voter preferences and state regulation of smoking i introduction tobacco taxation and smoking restrictions are two areas of regulation for which states have maintained a high level of control relative to the federal government 1 given this flexibility states have established a wide range of restrictions on smoking in areas such as government workplaces restaurants bars shopping malls indoor arenas and hospitals 2 although most states restrict smoking in hospitals there is considerable variation among states in restrictions in other areas in the 1998 99 period of this study about two thirds of states restricted smoking in restaurants whereas only four states restricted smoking in bars what has led to variation in smoking restrictions across states in a democratic society one would expect voter preferences to play an instrumental role in determining which policies are enacted and which are not this article provides the first empirical exploration of whether state level smoking restrictions are consistent with preferences of the citizenry taking into account both voting behavior and the role of smoking status in influencing whether an individual votes specifically we examine whether voters preferences for smoking restrictions in restaurants bars malls indoor sporting events and hospitals are consistent with state level restrictions on smoking in each of these public areas 3 our research draws on public choice models of policy making by state and local governments voters preferences typically play a central role because voting affects legislators incentives to support regulations 4 public choice research also finds that nonvoter factors may influence state and local policy making 5 in the case of smoking regulations public health advocates or tobacco industry lobbyists might influence regulatory policies the specific building block of our analysis of state restrictions on smoking is information on individuals voting behavior which we link to their smoking status and preferences over smoking restrictions our analysis uses measures of political pressure that account for individual preferences as well as their voting behavior to examine the possible role of interest group pressures we also control for nonvoter influences on smoking regulation including the proportion of the state population who smoke measures of state ideology and size of the tobacco industry with the exception of smoking in bars there is majority support for smoking restrictions unsurprisingly smokers are less supportive of restrictions than are nonsmokers nonetheless even smokers demonstrate a high level of support for many restrictions smokers are also less likely to vote than are nonsmokers even after controlling for other demographic factors the lower voting rate diminishes voter opposition to antismoking regulation but is usually not critical in view of the substantial support that most smoking restrictions have among smokers the political pressure indices for restrictions on smoking in each public area are generally significantly related to the probability that a state restricts smoking in that public area the nonvoter factors such as the smoking rate in the state and tobacco s role in the state economy are rarely influential policy debates over the desirability of smoking restrictions emphasize possible health risks due to exposure to environmental tobacco smoke ets and effects on business profitability the primary argument for expanding smoking restrictions is to protect workers and customers from exposure to ets 6 as our results show voters are generally supportive of smoking restrictions in public areas which would thereby protect workers as well as themselves and other customers however there is a substantial controversy over the extent of health risks associated with exposure to ets the basis for the push by the u s occupational and safety health administration osha for increased smoking restrictions to protect workers is the highly controversial u

are legislative tv and campaign finance regulations complementary entry barriers evidence from the usa the present study examines the political use of legislative television and campaign finance restrictions as either complementary or substitutable forms of entry barriers using data from the 50 states for 1976 results from a simultaneous probit procedure indicate that where campaign finance regulations are relaxed demand for televised house sessions is increased results also suggest that the presence of televised proceedings increases the restrictiveness of a state s campaign finance rules thus supporting the hypothesis that legislative television and campaign finance restrictions serve incumbent legislators as complementary institutional entry barriers mixon 2002 supports this view by providing examples of outlets for voters to scrutinize elected legislators at the federal level in the united states for instance legislative positions for members of congress are often described in detail by nationally circulated periodicals such as time and newsweek and in widely circulated newspapers such as th

strategic extremism why republicans and democrats divide on religious values party platforms differ sharply from one another especially on issues with religious content such as abortion or gay marriage given the high return to attracting the median voter why do vote maximizing politicians take extreme positions in this paper we find that strategic extremism depends on an intensive margin where politicians want to induce their core constituents to vote or make donations and the ability to target political messages toward those core constituents our model predicts that the political relevance of religious issues is highest when around one half of the voting population attends church regularly using data from across the world and within the united states we indeed find a nonmonotonic relationship between religious extremism and religious attendance

skill diversity of cities and entrepreneurship this paper analyses the effect of city skill diversity on local entrepreneurship it proposes a mechanism based framework to study the precise channels through which skill diversity contributes to

emerging economic viability of grid defection in a northern climate using solar hybrid systems high demand for photovoltaic pv battery and small scale combined heat and power chp technologies are driving a virtuous cycle of technological improvements and cost reductions in off grid electric systems that increasingly compete with the grid market using a case study in the upper peninsula of michigan this paper quantifies the economic viability of off grid pv battery chp adoption and evaluates potential implications for grid based utility models the analysis shows that already some households could save money by switching to a solar hybrid off grid system in comparison to the effective electric rates they are currently paying across the region by 2020 92 of seasonal households and 75 of year round households are projected to meet electricity demands with lower costs furthermore 65 of all upper peninsula single family owner occupied households will both meet grid parity and be able to afford the systems by 2020 the results imply that economic circumstances could spur a positive feedback loop whereby grid electricity prices continue to rise and increasing numbers of customers choose alternatives sometimes referred to as a utility death spiral particularly in areas with relatively high electric utility rates utility companies and policy makers must take the potential for grid defection seriously when evaluating energy supply strategies

diverting indirect subsidies from the nuclear industry to the photovoltaic industry energy and financial returns nuclear power and solar photovoltaic energy conversion often compete for policy support that governs economic viability this paper compares current subsidization of the nuclear industry with providing equivalent support to manufacturing photovoltaic modules current u s indirect nuclear insurance subsidies are reviewed and the power energy and financial outcomes of this indirect subsidy are compared to equivalent amounts for indirect subsidies loan guarantees for photovoltaic manufacturing using a model that holds economic values constant for clarity the preliminary analysis indicates that if only this one relatively ignored indirect subsidy for nuclear power was diverted to photovoltaic manufacturing it would result in more installed power and more energy produced by mid century by 2110 cumulative electricity output of solar would provide an additional 48 600 twh over nuclear worth 5 3 trillion the results clearly show that not only does the indirect insurance liability subsidy play a significant factor for nuclear industry but also how the transfer of such an indirect subsidy from the nuclear to photovoltaic industry would result in more energy over the life cycle of the technologies

capital budgets borrowing rules and state capital spending abstract this paper compares the level and composition of government spending in u s states that maintain separate budgets for capital and operating expenditures with that in states that employ unified budgets it also investigates the effects of pay as you go financing rules for capital projects the empirical findings suggest that states with separate capital budgets spend more on public capital projects than comparable states with unified budgets there is no evidence that the presence or absence of a capital budget affects the level of non capital spending pay as you go requirements for financing capital projects are associated with lower levels of both capital and non capital spending

government policy and the firm s capital structure abstract the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of commonly observed forms of government intervention on the firm s capital structure we show that since market claims against the firm are always properly priced the firm is forced to take market claimants interests into account on the other hand since government claims are usually not adjusted for risk the firm can take advantage of the government it does so by choosing strategies that extract maximum value minimum cost from these policies in particular the firm uses its capital capital structure to maximize the value of the policy thus leading to a determinate capital strucure

economic development institutional change and the political economy of agricultural protection an econometric study of belgium since the 19th century this empirical study uses 100 years of annual data on 11 agricultural commodities from belgium to measure the impact of structural changes coinciding with economic development and changes in political institutions on agricultural protection the analysis shows that changes in agricultural protection are caused by a combination of factors governments have increased protection and support to farmers when world market prices for their commodities fell and vice versa offsetting market effects on producer incomes other economic determinants were the share of the commodities in total consumer expenditures negative effect and in total output of the economy positive effect with belgium a small economy there was no impact of the trade position changes in political institutions have affected agricultural protection democratic reforms which induced a significant shift in the political balance towards agricultural interests such as the introduction of the one man one vote system led to an increase in agricultural protection the integration of belgian agricultural policies in the common agricultural policy in 1968 coincided with an increase in protection ceteris paribus both institutional factors related to changes in access to and information about the decision making at the eu level and structural changes in the agricultural and food economy may explain this effect

platform competition in two sided markets many if not most markets with network externalities are two sided to succeed platforms in industries such as software portals and media payment systems and the internet must get both sides of the market on board accordingly platforms devote much attention to their business model that is to how they court each side while making money overall this paper builds a model of platform competition with two sided markets it unveils the determinants of price allocation and end user surplus for different governance structures profit maximizing platforms and not for profit joint undertakings and compares the outcomes with those under an integrated monopolist and a ramsey planner jel l5 l82 l86 l96

creating good public policy to support high growth firms writing in small business economics scott shane argues that policy makers should stop subsidising start ups and instead focus on supporting the small subset of new businesses with high growth potential however both shane and other scholars who have made the same argument only offer broad brush proposals to achieve this objective the aim of this article in contrast is to engage in a detailed discussion of how to create appropriate policies for high growth firms hgfs drawing on research in scotland we argue that policy makers are looking for hgfs in the wrong places the heterogeneous nature of hgfs in terms of sector age size and origins makes in impractical to target support on particular sectors technologies or types of firms e g new or r d intensive the article proposes a reorientation of hgfs both in terms of appropriate targeting and forms of support public policy also needs to focus on the retention of hgfs which are acquired by non local businesses finally policy makers need to properly reflect upon the specificities of their entrepreneurial environment when devising appropriate policy interventions

on the political economy of guest worker programs in agriculture guest workers have provided a source of agricultural labor supply in many countries recent legislative proposals on immigration reform in the united states have renewed discussions about the role of guest worker programs and highlighted the arguments for and against such programs even within the agricultural sector there has not been strong broad based support for an expansion in the number of guest workers a model is developed that considers competing interests between commodity groups horticulture crops and grain crops to explain this lack of support and then a series of simulations are conducted to highlight the possible economic effects of an expanded guest worker program results suggest that an increase in the labor supply would have much larger economic impacts for horticultural producers and firms in the supporting input markets furthermore under some conditions simulation outcomes show how an increase in the labor supply may lead to small revenue losses for both producers and input suppliers in grain markets

clusters entrepreneurial ecosystem co creation and appropriability a conceptual framework extant literature on clusters underplays the role of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial management in creating and co creating organizations markets and supporting ecosystems we employ transaction costs resource knowledge capabilities and power control based theories to provide a comparative static governance based perspective on clusters we embed this into a more general co evolutionary entrepreneurial theory of the emergence evolution and co evolution of markets ecosystems and clusters we suggest that clusters can involve advantages that help engender superior appropriation of co created value as compared to alternatives entrepreneurial managers faced with a degree of choice will help co create clusters and be part of them for as long as they can appropriate more value in this way than through alternatives

advertising as information further evidence in the past 30 years the economics of information has become an important feature of the revolution in modern microeconomic theory the seminal literature includes theoretical advances by stigler 10 nelson 7 8 spence 9 and darby and karni 1 in an original approach laband 3 tests the proposition that the supply of product quality signals increases with a rise in the expected marginal return to consumers utilizing yellow pages advertisements in various urban settings in later expositions laband 4 5 provides further evidence of the durability of the informational content and the differences in information provision of television and commercial advertisements for different types of goods the present paper extends and provides alternatives to laband s tests of the impact of time costs faced by consumers on the informational content of advertising this study employs a supplementary category to laband s of credence goods developed in the literature 2 6 and analyzes the impact of income as a proxy for time and information costs with a unique intra city data set from new york city and los angeles

budgetary policy with unified and decentralized appropriations authority the divestiture of the house appropriations committee in the1880 s has received considerable attention of an empiricalnature this paper presents a formal model of legislativedecisionmaking using a common agency formulation to representinterest group lobbying of legislators this framework is usedto analyze the effects of decentralizing appropriationsauthority the conditions under which decentralization leadsto higher spending are characterized it is argued that theconventional view that divestiture caused higher levels ofspending only holds if decentralization created barriers tolobbying and political bargaining across different committees in addition the role of specialized committee knowledge isexamined

pricing and regulating affect environmental ethics effluent charges and tradeable permits are economically efficient but rarely used a new explanation for this discrepancy is offered pricing may crowd out environmental ethics in the pricing and via spillovers also in non pricing sectors pricing may therefore increase pollution providing a reason why decision makers tend to reject environmental pricing five propositions showing the conditions for counterproductive effects are advanced they are consistent with available empirical evidence regulation by setting standards and subsidies damage environmental ethics less than pricing because pollution is condoned damaging environmental ethics may prevent political action in favor of the environment

ideological conviction and persuasion in the rent seeking society abstract the paper develops a model of rent seeking in a democratic political context where voting as well as rent seeking matters in this context the paper demonstrates that voter ideology is a constraint on the rent seeking game as well as a possible avenue of rent seeking in a setting where there are both rent seeking and ideological interest groups rent seekers can free ride on the efforts of ideologues which tends to reduce rent seeking effort in a setting where complementary economic and ideological interest groups coordinate their efforts both rent seeking and ideological conflict tend to increase

photovoltaic power stations in germany and the united states a comparative study by data envelopment analysis abstract this study compares photovoltaic pv power stations between germany and the united states to examine which country more efficiently provides renewable energy in their usages for the comparative analysis this study utilizes data envelopment analysis dea as a methodology to evaluate the performance of pv power stations from the perspective of both solar and land usages a total of one hundred sixty pv power stations eighty in germany and eighty in the united states are used for this comparison the demand for sustainable energy and energy security has been rapidly increasing over the past decade because of concerns about environment and limited resources pv solutions are one of many renewable technologies that are being developed to satisfy a recent demand of electricity germany is the world s top installer and consumer of pv power and the united states is one of the top five nations germany leads the way in installed pv capacity even though the nation has less solar resources and land area due to limited solar resources low insolation and sunshine and land area the united states should have a clear advantage over germany however the empirical result of this study exhibits that pv power stations in germany operate more efficiently than those of the united states even if the latter has many solar and land advantages the surprising result indicates that the united states has room for improvement when it comes to utilizing solar and land resources and needs to reform the solar policy for such a purpose feed in tariff fit may be an effective energy policy at the state level in the united states because the fit provides investors such as utility companies and other types of energy firms with financial incentives to develop large pv power stations and generation facilities for other renewable energy it may be true that the fit is a powerful policy tool to promote pv and other renewable installation and support a reduction of an amount of greenhouse gases however the fit poses a large financial burden to consumers with a massive increase in renewable energy installation like in germany and spain therefore it is necessary for the united states to consider how to align a policy with a speed of technology innovation to balance between the benefit and the cost derived from the policy implementation on renewable energy in addition this study discusses policy issues regarding cost allocation due to fit among stakeholders related to the electric power industry at the end this study proposes a new type of wholesale electricity market that provides simultaneous trading on electricity and greenhouse gas emissions by fully utilizing modern computer science technology that exists in universities and national laboratories of the united states

voting and paying for public goods an application of the theory of the core abstract let any coalition with a majority of all voters have the power to choose the quantities of public goods under rule i a majority coalition bears a cost of its decision that is proportional to its size under rule ii it must bear the whole cost of its decision thus rule i imposes costs on minorities although they have no power to choose the quantities of public goods while rule ii allows goods to have some attributes of semiprivate goods it is shown that a nonempty core under rule i implies a nonempty core under rule ii but not conversely necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of the properties of the von neumann morgenstern characteristic function are given

the bias in favor of pro tariff lobbies abstract we show that the probability of success of the pro tariff lobby defined as a decreasing function of the ratio of consumer loss to producer gain rent generated by the tariff rises with the tariff under very general conditions this appears as an exception to becker s view that less distortionary measures tend to be adopted over their more distortionary counterparts we then provide a micro foundation for our probability definition using the imperfectly discriminating lobbying framework

random errors dirty information and politics rational voters assessments of candidates and policy proposals are unbiased but affected by random errors clean information decreases these errors while dirty information increases them in politics most voting procedures weigh random individual errors asymmetrically thus such errors do not counterbalance one another in the aggregate they systematically affect politics this illuminates the roles of political propaganda and interest groups it helps to explain various puzzles in public choice e g the frequent use of inefficient policy instruments institutional conditions are identified that shape the aggregate impact of individual errors and the politicians incentives to produce dirty information

bank failures as poisson variates abstract the elasticity of bank failures with respect to a set of explanatory variables is estimated using a maximum likelihood poisson estimator the resulting estimates are compared with their ols counterparts

rent seeking market structure and growth we study the role of productive and unproductive entrepreneurship in economic growth in a setting where firms compete in both economic and political markets specifically firms compete for market share through cost reducing technological innovation and they vie for influence over government transfer policy through rent seeking activities we find that rent seeking affects growth in two ways it allows firms to ignore economic competition leading to less innovation and it alters the number of firms that are supported in equilibrium the former effect is negative while the latter is ambiguous we show how these effects depend on various characteristics of economic and political markets

appropriation violent enforcement and transaction costs a critical survey this paper focuses on the extension of transaction costs to appropriative activity and coercive power in the property rights approach it has been argued that including the costs of appropriation and violent enforcement in transaction costs is based on the assumption that coaseian bargaining can be extended to any institutional scenario i e voluntary as well as coercive exchange however voluntary transactions cannot capture the logic of coercive power this means that the assumption of an efficient political market is not valid and that the political coase theorem lacks the logical consistency to provide a cornerstone for political theory

the adaptive life cycle of entrepreneurial ecosystems the biotechnology cluster we propose an empirical framework for assessing the vibrancy and trajectory of regional entrepreneurial ecosystems we apply this framework to study the us national capital region s localized cluster of biotechnology related entrepreneurship by building our analysis around a set of indicators of ecosystem vitality proposed by stangler and bell masterson 2015 this application constitutes an initial attempt at mapping the dynamics of an industry cluster within the adaptive life cycle of a wider regional ecosystem we find that the biotechnology cluster in the national capital region entered a reorientation stage in the early 2000s building up stored energy capital and connectedness in non research oriented activities an increasing regional presence of large biotech firms in the past 5 years a highly active and diverse start up sector increasing merger and acquisition activity and declines in regional public funding for medical and clinical trials all suggest a transition of entrepreneurial activity in the region from a dynamic driven by federal research spillovers to one increasingly driven by private sector actors

transaction costs institutional design and the separation of powers abstract the internal organization of the government can be used as a constraint on the capture of political decision makers in a setting where multiple interest groups try to influence policy outcomes centralization i e the choice of a single agency dealing with all interest groups is costly because it induces a better coordination of their influences the choice of specialized agencies is better because it increases the overall transaction costs of capture making agencies more immune to capture by interest groups more generally we discuss how an institutional design relying on separation of powers among specialized agencies may improve policy outcomes

the economics of special interest politics the case of the tariff this paper investigates the interaction of politicians and special interest lobbies the goal is to model the equilibrium levels of redistributive policies such as taxes subsidies tariffs and regulatory decisions the model is applied throughout to the setting of tariffs by contributing to political campaigns special interest lobbies generate economic returns higher tariffs generate revenue for import competing industries through higher product prices higher milk support prices raise dairy farm income and so forth the lobby invests to maximize these net economic returns in evaluating their chances of election politicians weigh the favorable effects of special interest money against the unfavorable association with the lobby and the social cost of the redistributive policy section i explores the lobby s problem it describes a formalization of mancur olson s discussion of the voluntary provision of public goods and optimal contributions by lobbies to political campaigns section ii describes determination of the equilibrium tariff positions of each politician in a political campaign

the lineages of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach in its most abstract sense an ecosystem is a biotic community encompassing its physical environment and all the interactions possible in the complex of living and nonliving components economics has always been about systems that explain differential output and outcomes however economics has generally ignored the role of entrepreneurship in economic systems just as entrepreneurship studies have largely overlooked the role of systems in explaining the prevalence and performance of entrepreneurship the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach has the promise to correct these shortcomings its two dominant lineages are the regional development literature and the strategy literature both lineages share common roots in ecological systems thinking providing fresh insights into the interdependence of actors in a particular community to create new value but studies of both regional development and strategic management have largely ignored the role of entrepreneurs in new value creation in this paper we will outline contributions to the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach and conclude with a promising new line of research to our understanding of the emergence growth and context of start ups that have achieved great impact by developing new platforms

self regulation taxation and public voluntary environmental agreements an increasingly popular instrument for solving environmental problems is the public voluntary agreement va in which government offers technical assistance and positive publicity to firms that reach certain environmental goals prior papers treat such agreements as a superior low cost instrument that can be used to preempt a threat of traditional inefficient regulation we present a more general model in which public vas may instead be weak tools used when political opposition makes environmental taxes infeasible we explore the conditions under which taxes public vas and unilateral industry actions are to be expected and the welfare implications of the various instruments notably we also show that welfare may be reduced by the introduction of public vas 2002 elsevier b v all rights reserved

has legislative television changed legislator behavior c span2 and the frequency of senate filibustering using data from 1959 1998 this study examines the impact of legislative television c span2 on the number of filibusters in the united states senate as previous work has sug gested the institutional rules of the federal legislative branch of government in the u s often allow for political grandstanding and posturing and these activities are enhanced with the presence of television cameras on the legislative floor like those previous studies the present work builds a theoretical model wherein political services are considered search experience goods and service providers federal legislators are expected utility maximizers who are concerned with promoting their policy preferences and their re election prospects poisson model estimates suggest that the presence of legislative television has worked to increase the filibuster count in the senate as a result such posturing and positioning on the issues by incumbents in front of television cameras is costly for challengers to replicate and likely contributes to lower turnover rates in the legislative branch

two sided markets a progress report the paper provides a road map to the burgeoning literature on two sided markets and presents new results it identifies two sided markets with markets in which the structure and not only the level of prices charged by platforms matters the failure of the coase theorem is necessary but not sufficient for two sidedness the paper builds a model integrating usage and membership externalities that unifies two hitherto disparate strands of the literature emphasizing either form of externality and obtains new results on the mix of membership and usage charges when price setting or bargaining determine payments between end users

regulation competition and liberalization in many countries throughout the world regulators are struggling to determine whether and how to introduce competition into regulated industries this essay examines the complexities involved in the liberalization process while stressing the importance of case specific analyses this essay distinguishes liberalization policies that generally are procompetitive from corresponding anticompetitive liberalization policies

explaining price policy bias in agriculture the calculus of support maximizing politicians a model is developed to explain observed patterns of policy intervention in agriculture we analyze the interaction between political support seeking politicians and supportsupplying citizens society consists of a rural and urban group we determine the effects on transfers of relative group size disparities in income endowments between groups and the deadweight loss of redistribution the framework advanced is an alternative to that of the interest group model and is used to explain for example why the export sectors in developing countries are taxed more and why the united kingdom is less adamant for higher price supports than germany

two sided network effects a theory of information product design how can firms profitably give away free products this paper provides a novel answer and articulates trade offs in a space of information product design we introduce a formal model of two sided network externalities based in textbook economics a mix of katz and shapiro network effects price discrimination and product differentiation externality based complements however exploit a different mechanism than either tying or lock in even as they help to explain many recent strategies such as those of firms selling operating systems internet browsers games music and video the model presented here argues for three simple but useful results first even in the absence of competition a firm can rationally invest in a product it intends to give away into perpetuity second we identify distinct markets for content providers and end consumers and show that either can be a candidate for a free good third product coupling across markets can increase consumer welfare even as it increases firm profits the model also generates testable hypotheses on the size and direction of network effects while offering insights to regulators seeking to apply antitrust law to network markets

allocation of goods by lottery i introduction many goods such as hunting permits oil drilling leases cellular telephone licenses and rights to fishing berths as well as some buds such as the military draft jury duty and who is to be thrown overboard on a sinking life raft are or have been allocated by lotteries in neo classical welfare economics the random distribution of property rights does not affect allocative efficiency as long as transferability is allowed and the transactions costs are non prohibitive lottery allocations however are generally not transferable thus lottery allocations are inefficient since the goods are not ultimately allocated to the users who value them the most a number of authors such as aubert 1959 fienberg 1971 eckhoff 1989 and elster 1989 36 122 have argued that lotteries are chosen as the allocative instrument because it represents a fair or just means of allocating the goods rawls 1971 374 and eckhoff 1989 have noted that where it is impractical to divide the goods equally among those who desire them a lottery serves to satisfy both the requirement that the process be fair and that the allocation problem be resolved relatively costlessly elster 1989 113 however notes that lotteries are not the only fair allocation mechanism for example he points out that in jewish ethics the problem of allocating an indivisible good such as life saving resources is resolved by denying it to everyone even economists would probably prefer a lottery to this resolution the fairness hypothesis has a rich history in the old testament lotteries are deemed a fair way of allocating goods such as the inheritance of land numbers 33 54 lotteries are also used to allocate bads in perhaps the most famous biblical example of use of lots jonah was chosen by lot to be sacrificed to appease god who had brought a storm that threatened to wreck the ship the story goes that the lot selected jonah because he was shirking his duties elsewhere and should not have even been on the vessel jonah 1 6 1 notice that fair here is taken to mean just given this theological foundation it is not surprising that the lottery has seen frequent use in legal history as well one of the most interesting cases occurred in swedish and finnish trials in the 17th and 18th centuries in cases where a man was murdered by a mob lotteries were used to allocate punishment since the law required an eye for an eye no more and no less eckhoff says that if it was impossible to ascertain which of them had dealt the mortal blow the courts determined that one of the responsible parties be sentenced to death and that the person be selected by lottery 1989 19 a similar use of lotteries occurs in military history to deal with cases of mass desertion in roman armies every tenth man was executed decimated and the remainder pardoned in more modern times the lottery has been used in u s law 2 first of course is the use of a lottery to decide who shall sit on a jury a connection between fairness and lotteries however has also appeared in the common law in an 1842 case u s v holmes which has been discussed by fienberg 1971 eckhoff 1989 and elster 1989 a ship sank in a heavy storm and the lone surviving life raft was in grave danger of sinking the crew threw overboard fourteen male passengers in an effort to save the rest when back in port after being rescued a crewman named holmes the only crew member who had not disappeared upon arrival to port was brought to trial for the deaths of the passengers the court ruled that the non essential members of the crew should have been thrown overboard before any passengers and if that was not sufficient then passengers should have been selected by lot which is the fairest mode elster 1989 65 the fact that a human life presumably a large cost was at stake ex post did not affect the decision 3 the environmental economics literature contains a number of references to the social preferences for and benefits of lottery allocations

informative and persuasive campaigning in this paper we use a simple downsian spatial model to analyze the properties of campaign contributions we first consider campaign contributions that are intended to inform voters of candidate positions we show that it is difficult to construct arguments in a downsian spatial model for why some voters would choose to contribute to a candidateand the candidate would want to spend the money contributed to inform voters of his position we then define persuasive campaign expenditures as those that are intended to convince an individual to vote for a candidate regardless of the candidate s position on issues in the presence of persuasive campaign expenditures some voters have an incentive to contribute to one or both candidates and the candidates have an incentive to spend the money we show why the nature of persuasive campaign expenditures may explain both their growth in recent years and the increasing advantage of incumbency

the influence on congress by the thrift industry abstract the investigation of the influential role of the thrift industry on congress as demonstrated by voting behavior on regulatory policy changes in the eighties is the focus of this study specifically we search for the degree to which the inadequately capitalized component of the thrift industry has captured the house of representatives we examine the influence on congress by the thrift industry using the votes by the house of representatives associated with three different legislative acts the garn st germain act the competitive equality banking act and the financial institutions reform recovery and enforcement act addressing the thrift crisis using a multi chotomous voting model we identify traditional public choice variables that could influence the probability of voting for legislation to capture the variation of the thrifts interests we consider a series of financial variables motivated by the thrift literature of failure prediction models these variables allow us to investigate the influences from the health of the congressional district s thrifts their asset composition characteristics and their reliance on regulatory forbearance

balancing environmental protection and energy production in the federal hydropower licensing process the u s federal energy regulatory commission ferc must balance environmental protection of riverine resources with the nation s growing demand for power production every time it issues a hydroelectric license this paper models the bureaucratic agency s decision making process in issuing these licenses data on nearly 500 hydro power licenses issued from 1983 to 2005 are utilized it is discovered that legislative and institutional constraints are by far the largest influences on ferc s regulatory decisions implying that if the current allocation of surface water in the united states is considered inefficient the most effective way to alter this allocation is by passing new legislation or by implementing institutional reform at ferc

interest group politics under majority rule abstract we develop a model of interest group politics in which the groups and coalitions that arise and the form of redistributive policies sought are jointly determined the model generates three key results first programs intended to reduce income inequality are more likely to involve direct payments than are programs that redistribute wealth across groups with similar incomes second nonequalizing redistribution is unlikely unless the various participants in the political process face significantly different political and economic costs of obtaining transfers third many policies that induce asymmetries among interest groups also impose significant deadweight costs stable nonequalizing redistribution will therefore tend to involve indirect and economically inefficient methods of transferring income

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

studying the role of political competition in the evolution of government size over long horizons here we argue for the use of cointegration and error correction analysis to combine economic factors that are nonstationary with political factors that are stationary into an empirical model of the evolution of public policy over long periods the approach is applied to disentangle the contributions of economics and politics to the evolution of public expenditure by the government of canada over 130 years political competition emerges as the primary political factor affecting government size

pivotal power brokers theory and evidence on political fundraising this study examines the campaign fundraising success of senate incumbents that have a unique pivotal status legislatively in the senate with regards to parliamentary procedures e g the filibuster regression estimates place the fundraising advantage in favor of certain pivotal moderates over all other senators at about 2 12 million in real terms in total contribution per 2 yr election cycle pivotal status is even more significant in explaining variations in pac contribution in the u s senate given that individuals who make contributions are not likely to be as interested as pacs in buying policy the results also suggest that krehbiel s pivotal politics krehbiel k 1988 pivotal politics a theory of u s lawmaking chicago il university of chicago press construct warrants modification given that it offers prediction about policy outcomes and gridlock intervals without fully incorporating interest group politics of the vote buying or policy buying variety

comparing the feed in tariff incentives for renewable electricity in ontario and germany the development of feed in tariff fit programs to support green electricity in ontario the green energy and green economy act of 2009 and germany the erneuerbare energien gesetz of 2000 is compared the two policies are highly comparable offering similar rates for most renewable electricity technologies major differences between the policies include the level of differentiation found in the german policy as well as the use of a price degression strategy for fit rates in germany compared to an escalation strategy in ontario the german renewable electricity portfolio is relatively balanced compared to ontario where wind power dominates the portfolio at the federal level canada does not yet have a policy similar to the european directive on renewable energy and this lack may impact decisions taken by manufacturers of renewable technologies who consider establishing operations in the province ontario s green energy and green economy act could be benefit from lessons in the german system especially with regard to degression of feed in tariff rates over time which could significantly reduce payments to producers over the course of a contract and in turn encourage greater competitiveness among renewable power providers in the future

gavel to gavel congressional television coverage as political advertising the impact of c span on legislative sessions kamal p upadhyaya this article examines the effect of television on the length of legislative sessions at the federal level in the united states data from the u s congress during the period 1972 96 are employed during part of which time each house of congress received significant television coverage by c span and c span2 evidence from a parks regression suggests that the presence of c span has increased house sessions by 88 250 hours and the presence of c span2 has increased senate sessions by a striking 252 431 hours other things constant additional estimates suggest that house sessions are about two minutes longer per bill introduced under the eye of c span and senate sessions are about four minutes longer per bill introduced in the presence of c span2 longer sessions which represent low cost forms of advertising for incumbents are not without costs to taxpayers we estimate that these costs lie somewhere between 16 million and 392 million in real terms per session of congress jel d72 h11 i introduction as grain and goff 1988 point out the number of political watchers c span junkies seems to be on the rise from a 1986 estimate of 40 million since 1986 the grain and goff 1988 study has been the only significant empirical study of the impact of television on representative democracy despite the potential availability of relevant data and statistical techniques the purpose of the present article is to partially fill the void concerning the impact of television on the democratic process by concentrating on the effect of television on the length of legislative sessions in the u s congress this study makes use of a voter shopping construct that analyzes political services as search experience goods and employs data from the u s house of representatives and the u s senate during the period 1972 96 during some of which time each branch of congress received significant television coverage by c span or c span2 ii product classifications and the provision of political services as grain and goff 1988 point out the theory of product advertising parallels the theory of information as in stigler 1961 and nelson 1970 1974 these articles define search goods as goods for which consumer judgments about quality or performance can be made prior to purchase and experience goods as those for which consumer judgments about product quality performance can be made only after purchase nelson points out that information regarding experience good search good quality can be obtained by consumers at high cost low cost for experience goods ads contain cues indirect on the reputation of the seller which is verifiable at low cost and from which the buyer can make inferences regarding product quality 1 crain and goff 1988 point out that one point of view in the literature holds that political services are like search goods because candidates records are available to voters for verification and evaluation at low cost on the other hand it might be costly for voters to gather information on candidates prior to an election and or difficult for voters to draw inferences about the future behavior of politicians which suggests that political services are experience goods crain and goff 1988 11 in this regard any technological advancement that changes the costs of information gathering by voters will alter the nature of political services as in crain and goff 1988 19 because televising legislative proceedings lowers the cost of evaluating a politician s advertised qualities against his or her actual qualities political services would be more like search goods it is within this framework that we analyze the impact of television on the length of legislative sessions however we argue that there are differences in this regard with state level legislatures which were analyzed by crain and goff 1988 and the u

financial return for government support of large scale thin film solar photovoltaic manufacturing in canada as the ontario government has recognized that solar photovoltaic pv energy conversion is a solution to satisfying society s energy demands while reducing the adverse anthropogenic impacts on the global environment that compromise social welfare they have begun to generate policy and funding programs to support financial incentives for pv this paper provides a financial analysis for investment in a 1 gw per year turnkey amorphous silicon pv manufacturing plant the financial benefits for both the provincial and federal governments were quantified for i full construction subsidy ii construction subsidy and sale iii partially subsidize construction iv a publicly owned plant v loan guarantee for construction and vi an income tax holiday revenues for the governments are derived from taxation personal corporate and sales sales of panels in ontario and saved health environmental and economic costs associated with offsetting coal fired electricity both governments enjoyed positive cash flows from these investments in less than 12 years and in many of the scenarios both governments earned well over 8 on investments from 100s of millions to 2 4 billion the results showed that it is in the financial best interest of both the ontario and canadian federal governments to implement aggressive fiscal policy to support large scale pv manufacturing

securitization of residential solar photovoltaic assets costs risks and uncertainty abstract limited access to low cost financing is an impediment to high velocity technological diffusion and high grid penetration of solar photovoltaic pv technology securitization of solar assets provides a potential solution to this problem this paper assesses the viability of solar asset backed securities abs as a lower cost financing mechanism and identifies policies that could facilitate implementation of securitization first traditional solar financing is examined to provide a baseline for cost comparisons next the securitization process is modeled the model enables identification of several junctures at which risk and uncertainty influence costs next parameter values are assigned and used to generate cost estimates results show that under reasonable assumptions securitization of solar power purchase agreements ppa can significantly reduce project financing costs suggesting that securitization is a viable mechanism for improving the financing of pv projects the clear impediment to the successful launch of a solar abs is measuring and understanding the riskiness of underlying assets this study identifies three classes of policy intervention that lower the cost of abs by reducing risk or by improving the measurement of risk i standardization of contracts and the contracting process ii improved access to contract and equipment performance data and iii geographic diversification

the political economy of farmland ownership regulations and land prices one of the most ubiquitous forms of agricultural regulation is a restriction on farmland ownership one canadian example of a farmland ownership restriction is the saskatchewan farm security act fsa passed in 1974 the purpose of this article is to explain using a political economy framework why the fsa was implemented and to estimate the effect of the fsa on saskatchewan farmland values a present value pv model is used to estimate the relationship between land values rents and the regulation the hausman endogeneity test reveals that the regulation variable is endogenous with the land price the sign of the regulation variable is negative which fits with the theory i e the more stringent the regulation the lower the land value we estimate that the regulation lowered saskatchewan farmland prices by an average of 4 to 34 us acre depending on whether ordinary least squares ols or two stage least squares tsls is employed in the estimation over the period of 1974 2001