when do they focus on narrow legislation tailored to a local interest we investigate this question by exploring historical variation in the types of bills produced by american state legislatures drawing on a new database of 165 000 bills covering sessions over 120 years in thirteen different states we demonstrate the surprising prominence of particularistic bills affecting a specific legislator s district we then develop and test a theory linking the goals of legislators to their propensity to introduce district bills rather than broad legislation we find that consistent with our predictions politicians are more likely to craft policies targeted to a particular local interest when a legislature is dominated by one party or when it pays its members relatively high salaries these findings provide empirical support for key s 1949 thesis that one party politics descends into factionalism and undermines the making of broad public policy w hen lawmakers consider their legislative agendas they face a choice between introducing broad bills addressing major public policy needs and pushing for particularistic policies to meet the electoral demands of their districts or coreconstituencies thisdecisionoftensetstheirpolicy goals against their political ambitions forcing them to trade off among the competing priorities that fenno 1973 1978 and mayhew 1974 outline in making this decision legislators must consider the structure of their house the incentives provided by that structure and their own place in the chamber s power struggles how they resolve the tension between common policy considerations and personal electoral needs is at the root of legislative action the aggregation of individual decisions about the mix of legislation that each will pursue has important consequences for the balance of public and particularistic goods that the political system as a whole will produce analyzed theoretically

school spirit legislator school ties and state funding for higher education abstract we explore a new mechanism to understand state funding for public colleges and universities by leveraging data on the educational experiences of state legislators specifically if and where they received postsecondary education using novel hand collected data from 2002 through 2014 we provide comprehensive documentation for the first time in the literature on the educational backgrounds of state legislators we find a statistically significant positive association between the share of legislators who attended their states public institutions and state funding for their entire public higher education system we also find a similar positive relationship between the share of state legislators who attended particular campuses of the state s public university system and funding for those campuses this relationship is more pronounced among publicly educated legislators who represent legislative districts close to their alma mater s district and becomes most consequential when the legislator s district contains his or her alma mater we discuss the implications of our findings for academic studies on how politics and legislators personal experiences influence support for higher education

the cost of intraparty competition the single nontransferable vote and money politics in japan many scholars have argued that money politics in japan has been driven in part by the imperatives of intraparty competition under the single nontransferable vote sntv system used for lower house

declining electoral competitiveness in the house of representatives the differential impact of improved transportation technology this paper advances the hypothesis that improvements in the national transportation and communication infrastructure are responsible for the vanishing marginals or the increased electoral security of u s representatives we assume that margin and security are directly affected by the amount of time a legislator or a member of her staff devotes to direct contact with constituents in the home district formally we demonstrate that a decline in the time opportunity cost associated with travel to the district improves victory margins where we proxy improvement in transportation technology by using a distance variable across three different historical samples 1890 1928 and 1970 this proposition offers a potentially more fundamental explanation of declining electoral competition than existing explanations focusing on professionalism careerism redistricting and bureaucratic casework in fact the technology communication hypothesis may well encompass such explanations the model specified here offers at best a crude test of the hypothesis that technology and communication are the cause of the vanishing marginals a superior test would include the actual time required to travel to each district in each sample year because a closer but more inaccessible location would be less electorally favorable according to the logic underlying our model while distance is therefore an imperfect proxy we are encouraged by the results of the preliminary test the next step for future research is to identify which technological innovations have had the greatest impact in order to accomplish this a more complete model of the link between legislators and constituents must be established

changes in the federal reserve s inflation target causes and consequences this paper estimates a new keynesian model to draw inferences about the behavior of the federal reserve s unobserved inflation target the results indicate that the target rose from 1 1 4 percent in 1959 to over 8 percent in the mid to late 1970s before falling back below 2 1 2 percent in 2004 the results also provide some support for the hypothesis that over the entire postwar period federal reserve policy has systematically translated short run price pressures set off by supply side shocks into more persistent movements in inflation itself although considerable uncertainty remains about the true source of shifts in the inflation target jel e31 e32 e52

ex post liability for harm vs ex ante safety regulation substitutes or complements this paper concerns the regulation of hazardous economic activities economists have generally viewed ex ante regulations safety standards pigouvian fees that regulate an activity before an accident occurs as substitutes for ex post policies exposure to tort liability for correcting extemalities this paper shows that where there is uncertainty there are inefficiencies associated with the exclusive use of negligence liability and that ex ante regulation can correct the inefficiencies in such a case it is efficient to set the safety standard below the level of precaution that would be called for if the standard were used alone jel 619

drifting inflation targets and monetary stagflation abstract this paper revisits the phenomenon of stagflation using a standard new keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model we show that stagflation from monetary policy alone is a very common occurrence when the economy is subject to both deviations from the policy rule and a drifting inflation target once the inflation target is fixed the incidence of stagflation in the baseline model is essentially eliminated in contrast with several other recent papers that have focused on the connection between monetary policy and stagflation we show that while high uncertainty about monetary policy actions can be conducive to the occurrence of stagflation imperfect information more generally is not a requisite channel to generate stagflation

divided government versus incumbency externality effect quasi experimental evidence on multiple voting decisions abstract this paper explores the causal relationship between vote outcomes in different elections we ask 1 does the partisan identity of the mayor influence the voter s decision in subsequent town council elections 2 do voters condition their vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election the analysis mainprod type flply relies on a regression discontinuity design focusing on close election outcomes based on municipal level data for germany we find that the party of the mayor can receive a significant bonus in the next town council election moreover voters punish mayor candidates of parties that performed strongly in earlier council elections throughout the paper we highlight how these findings can be related to an incumbency externality effect and to the theory of divided government

divided government in the american states a byproduct of legislative professionalism s since world war ii divided government has become increasingly common in the american states a significant component of the increase is the deterioration of republican fortunes in state legislatures after the 1990 and 1992 elections for example only five state legislatures were controlled by the republicans i shall examine the hypothesis that the professionalization of state legislatures makes legislative service more attractive to democratic candidates and less attractive to republican candidates because full time legislative service is incompatible with another career and democrats on average have less lucrative career opportunities than republicans statistical analysis of post world war ii legislative elections outside the south is consistent with the argument other things being equal every ten thousand dollar increase in real biennial legislative compensation is associated with approximately a 1 increase in democratic legislators

optimal sharing of foodborne illness prevention between consumers and industry the effect of regulation and liability consumers and the food industry can both prevent foodborne illness two questions are explored what is the socially optimal level of preventative effort by each and can tort and regulatory instruments induce such behavior analysis is complicated by two aspects of food safety technology one party s effort can affect the marginal effectiveness of the other party s effort and damage functions can be nonconvex previous analysis of accidents under torts and regulation fails to consider these generalizations indeed results concerning the ability of tort and regulatory instruments to induce first best and second best behavior often contradict previous results in the literature

do electoral rules matter political institutions and foreign direct investment in latin america despite the growing importance of domestic institutions in the political economy literature few studies explore the effects of disaggregated measures of political institutions specifically electoral rules and systems on foreign direct investment fdi building on institutional accounts this articles tests the effects of electoral rules on fdi inflows for 16 latin american countries from 1978 to 2000 using panel data and controlling for common explanations in the fdi literature the authors find that candidate centered electoral systems increase political access for voters and industries supportive of fdi inflows the results show the benefits of unpacking political institutions to explain fdi inflows paving the way for many new research avenues

macroeconomic conditions and committee re election rates the traditional literature on the link between the macro economy and house elections follows kramer 1971 and assumes all members of the president s party are equally vulnerable to voter wrath caused by economic changes using presidential party return rates from 10 house committees over the time period 1916 1996 i find the impact of economic conditions at the polls varies by committee generally committees that manage money or provide a public good are the most sensitive to economic fluctuations contrastingly members of the public works committee and the rules committee are more insulated from electoral culpability due to economic fluctuations

imperfect credibility and inflation persistence in this paper we formulate a dynamic general equilibrium model with staggered nominal contracts in which households and rms use optimal ltering to disentangle persistent and transitory shifts in the monetary policy rule the calibrated model accounts quite well for the dynamics of output and insation during the volcker disinsation and implies a sacri ce ratio very close to the estimated value our approach indicates that insation persistence and substantial costs of disinsation can be generated in an optimizing agent framework without relaxing the assumption of rational expectations or relying on arbitrary modi cations to the aggregate supply relation jel classi cation e31 e32 e52

state dependent or time dependent pricing does it matter for recent u s inflation in the 1988 2004 micro data collected by the u s bureau of labor statistics for the cpi price changes are frequent every 4 7 months depending on the treatment of sale prices and large in absolute value on the order of 10 the size and timing of price changes varies considerably for a given item but the size and probability of a price change are unrelated to the time since the last price change movements in aggregate inflation reflect movements in the size of price changes rather than the fraction of items changing price due to offsetting movements in the fraction of price increases and decreases neither leading time dependent models taylor or calvo nor 1 st generation state dependent models match all of these facts some 2 nd generation state dependent models however appear broadly consistent with the empirical patterns

when to risk it institutions ambitions and the decision to run for the u s house the health of any democratic system depends on political ambition to generate a steady supply of quality candidates for office because most models of candidate entry assume ambition rather than model it previous research fails to understand its roots in individual and institutional characteristics we develop a two stage model of progressive behavior that distinguishes between the formation of ambition for higher office and the decision to enter a particular race using data from a survey of state legislators we demonstrate that the intrinsic costs and benefits associated with running for and holding higher office shape ambitions but do not influence the decision to run for progressively ambitious legislators the second stage decision is a strategic choice about when to run rather than whether to run our research highlights how institutional characteristics that foster progressive ambition also increase the likelihood that national or local political conditions will be translated into meaningful choices at the ballot box

what s a losing party to do the calculus of contesting state legislative elections existing theories of contesting elections typically treat all potential challengers as identical while under playing the importance of political parties and primary contests we offer a theory addressing these issues based on how the various actors in the process define and evaluate the probability of winning an election and the value of the office being contested we test our theory by estimating a model predicting which of three responses a party that loses a legislative race makes in the next cycle nominating the same candidate nominating a new candidate or nominating no one we find substantial empirical support for our theory

shifting endpoints in the term structure of interest rates abstract this paper links the term structure to perceptions of monetary policy long horizon forecasts of short rates required by no arbitrage term structure models are heavily influenced by the endpoints or limiting conditional forecasts of the short rate process common assumptions that the short rate is mean reverting or contains a unit root are shown to generate unrealistic yield predictions failures occur because these assumptions inadequately account for historical shifts in market perceptions of the policy target for inflation this paper links endpoint shifts to agent learning about shifts in long term policy goals shifting endpoints in short rate processes significantly improve yield predictions

the limitations of pigouvian taxes as a long run remedy for externalities comment carlton and loury 1980 p 565 are the first to show that the competitive firm should operate in the range of decreasing returns to scale if the average pollution damage function is falling at the optimal output level or in the range of increasing returns if it is rising there is no reason however for them to conclude from their discovery that contrary to widely held beliefs use of a pigouvian per unit tax will not in general lead to an efficient allocation of resources in the long run p 559 c l prove that in general a tax upon the output of a polluting firm must be accompanied by a lump sum tax subsidy scheme this comment shows that a single per unit tax on emissions rather than output does lead to an efficient allocation of resources even where a single tax on output does not the model allows for emissions that are variable with respect to output as well as emissions that are independent of the level of output both of which cases are treated by c l c l p 560n observe that their results are unchanged if the problem is reformulated as one in which the number and output of firms of one industry affect the cost curves of other competitive industries following this suggestion a simple economy is assumed in which there are two industries whose total outputs x and y are produced by a variable and divisible number of firms n and m respectively the production of good y causes pollution that mixes uniformly throughout the airshed in which the economy is situated the total quantity of emissions per time period is

the disadvantaged incumbents estimating incumbency effects in indian state legislatures this paper estimates the incumbency effects using a large dataset on state legislative elections in india during 1975 2003 i use a regression discontinuity design rdd that estimates the causal effect of incumbency by comparing candidates in closely fought elections i find that there is a significant disadvantage to incumbency in indian state legislative elections and the adverse effect of incumbency has increased after 1991 also the incumbency disadvantage is higher in states that have lower availability of public goods such as health centers and lower employment poverty and per capita income

the party of lincoln and the politics of state fair employment practices legislation in the north 1945 1964 from 1945 to 1964 more than a score of northern states passed laws mandating nondiscrimination in employment why did some states pass such fair employment practice fep laws much more slowly than other states this article presents archival and statistical evidence that partisan control of policy making institutions namely republican control of veto points in the legislative process is associated with a substantial reduction in the likelihood that a state would pass fep legislation even when controlling for potentially confounding variables this finding casts doubt on the leading account of the electoral realignment that began in the mid 1960s and culminated in the reagan bush years well before the advent of affirmative action key numbers of gop officeholders allied with organized business and motivated by a free market antiregulatory ideology worked successfully to block the adoption of color blind laws mandating formal racial equality

some problems in studying the effects of resource allocation in congressional elections after analyzing 1 data aggregated to the congressional district level and 2 individual level data from the 1978 cps election survey johannes and mcadams conclude that congressional casework has no electoral impact the following commentary explains such null findings as the product of oversimplistic expectations and methodological weaknesses specifically the johannes and mcadams aggregate data analysis is misspecified on two counts first it attempts to reduce to a single regression equation a temporal sequence in which casework activity and electoral outcomes are mutually intertwined second even were such a drastic reduction possible the single equation employed would be poorly specified because of inattention to the differential productivity of cases constituents and representatives the individual level analysis also is rife with statistical problems chief among which is multicollinearity aggravated by small numbers of cases analyses that do what is possible to minimize such problems reveal a statistically and substantively significant impact of casework on electoral outcomes further analyses that go beyond the johannes and mcadams limitation of casework effects to the individuals directly helped suggest that the electoral effects of an incumbent s reputation for service may approach the effects of party identification

the effects of campaign spending in house elections new evidence for old arguments the question of how campaign spending affects election results remains open because the simultaneity problem has proven so intractable green and krasno s 1988 recent attempt to solve the problem and to demonstrate that marginal returns on spending are as great for incumbents as for challengers again comes up short a panel feature of the abc newslwashington post congressional district poll conducted during the 1986 elections offers a fresh perspective on the question analysis of changes in voting intentions during the final six weeks of the campaign shows that as the tainted ols studies have invariably suggested the amount spent by the challenger is far more important in accounting for voter s decisions than is the amount spent by the incumbent

trend inflation indexation and inflation persistence in the new keynesian phillips curve purely forward looking versions of the new keynesian phillips curve nkpc generate too little inflation persistence some authors add ad hoc backward looking terms to address this shortcoming we hypothesize that inflation per sistence results mainly from variation in the long run trend component of inflation which we attribute to shifts in monetary policy we derive a version of the nkpc that incorporates a time varying inflation trend and examine whether it explains the dynamics of inflation when drift in trend inflation is taken into account a purely forward looking version of the model fits the data well and there is no need for backward looking components jel e12 e31 e52 in this paper we consider the extent to which guillermo calvo s 1983 model of nominal price rigidities can explain inflation dynamics without relying on arbitrary backward looking terms in its baseline formulation the calvo model leads to a purely forward looking new keynesian

fitting observed inflation expectations abstract the paper provides evidence on the extent to which inflation expectations generated by a standard christiano et al 2005 smets and wouters 2003 type dsge model are in line with what observed in the data we consider three variants of this model that differ in terms of the behavior of and the public s information on the central banks inflation target allegedly a key determinant of inflation expectations we find that i time variation in the inflation target is needed to capture the evolution of expectations during the post volcker period ii the variant where agents have imperfect information is strongly rejected by the data iii inflation expectations appear to contain information that is not present in the other series used in estimation and iv none of the models fully capture the dynamics of this variable

the ecological fallacy revisited aggregate versus individual level findings on economics and elections and sociotropic voting several aggregate level studies have found a relationship between macroeconomic conditions and election outcomes operating in intuitively plausible directions more recent survey based studies however have been unable to detect any comparable relationship operating at the individual voter level this persistent discrepancy is puzzling one recently proposed explanation for it is that voters actually behave in an altruistic or sociotropic fashion responding to economic events only as they affect the general welfare rather than in terms of self interested pocketbook considerations it is argued here that the discrepancies between the macro and micro level studies are a statistical artifact arising from the fact that observable changes in individual welfare actually consist of two unobservable components a government induced and politically relevant component and an exogenous component caused by life cycle and other politically irrelevant factors it is shown that because of this individual level cross sectional estimates of the effects of welfare changes on voting are badly biased and are essentially unrelated to the true values of the behavioral parameters of interest they will generally be considerable underestimates and may even be of the wrong sign an aggregate level time series analysis on the other hand will often yield reasonably good if somewhat attenuated estimates of the underlying individual level effects of interest thus in this case individual behavior is best investigated with aggregate rather than individual level data it is also shown that the evidence for sociotropic voting is artifactual in the sense that the various findings and evidence which ostensibly show sociotropic behavior are all perfectly compatible with the null hypothesis of self interested pocketbook voting

incumbency electoral safety and turnover in the house of representatives 1952 76 two hypotheses have received a great deal of attention from students of congressional elections first many analysts have concluded that an increase in the electoral value attached to incumbency accounts for the rise in incumbents victory margins observed since the mid sixties second many scholars have attributed the decline in electoral turnover to the percentage increase in victory margins analyzing the electoral histories of 13 house cohorts 1952 76 this study reexamines these two hypotheses within theframework of a quasi experimental design the results presented here in contrast to those of previous studies cast doubt on the increased incumbency effect moreover little relationship is found between an increase in electoral safety as reflected by increased victory margins and a decline in electoral turnover

who influences u s foreign policy research in international relations has identified a variety of actors who appear to influence u s foreign policy including experts and epistemic communities organized interests especially business and labor and ordinary citizens or public opinion this research however has often focused on a single factor at a time rather than systematically testing the relative importance of alternative possible influences using extensive survey data gathered over three decades we conduct a comparative test attempting to account for the expressed foreign policy preferences of policy makers by means of the preferences of the general public and those of several distinct sets of elites the results of cross sectional and time lagged analyses suggest that u s foreign policy is most heavily and consistently influenced by internationally oriented business leaders followed by experts who however may themselves be influenced by business labor appears to have significant but smaller impacts the general public seems to have considerably less effect except under particular conditions these results generally hold over several different analytical models including two observation time series and different clusters of issues economic military and diplomatic with some variations across different institutional settings the u s house senate and executive branch

policy responsiveness and incumbent reelection in state legislatures does policy responsiveness on the part of incumbent legislators affect their prospects for reelection recent studies of congressional campaigns demonstrate that incumbents who support policies that are more congruent with their constituents preferences face fewer reelection obstacles the present analysis considers this question in state legislative elections where voter knowledge of legislator activities is generally quite low the findings demonstrate that incumbents positioned farther from the average citizen and toward their party s base are only slightly more likely to be challenged than other incumbents however more partisan voting incumbents do attract challengers capable of raising and spending larger amounts of money interestingly incumbents positioned closer to their party s base actually receive a greater share of the vote in most contested elections only when challengers spend significant amounts of money do we see the positive effects of partisan voting by incumbents diminished overall these findings demonstrate the mechanisms by which policy positions of incumbents in a low information environment affect the challengers that emerge and the level of voter support received

how much does money matter buying votes in japan 1967 1990 japanese elections are notorious for the money that flows between contributors politicians and voters to date however nobody has estimated statistically the impact of this money on electoral o

legislative turnover fiscal policy and economic growth evidence from u s state legislatures an examination of how increased turnover among legislators in the fifty u s states affects fiscal policy and economic growth finds that it makes legislators short sighted turnover increases the size of government by increasing the shares of both total spending and taxes in income in particular turnover increases capital expenditure and income taxes both of which may cause long run distortions in the economy further increased turnover by resulting in inefficient fiscal policy reduces long term economic growth

bad eggs learning by doing and the choice of technology we model long run economic development through technology adoption under scientific uncertainty about environmental effects there are four possible long run equilibria in a socially planned economy high growth adopt rapidly but abandon damaging technologies once revealed ddt cfcs cautious brake the introduction of new technologies to avoid mistakes genetically modified organisms no growth halt technological progress to preserve secondary knowledge and collapse adopt rapidly without ever abandoning damaging technologies in the base parameterization a short sighted social planner chooses the cautious strategy a far sighted planner chooses the high growth strategy unless damages are irreversible in which case the cautious strategy again dominates regulatory options in the market economy are investigated pollution taxes do not affect the firm s level of precaution if they can only be applied after the adopting firm has reaped the benefits however they do encourage the abandonment of damaging technologies liability rules do affect precaution but may lead to excessive caution or even a no growth trap

an analysis of congressional career decisions 1947 1986 most previous research on congressional career decisions has focused on one of two binary choices between retiring and running for reelection or between running for reelection and seeking higher office but most of the time representatives face all three choices simultaneously employing a mother logit model we estimate the effects of relevant variables both on pairwise comparisons conditional probabilities and on the unconditional probabilities of choosing each one of these three alternatives probably most intriguing is our finding that a member s age has little or no effect upon the unconditional probability of running for reelection the interrelatedness of career options is seen particularly clearly in the case of incumbents who had been redistricted out of their seats when they had an opportunity to run for higher office they were likely to take it only when they lacked such an opportunity were they more likely than other members to opt for retirement

the determinants of industry political activity 1978 1986 c ampaign contributions made by corporate political action committees pacs are increasingly important and controversial in u s elections influence purchasing is often alleged by pundits and campaign finance reform is continually debated in congress in the academy social scientists have analyzed the allocation of interest group monies and have looked for possible impacts on legislation few however have tried to explain the total contributions of economic interest groups we shall analyze variations in contributions across industries and over time with an empirical model based on organizationally constrained profit maximizing behavior we assume that corporate pac contributions in an industry are raised to enhance industry profits subject to the constraints of organization costs and freeriding incentives our empirical work covers 124 industries over five election cycles from 1978 through 1986 both the costs and benefits of political activity vary across industries we argue that the benefits of political action are determined by direct contact with the government as a regulator or purchaser of industry output by government s ability to ameliorate adverse market conditions and by the industry s ability to solve collective action problems without government assistance the costs of industry political action arise mainly from collective action problems because effective political activity often requires concerted action by the constituent firms in each industry we also make a methodological contribution previous studies use statistical techniques that suffer from sample selectivity bias or else force the probability of acting politically to be explained by the same set of coefficients as is the amount of action taken we explain and employ a technique that accounts for both problems the results are consistent with the theses that industries follow investment oriented goals in deciding the amount of political action to undertake and that collective action problems are important constraints on industry political activity we can explain between 60 and 80 of the variation in contributions in our sample first we review existing work on corporate political activity particularly papers examining patterns of aggregate pac spending by industry then we present an organization cost constrained industryprofit maximizing model based on a comparison between an idealized zero organization cost industry and the more realistic case where organizing collective action is difficult the independent variables used in the analysis are also discussed and defined next we discuss the dependent variable and total industry contributions and explain our statistical method then the results are presented followed by a discussion of industry structure and political activity to make clear how our results can explain different contribution patterns we give examples using five actual industries

presidential party incumbency and the effects of economic fluctuations on house elections 1916 1996 there is little professional consensusregarding the effect of economic conditionson house elections we argue that recentwork still uses the paradigm of party toorganize their data and tests given thatrecent developments in the theory ofcongress emphasize the paradigm ofincumbency we investigate the empiricalrelevance of that competing paradigm weshow that 1 incumbency matters in a purepresidential party model of houseelections 2 presidential party mattersin a pure incumbency model 3 once bothparty and incumbency are accounted for economic conditions exert a highlysignificant and temporally stable influenceon house elections 4 return rates aremore affected by economic fluctuations thanare vote shares and 5 not allpresidential party incumbents face the samedegree of electoral accountability foreconomic fluctuations

estimating incumbency advantage without bias in this paper we prove theoretically and demonstrate empirically that all existing measures of incumbency advantage in the congressional elections literature are biased or inconsistent we then provide an unbiased estimator based on a very simple linear regression model we apply this new method to congressional elections since 1900 providing the first evidence of a positive incumbency advantage in the first half of the century incumbency advantage is the most frequently studied factor in the last 15 years of congressional elections research discovery of the increase in incum bency advantage has sparked controversy over its origins historical pattern cur rent magnitude and electoral democratic and policy consequences even the most basic descriptive information about incumbency advantage is flawed be cause every previous measure based on aggregate data in this literature is plagued by selection bias inconsistencies and inefficiencies we prove this result and also propose a new unbiased and statistically efficient measure that is very easy to calculate congressional elections from 1900 to the present fit our theoretical model our empirical reanalyses do not challenge the existing scholarly consen sus that incumbency advantage is much larger than it once was however we do challenge the prevailing belief that incumbency advantage was nonexistent and the evidence that it was negative in house elections during the first half of this century alford and brady 1988 we show instead that the average advantage of incumbency in these elections was about two percentage points in section 1 of this paper we define incumbency advantage and section 2 gives an intuitive sense of the problems identifying it even in ideal electoral sys tems section 3 formally proves that sophomore surge and retirement slump are biased estimates of incumbency advantage and section 4 briefly reveals the flaws

the personal vote and the efficacy of education spending in this article we explore the ways in which incentives to cultivate a personal vote affect the efficiency of education spending in developing democracies we argue that where the electoral system provides incentives for political particularism resources are allocated less efficiently and the effect of increased spending on literacy is diminished we test our hypotheses using data on education spending and performance in over 40 developing democracies since 1980 we find that though personal vote systems spend just as much on education as party vote systems particularism in personal vote systems dampens the marginal effect of increased education spending on illiteracy and at its highest levels incentives to cultivate a personal vote completely undermine the positive effects of increased education spending on literacy

between decisiveness and credibility transforming the securities industry in singapore and thailand abstract this article suggests a political party centred explanation of economic policy reforms that differs significantly from the standard theoretical models that emphasise social coalitions government systems regime types or electoral cycles the explanatory approach advanced here focuses on inter party and intra party organisational dimensions within an integrated analytical framework as the major determinants of both the decisiveness of policy reforms and the credibility of such reforms a comparative analysis of government efforts to transform the securities industry in singapore and thailand provides preliminary evidence with which to explore the proposed causal linkage between the patterns of stock market reforms and the changing configurations of political parties

pigouvian penalty for oil spills abstract the imposition of ex ante taxes on expected spilled oil in addition to ex post payments for damages under tort liability would foster economic efficiency this paper begins the analysis of the joint approach with the case in which pigouvian taxes are used exclusively a model is developed in which the volume of spilled oil causing environmental damage is reduced first by spill prevention expenditures by shippers and then by clean up expenditures by the government the efficient pigouvian tax on expected spilled oil equals marginal environmental damage which equals the net marginal cost of prevention which equals marginal clean up cost

electoral systems and legislators constituency effort the mediating effect of electoral vulnerability in so far as legislators value re election electoral institutions are said to shape their strategic behavior yet the empirical evidence linking legislators behavior to electoral institutions is weak at best previous studies we argue have either ignored or misspecified how legislators vulnerability to electoral defeat mediates the expected effect of electoral institutions to test this argument we develop and operationalize a new comparative measure of electoral vulnerability which we combine with new individual level data on legislators constituency effort in 14 mostly european countries our data demonstrate that the effect of electoral institutions on constituency effort is different dependent on legislators electoral precariousness in party centered systems district magnitude s negative effect grows weaker among those most vulnerable in candidate centered systems by contrast district magnitude s positive effect grows even stronger among those most vulnerable the results suggest the n

term structure views of monetary policy under alternative models of agent expectations abstract term structure models and many descriptions of the transmission of monetary policy rest on the empirical relevance of the expectations hypothesis small differences in the perceived policy reaction function in var models of agent expectations strongly influence the relevance in the transmission mechanism of the expected short rate component of bond yields mean reverting or difference stationary characterizations of interest rates require large and volatile term premiums to match the observable term structure however short rate descriptions that capture shifting perceptions of long horizon inflation evident in survey data support a more substantial term structure role for short rate expectations

was the new deal contractionary can government policies that increase the monopoly power of firms and the militancy of unions increase output this paper shows that the answer is yes under certain emergency conditions these emergency conditions zero interest rates and deflation were satisfied during the great depression in the united states the new deal which facilitated monopolies and union militancy was therefore expansionary in the model presented this conclusion is contrary to a large previous literature the main reason for this divergence is that this paper incorporates rigid prices and the zero bound on the short term interest rate jel e23 e32 e52 e62 j51 n12 n42