a model of candidate location with endogenous valence this work gives a theoretical explanation for the increase in campaign spending and party polarization in u s politics i assume that the effectiveness of persuasive advertising and of costly valence campaigning in general positively depends on the share of nonpartisan voters a decline in the number of partisan voters in a constituency results in greater campaign spending by the candidates if the voters are risk averse the candidates who maximize their expected office rents minus the cost of campaigning will choose divergent policy platforms strategically in order to reduce the costs of subsequent campaign spending the degree of policy divergence positively depends on the share of nonpartisan voters for a broad class of voter disutility and candidate cost of valence functions

the amenity and disamenity impacts of agriculture estimates from a hedonic pricing model the positive and negative externalities from farmland are increasingly a focus of public policy discussion about agriculture and land use a gis based hedonic pricing model shows that agricultural open space increases nearby residential property values but larger scale animal operations and mushroom production have negative impacts animal production facilities with as few as 200 animal equivalent units reduce nearby property values but larger facilities do not necessarily generate larger impacts because they tend to occur together the negative impacts of animal agriculture and the positive impacts of open space must be simultaneously modeled to avoid omitted variable bias

candidate reputations and the incumbency effect abstract a major shortcoming of the classical median voter model is that its central prediction convergence of platforms to the median voter s ideal is seldom observed one reason is that the classical model neglects the importance of voter expectations as a determinant of votes here we associate voters expectations about candidates with past as well as current candidate pronouncements and assume that incumbents whose actions are consistent with their reputations are perceived as less risky than challengers in equilibrium candidates choose distinct platforms typically neither adopts the median voter s ideal point either candidate may win depending on how well the incumbent s reputation reflects current voter tastes and how relatively risky the electorate perceives the challenger to be

electoral outcomes with probabilistic voting and nash social welfare maxima abstract this paper provides unexpected support to nash s view of how bargaining determines the social choice we first present a spatial model of electoral competition with probabilistic voting and a very close relation between voters preferences and their choice probabilities the outcome of the electoral competition game is then shown to be precisely the social alternative that maximizes a nash type social welfare function theorem 1 this electoral outcome is also interpreted as a unanimity likelihood maximum corollary 1 within our framework existence and uniqueness of such an outcome are guaranteed corollaries 2 and 3

technical performance and firm size analysis of patents and publications of u s firms this study focuses on the scientific output of firms of different sizes in different industries in the u s both patents and papers and publications are used as measures of technical output data from two samples of firms one consisting of 225 large firms annual sales at least 250 million and minimum annual r d budget of 1 million and the other consisting of 248 small and medium sized firms annual sales between 10 to 200 million and annual r d budget at least 10 thousand have been presented here the study shows that determinants of r d expenditure are different in firms of different sizes for the large firms r d expenditure depends on net income as well as its size measured in terms of annual sales for small size firms r d expenditure is closely related with sales rather than the net income for large firms r d expenditure is related to both sales and income the latter being more important than the former the two output measures patents and papers are correlated but the correlation is not a very strong one for small firms patent and papers are correlated significantly with both r d expenditure as well as annual sales the firm s growth is not linked with patents on the contrary there is a negative relationship between patent and r d growth and patent and income growth in the case of small firms papers are not linked with growth variables for small firms finally this study confirms the hypothesis that small firms are more productive in innovation than the large firms small firms are more efficient than their larger competitors in terms of patents and papers per million dollars of r d expenditure

political motivations and electoral competition equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence we study both theoretically and experimentally the complete set of nash equilibria of a classical one dimensional majority rule election game with two candidates who might be interested in power as well as in ideology but not necessarily in the same way apart from obtaining the well known median voter result and the two sided policy differentiation outcome the paper uncovers the existence of two new equilibrium configurations called one sided and probabilistic policy differentiation respectively our analysis shows how these equilibrium configurations depend on the relative interests in power resp ideology and the uncertainty about voters preferences the theoretical predictions are supported by the data collected from a series of laboratory experiments as we observe convergence to the nash equilibrium values at the aggregate as well as the individual levels in all treatments and the comparative statics effects across treatments are as predicted by the theory

searching for equilibrium positions in a game of political competition with restrictions this paper considers a problem of political economy in which a nash equilibrium study is performed in a proposed game with restrictions where the two major parties in a country vary their position within a politically flexible framework to increase their number of voters the model as presented fits the reality of many countries moreover it avoids the uniqueness of equilibrium positions the problem is stated and solved from a geometric point of view

the management of multinational r d a neglected topic in international business research despite the growing involvement of multinational firms in foreign based r d during the past fifteen years little research has been done on why and how firms internationalize their r d and what effects it might have on firm competitiveness the present paper calls attention to this neglect and seeks to advance the management of multinational r d as an area of study for international business scholars to this end the paper first examines the key contributing factors to increased foreign r d investments among multinationals it then reviews the research literature to find out what we presently know about the management of multinational r d finally a research agenda is proposed to provide a foundation and stimulus for future investigations seven research directions are recommended with an emphasis on interdisciplinary inquiry and a focus on issues that have both theoretical and practical significance

extremism campaigning and ambiguity this paper studies a model of how political parties use resources for campaigning to inform voters each party has a predetermined ideology drawn from some distribution parties choose a platform and campaign to inform voters about the platform we find that the farther away parties are from each other on average the less resources are spent on campaigning on average thus if parties are extreme less information is supplied than if parties are moderate we also show that if a public subsidy is introduced we have policy convergence given some mild technical restrictions on the public subsidy

political competition between differentiated candidates abstract we introduce a framework of electoral competition in which voters have general preferences over candidates immutable characteristics such as gender race or previously committed policy positions as well as their policy positions which are flexible candidates are uncertain about the distribution of voter preferences and choose policy positions to maximize their winning probability we characterize a property of voter utility functions uniform candidate ranking ucr that captures a form of separability between fixed characteristics and policy when voters have ucr preferences candidates equilibrium policies converge in any strict equilibrium in contrast notions like competence or complementarity lead to non ucr preferences and policy divergence in particular we introduce a new class of models that contains the probabilistic voting model as a special case and in which there is a unique equilibrium that generically features policy divergence

the incumbency effects of signalling much literature on political behaviour treats politicians as motivated by re election choosing actions to signal their types to voters we identify a novel implication of incumbent signalling because incumbents only care about clearing a re election hurdle signals will tend to cluster just above the threshold needed for re election this generates a skew distribution of signals leading to an incumbency advantage in the probability of election we also solve for the optimal threshold when voters have the ability to commit

partisan politics and election failure with ignorant voters abstract we analyze candidate competition when some voters do not observe a candidate s policy choice voters have a personality preference when both candidates offer the same policy in equilibrium the candidate with a personality advantage may get elected with a partisan policy even though his opponent s policy is preferred by all voters the departure from the downsian prediction is most pronounced when candidates have a weak policy preference and care mostly about winning the election in that case uninformed voters choose the candidate with the preferred personality even if electing this candidate implies a lower payoff on average

securing the base electoral competition under variable turnout i evaluate the securing the base strategy which prescribes that candidates position themselves away from the political center in order to maximize turnout among their supporters and reduce defections of their supporters to third party candidates my results support the notion that voters abstain due to indifference and imply that candidate positioning has a large effect on voter turnout and third party voting nonetheless my results indicate that the candidates can best compete by adopting centrist positions while a candidate can increase turnout among his supporters by moving away from the center many moderate voters will defect to his opponent

party polarization in legislatures with office motivated candidates we develop a theory of legislative competition in which voters care about local candidate valence and national party positions that are determined by the parties median legislators as long as election outcomes are sufficiently predictable the only stable equilibria exhibit policy divergence between the parties if the degree of uncertainty about election outcomes decreases and if voters place less weight on local candidates valence polarization between the parties increases furthermore a systematic electoral shock makes the party favored by the shock more moderate while the disadvantaged party becomes more extreme finally we examine data on state elections and the ideological positions of state legislatures and find patterns that are consistent with key predictions of our model

a spatial theory of positive and negative campaigning abstract in order to explore the content of electoral campaigns this paper makes two modifications to hotelling s model of spatial competition first we assume that agents inherit initial locations and engage in costly relocation second an agent s relocation is affected by her rival s actions we investigate how a candidate allocates resources between positive campaigning which influences voters perceptions of her own ideology and negative campaigning which influences her opponent s perceived ideology our theory predicts that the candidate who is perceived as having less attractive personal attributes runs a relatively more negative campaign the theory s implications are illustrated for the 1988 presidential election journal of economic literature classification numbers c7 h0

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

valence politics and equilibrium in spatial election models spatial models of two party or two candidatecompetition almost never have pure strategy nashequilibria when the issue space has more than onedimension this paper shows that the introduction ofvalence issues can create conditions where equilibriaexist even in a multidimensional setting we derivesufficient conditions for the existence of equilibria and characterize the spatial locations of twocompeting parties or candidates when such equilibriaexist the party with the advantage on the valencedimension will generally take a moderate position onthe positional issues we consider the implications ofthese results for public perceptions of the parties incumbency advantages and realigning elections

candidate quality in a downsian model with a continuous policy space abstract this paper characterizes a unique mixed strategy nash equilibrium in a one dimensional downsian model of two candidate elections with a continuous policy space where candidates are office motivated and one candidate enjoys a non policy advantage over the other candidate we show that if voters utility functions are concave and the median voter ideal point is drawn from a unimodal distribution there is a mixed strategy nash equilibrium where the advantaged candidate chooses the ideal point of the expected median voter with probability one and the disadvantaged candidate uses a mixed strategy that is symmetric around it existence conditions require the variance of the distribution to be small enough relative to the size of the advantage

the impacts of the tax deferred exchange provision on farm real estate values this study examines the effects of the section 1031 tax deferred exchange provision on agricultural land values the provision allows taxpayers to defer taxation for relinquished productive assets if a like kind asset is acquired within the allotted time of 180 days the analysis examines a set of 3 580 farm real estate transaction from 55 agricultural counties in indiana over the period 2003 2006 hedonic price analysis suggests that properties acquired under a like kind exchange are associated with a 1 32 price premium jel h23 q15

policy specific information and informal agenda power in gilligan and krehbiel s models of procedural choice in legislatures a committee exerts costly effort to acquire private information about an unknown state of the world subsequent work on expertise delegation and lobbying has largely followed this approach in contrast we develop a model of information as policy valence we use our model to analyze a procedural choice game focusing on the effect of transferability i e the extent to which information acquired to implement one policy option can be used to implement a different policy option we find that when information is transferable as in gilligan and krehbiel s models closed rules can induce committee specialization however when information is policy specific open rules are actually superior for inducing specialization the reason for this surprising result is that a committee lacking formal agenda power has a greater incentive to exercise informal agenda power by exerting costly effort to generate high valence legislation

incumbent challenger and open seat elections in a spatial model of political competition in groseclose am j political sci 45 862 886 2001 candidates with asymmetric valence scores and varying degrees of policy motivation simultaneously choose divergent policies i take a version of the groseclose model with policy motivated candidates and extend it to allow for sequential policy announcements this may be a suitable approach for incumbent challenger elections because the incumbent s policy is typically known before the challenger s i show that policy divergence is greater when candidates announce policies sequentially as opposed to simultaneously i also show that policy motivated incumbents benefit from a first mover advantage

the dynamics of locally adaptive parties under spatial voting abstract we explore the dynamics of a model of two party competition under spatial voting the parties are allowed to incrementally adapt their platforms by following the voting gradient imposed by the preferences of the electorate and the platform of the opposition the emphasis in this model is on the dynamic system formed by these conditions in particular we examine the characteristics of the transient paths and the convergence points of the evolving platforms we find that in a simple spatial model with probabilistic voting regardless of the initial platforms of each party platforms eventually converge to a unique globally stable equilibrium matching the strength weighted mean of the voters preferred positions this result appears robust to many variations in voter preferences and party behavior however we do find some conditions under which other dynamic possibilities occur including multiple equilibria and perhaps limit cycles

finagle s law and the finagle point a new solution concept for two candidate competition in spatial voting games without a core we investigate the geometry underlying finagle s law which states no matter what happens you can come out ahead if you just know how to finagle and we introduce a new solution concept for two candidate sequential spatial voting games the finagle point the finagle radius is the radius of a circle such that if a candidate locates at its center some alternative in the circle can beat any alternative in the space the finagle point is the point with minimum finagle radius from it a candidate can with only minuscule changes in his initial policy location find a response to any challenger that will defeat that challenger for each possible candidate location we provide a geometric construction which gives an outer bound for its finagle radius a measure of the attractiveness of that location to a finagling politician for three voter games without a core we provide an analytic solution for the point with minimal finagle radius that guarantees that the maximum finagle needed to defeat an opponent will in general be quite small relative to the pareto set we also show how the construction used to generate the finagle point in the three voter case can be extended to the n voter case the basic idea underlying the finagle point is that it is unnecessary and indeed usually impossible to find a position that will defeat all challengers but it is possible to find a position that is virtually invulnerable to challenge since any position that beats it can be countered by shifting to a position very close to the original location that will defeat the challenger moreover even if not at the point with minimal finagle radius in searching for positions to respond optimally to the location of the other candidate a candidate will in general not find it necessary to move far from an initial point located near the finagle point since points located near the finagle point will also have a small finagle radius

imperfectly informed voters and strategic extremism we analyze a two candidate downsian model considering that voters use shortcuts e g interest group media endorsements to infer candidates policy platforms that is voters do not observe candidates exact platforms but only which candidate offers the more leftist rightist platform relative positions in equilibrium candidates behavior tends to maximum extremism but it may converge or diverge depending on how voters behave when indifferent policywise between the candidates when the tie breaking rule used by the voters is sufficiently fair candidates converge to the extreme preferred by the median voter but when it strongly favors a certain candidate each candidate specializes in a different extreme

covering dominance and institution free properties of social change this paper shows that different institutional structures for aggregation of preferences under majority rule may generate social choices that are quite similar so that the actual social choice may be rather insensitive to the choice of institutional rules specifically in a multidimensional setting where all voters have strictly quasi concave preferences it is shown that the uncovered set contains the outcomes that would arise from equilibrium behavior under three different institutional settings the three institutional settings are two candidate competition in a large electorate cooperative behavior in small committees and sophisticated voting behavior in a legislative environment where the agenda is determined endogenously because of its apparent institution free properties the uncovered set may provide a useful generalization of the core when a core does not exist a general existence theorem for the uncovered set is proven and for the downsian case bounds for the uncovered set are computed these bounds show that the uncovered set is centered around a generalized median set whose size is a measure of the degree of symmetry of the voter ideal points

majority rule and election models abstract this paper surveys the theoretical work that has been done on majority rule and economic models of elections section i provides an overview of the topic section 2 reviews the most important results that have been obtained about majority rule as an abstract collective choice rule section 3 identifies some alternative inferences that can be made from those results section 4 covers some models that include additional features that are present in political institutions where majority rule is used section 5 concentrates on some alternative election models and equilibrium concepts section 6 focuses on election models with abstentions and or candidate uncertainty about voter behaviour section 7 compares and contrasts models where candidates are certain about what the voters choices will be contingent upon about the choices made by the candidates and models where they are uncertain about those choices section 8 closes the survey by identifying some emerging areas of research

equilibrium political budget cycles political business cycle theories generally rely on nominal rigidities and voter myopia this paper offers an equilibrium theory that preserves some basic insights from earlier models though with significant refinements the political budget cycle emphasized here is in fiscal policy rather than output and inflation it arises via a multidimensional signal process one can consider the welfare implications of proposals to mitigate the cycle and the effects of altering the electoral structure copyright 1990 by american economic association

candidate ability and platform choice abstract contrary to the median voter theorem candidates in real world elections do not always adopt moderate platforms using a modified hotelling model we show that low ability candidates may attempt to differentiate themselves from higher ability competitors by choosing less moderate platforms

elections with platform and valence competition abstract we study a game in which candidates first choose platforms and then invest in costly valences e g engage in campaign spending the marginal return to valence depends on platform polarization the closer platforms are the more valence affects the election outcome consequently candidates without policy preferences choose divergent platforms to soften valence competition moreover exogenous increases in incentives for valence accumulation lead to both increased valence and increased polarization the latter because candidates seek to avoid the costs of extra valence as a result the increase in valence is smaller than it would have been with exogenous platforms finally the model highlights the overlooked substantive importance of common modeling assumptions changing the source of uncertainty in our model from noise around the median voter s ideal point to a shock to one candidate s valence as is common in the literature leads to complete platform convergence for all parameter values

learning about voter rationality we model the accountability relationship between voters and politicians to clarify what can and can t be learned about voter rationality from existing evidence from the behavior literature we make two key points first we show that evidence on the electoral consequences of natural disasters and economic shocks typically interpreted as evidence for voter irrationality is consistent with a canonical model with rational voters second we show that the evidence on the electoral consequences of disaster response typically interpreted as evidence for voter rationality is consistent with the same model with irrational voters hence neither body of evidence can adjudicate between rational and irrational voting behavior we also derive new hypotheses that can better guide future empirical work attempting to assess voter rationality

party competition in a heterogeneous electorate the role of dominant issue voters this paper provides a theoretical model of party competition in a heterogeneous electorate the latter consists of numerous groups of dominant issue voters who base their voting decision primarily on one issue of the political agenda parties follow a lexicographic objective function aiming to gain power at minimum programmatic concessions the emerging pattern of movement in policy platforms is fundamentally different to the concept of convergence proposed by the spatial theory of voting rather than the centre of the scale of policy preference its extreme ends occupied by dominant issue voters attract the policy platforms the difference in policy platforms is not reduced the conclusions are found to be compatible with some major empirical findings of the manifesto research group

electoral equilibria with restricted strategies we construct a spatial election model in which candidates inherit initial positions in the strategy space presumably from previous political activity and they are restricted to strategies close to their initial positions we establish sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium the equilibrium need not entail an expectation of a zero plurality for each candidate we then apply this model to a sequence of elections in which a series of opposition candidates challenge incumbents given certain regularity conditions the result will be an apparent incumbency advantage corresponding to that observed in recent congressional elections

floodplain price impacts by property type in boulder county colorado condominiums versus standalone properties studies find various and often small or negligible impacts of floodplain designation on home sales prices in the united states calling into question the u s s national flood insurance program s nfip effectiveness at internalizing flood risk into the residential property market however studies also tend to focus only on standalone homes although a substantial portion of the u s housing market particularly within designated floodplains consists of condominiums single unit residences that are bundled with an ownership share in common property this study investigates the price impact of floodplain designation for condominiums and for standalone properties in boulder county colorado u s and finds a strong impact for condominiums but none for standalone properties results are consistent across hedonic price estimation and non parametric matching estimation numerous factors may contribute to this difference including differences in the pre transaction provision of flood insurance cost information and whether maintaining ongoing flood insurance is compulsory these results have implications for the nfip and offer insights for policy interventions for internalizing risks more generally they also caution against generalizing from the experience of the nfip without detailed consideration of the contexts and specific conditions in which it is applied

model unvertainty political learning and institutions a broader view on mancur olson s theory of institutional sclerosis in his rise and decline of nations mancur olson argues that politically stable countries suffer from declining growth rates caused by the growing influence of distributional coalitions that accumulate over time the empirical literature supports the notion of a negative relationship between a country s duration of political stability and its growth rates but finds only weak support for a negative influence of distributional coalitions on growth this paper sketches a simple model of party competition under model uncertainty which may explain this mixed empirical picture it shows that politically stable democracies are less well equipped to adjust to shifts in their economic environment than democracies with a shorter history of political stability in a further step the paper relates the major theme of this theory and olson s theory to the more recent literature on institutions and growth directions for further research are discussed

candidate valence evidence from consecutive presidential elections this article develops and estimates a dynamic spatial model of voting the distribution of voters policy positions and candidates valence are recovered using individual level data on voting decisions in two consecutive presidential elections the estimated model is used to provide an equilibrium interpretation of observed individual voting profiles and aggregate electoral outcomes as well as to conduct counterfactual experiments that assess the impact of candidates policy positions valence and voters information on electoral outcomes

voters private valuation of candidates quality abstract different voters might have different valuations of candidates qualitative features we argue that this intuitive fact acts as a strong stabilizing force in electoral competition dynamics when candidates are office motivated pure strategy equilibria may exist unlike when all voters favor the same candidate perhaps more importantly it affects candidates platform moderation incentives in a rather intriguing manner when voters are evenly split in terms of their candidates quality valuations then both candidates have incentives to locate sufficiently near but not necessarily exactly at the center of the policy space however as the number of voters who favor the same candidate rises maximum equilibrium differentiation follows a non trivial u shaped pattern it is first decreasing and then increasing in the fraction of voters who prefer the more popular candidate

interest groups campaign contributions and probabilistic voting this essay develops a simple model to analyze the impact of campaign contributions on electoral policy decisions of candidates for office interest groups here are firms that select contributions under the assumption that candidates policies and opposing groups donations remain unaltered candidates however recognize that their policy choices affect contributions campaign contributions are used by candidates to affect policy oriented voters perceptions of candidates positions in this framework the introduction of campaign contributions may affect candidates electoral policies and if they do then they benefit surely exactly one of the two interest groups

signaling character in electoral competition we study a one dimensional hotelling downs model of electoral competition with the following innovation a fraction of candidates have character and are exogenously committed to a campaign platform this is unobservable to voters character is desirable and a voter s utility is a convex combination of standard policy preferences and her assessment of a candidate s character this structure induces a signaling game between strategic candidates and voters since a policy platform affects voters utilities not only directly but also indirectly through inferences about a candidate s character the model generates a number of predictions starting with a failure of the median voter theorem jel d72 d82

the effect of candidate quality on electoral equilibrium an experimental study when two candidates of different quality compete in a one dimensional policy space the equilibrium outcomes are asymmetric and do not correspond to the median there are three main effects first the better candidate adopts more centrist policies than the worse candidate second the equilibrium is statistical in the sense that it predicts a probability distribution of outcomes rather than a single degenerate outcome third the equilibrium varies systematically with the level of uncertainty about the location of the median voter we test these three predictions using laboratory experiments and find strong support for all three we also observe some biases and show that they can be explained by quantal response equilibrium

the mean voter theorem necessary and sufficient conditions for convergent equilibrium formal models of elections have emphasized the convergence of party leaders towards the centre of the electoral distribution this paper attempts to resolve the apparent disparity between the formal result and the perception of political divergence by considering a model incorporating valence valence can be interpreted as the non policy basis of political judgement made by the electorate concerning the quality of political contenders the theorem presented here shows that there is a necessary condition for convergence the condition involves the difference in party valences and the electoral variance when the condition fails the low valence parties will be forced to adopt policy positions far from the electoral centre the inference appears to be substantiated by an empirical model of the israel election in 1996 copyright 2007 wiley blackwell

spatial electoral competition with a probabilistically favored candidate abstract this paper studies unidimensional electoral competition between two office motivated candidates where one of them enjoys a probabilistic and non policy advantage over the other we consider a finite number of voters who have single peaked preferences and whose ideal policies are not known to the candidates unlike the deterministic advantage models we find that the downsian pure strategy equilibrium is in this environment the unique nash equilibrium of the game when the electorate is sufficiently large

a reform dilemma in polarized democracies abstract we study the feasibility and efficiency of policy reforms in democracies we develop a simple election model where i reforms are costly for voters and politicians and these costs increase with the extent of policy change and ii politicians differ in their ability to carry out reforms efficiently we identify a so called reform dilemma which manifests itself in two variants from a static perspective low reform ability politicians are elected when political parties are polarized who then impose high costs on citizens for each reform step this property of elections arises as low reform ability is a substitute for policy commitment from a dynamic perspective incumbents may choose socially undesirable policies to align the social need for reform with their own reform ability and are thus re elected regardless of their reform ability

on the nature of equilibria in a downsian model with candidate valence abstract i analyze mixed strategy equilibria in a downsian model with two office motivated candidates in which one candidate is endowed with a sufficiently large valence advantage that a voter might prefer this candidate even if the voter strictly prefers the other candidate s policies there is a discrete one dimensional policy space and the preferences of the median voter are uncertain i show that there is a range of moderate policies with no gaps that are optimal for the advantaged candidate there is also a range of liberal policies with no gaps and a corresponding range of conservative policies with no gaps that are optimal actions for the disadvantaged candidate the upper and lower bounds on these ranges of policies vary in predictable ways with the size of the advantaged candidate s advantage

environmental externalities and residential property values externalized costs along the house price distribution this study examines the impacts of animal agricultural facilities on the value of residential housing through a quantile regression framework we are able to show that the estimated price impacts are not uniform across the distribution of housing prices and a statistically significant relationship exists only for houses at or above median price levels these estimated price impacts also increase as the percentile increases for comparison the model also includes the proximity to three other waste facility types industrial solid and septic our dataset features 14 785 single family residential transactions in tippecanoe county indiana over the period 1993 2006 jel q51

spatial voting in the 2004 presidential election the theory of spatial voting has played a large role in the development of important results across many areas of political science directly testing the foundational assumptions of spatial voting theory however has not been possible with existing data using a novel survey design this article obtains estimates of voter ideology on the same scale as candidate positions the results of this scaling demonstrate that voters possess meaningful ideologies and furthermore that these beliefs are strongly related to the sorts of policy proposals considered in congress these ideology estimates are then used to uncover the actual relationships between ideology and vote choice for citizens of various types in the 2004 presidential election although the choices of independent voters are shown to be largely consistent with the assumptions of spatial voting theory the decision rules used by partisans differ strongly from what unbiased spatial voting would imply although partisans do converge toward the behavior of independents and hence toward the assumptions of spatial voting theory as information levels increase we see that even highly informed partisans show significant differences from what would be implied by unbiased spatial voting theory

valence characteristics costly policy and the median crossing property a diagrammatic exposition voters value valence characteristics such as honesty and competence in this paper we consider the situation where candidates may have more than one valence characteristic of importance to the voters at the same time we introduce a new concept the median crossing property which differs from single peakedness and is less restrictive than the single crossing property if indifference curves satisfy the median crossing property then voting is transitive and the majority s preference rankings coincide with those of the median voter if the indifference curves violate the median crossing property then intransitivity may arise the framework also allows us to consider elections with costly policy

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

do institutions affect citizens selection into politics traditional political economy has paid primary attention to the structuring of the principal agent relationship between citizens and politicians and the role of competition and institutions in disciplining political agents however as the electoral control of politicians and the credibility of policy commitments are limited this perspective needs to be complemented with an economics of political selection that takes into account the quality of those elected to political office we review the emerging literature which investigates institutional conditions that impact the selection of politicians we discuss pay in politics electoral rules institutions enhancing transparency in politics and institutions which govern dual office holding in different branches of government we argue that further comparative analyses are essential in order to gain an improved understanding of the impact that institutions have on political outcomes not only via the channel of accountability but also via the channel of selection

cross national laws and differences in market response international differences in general and cultural differences in particular exert profound influence on what people buy in modeling market response highly visible international differences in purchase behavior seem to lead to an assumption by management scientists that there are large parallel international differences in market response to such things as price and advertising in an interpretive review of market response models we do find international differences in response parameters but we also find that parameter differences due to cross national factors tend to be smaller than differences related to technical characteristics of the model or to product market specifics we suggest two new intermediate categories of generalizability between the extremes of everything is the same and everything is different we also argue that one promising approach to international generalization is through appropriate statistical adjustment of parameters from existing models

asymmetric information and the electoral momentum of public opinion polls this paper demonstrates that the existence of public opinion polls amplifies the effects of shifts in the distribution of the public s preferences over the issue space on the election s results voters evaluate candidates by their positions on the issue space and by a valence or general ability dimension some individual s the informed have more precise information about the relative abilities of candidates than others the uninformed since public opinion polls reflect the information of the informed high approval for a candidate at the polls signals to the uninformed that he is more likely to be abler however high approval may also reflect changes in the distribution of the public on the issue space as a result the uninformed partly confuse the two effects and public opinion polls tend to reinforce the effects of shifts in the public s ideological preferences on election results a shift to the right that shows up as more support for the right wing candidate at the polls is partly interpreted as a higher efficiency of this candidate as a result he wins with a higher margin than the margin he would have won with in the absence of polls or under perfect information

political competition and mirrleesian income taxation a first pass we study downsian competition in a mirrleesian model of income taxation the competing politicians may dier in competence if politicians engage in vote share maximization the less competent politician s policy proposals are attractive to the minority of rich agents whereas those of the competent politician are attractive to the majority of poor agents the less competent politician wins with positive probability which gives rise to a political failure in the sense of besley and coate 1998 political failures are avoided if politicians maximize winning probabilities nevertheless the two equilibria cannot be pareto ranked the minority may be better o under vote share maximization

incumbency effects in political campaigns in this paper we examine two effects of incumbency first an incumbent may have an advantage in creating a favorable image in the eyes of the voters second the incumbent may have to chose a position before the challenger this second aspect of incumbency is modelled as stackelberg leadership in the model two candidates run for election by choosing a position in an ideological spectrum voters care about candidates chosen positions as well as non policy attributes of candidates which we call charisma charismata are not known when candidates choose policy positions they are only revealed on election day so that winning is not usually a certain prospect candidates care about the probability of winning but they also dislike compromising their own ideals

political rents and voter information in search equilibrium abstract political parties committed to grab rents may run for election and even win if citizens are uninformed but how is the political equilibrium affected if citizens can mitigate this information problem through costly information search we propose a political equilibrium theory with endogenous information search and turnout we show that i the political equilibrium generates political uncertainty characterized by a distribution of rent policies i i the expectation of this rent distribution is inversely u shaped in the information search cost i i i turnout is lower and rents are higher the more proportional is the electoral system

comparative invention performance of major industrial countries patterns and explanations the paper presents an analysis of invention performance as measured by patenting activities of six countries france italy japan united kingdom ussr west germany relative to the united states for 41 sic industries over the past 20 years it turns out that non u s countries as a group have increased their relative invention performance in all fields of technology including high technology fields in a second step hypotheses which can be supposed to explain the relative decline of the united states patenting activities are discussed and tested there is strong evidence that catching up processes contributed most to the relative decrease of the united states there is only little evidence that government interventions regarding research and development activities have had counterproductive effects on invention performance

a theory of voting in large elections this paper provides a game theoretic model of probabilistic voting and then examines the incentives faced by candidates in a spatial model of elections in our model voters strategies form a quantal response equilibrium qre which merges strategic voting and probabilistic behavior we first show that a qre in the voting game exists for all elections with a finite number of candidates and then proceed to show that with enough voters and the addition of a regularity condition on voters utilities a nash equilibrium profile of platforms exists when candidates seek to maximize their expected margin of victory this equilibrium 1 consists of all candidates converging to the policy that maximizes the expected sum of voters utilities 2 exists even when voters can abstain and 3 is unique when there are only 2 candidates