the market for safety regulation and the effect of regulation on fatalities the case of motorcycle helmet laws existing econometric studies of the efficacy of motorcycle helmet laws assume that such laws are exogenously determined and may therefore yield biased results to correct for possible selectivity bias we specify and estimate a self selection model in which the choice of having a helmet law is endogenous our results indicate selectivity bias exists and that if laws were randomly assigned fatality rates for states with helmet laws would on average be less than 1 lower than for states without laws

analysis of evolutionary game in structural formation of market power in remanufacturing supply chains it is normal for enterprises to engage in remanufacturing nowadays nevertheless the concern of enterprises and researchers is whether remanufacturers should compete for leadership in supply chain

analysing remanufacturing decisions of supply chain members in uncertainty of consumer preferences abstractthis article formulates a gaming model of the closed loop supply chain with manufacturers as the leader sellers and consumers where consumers may or may not be willing to pay remunerative price for remanufactured products vis a vis new products in the model manufacturers produce new as well as remanufactured products whereas sellers distribute them in stable circumstances this article presents the functional formula of the optimal manufacturing pricing decisions the results show that when the cost of new products is significantly lower than that of remanufactured ones manufacturers choose to produce new products only when the difference between cost of new and remanufactured products is moderate manufacturers tend to produce both new and remanufactured products and in some regions production of new and remanufactured products is proportional to each other when the difference between cost of new and remanufactured products is enormous their production and sale tend to stop also th

research advances in environmentally and socially sustainable operations abstract consumers and governments are pressuring firms to strike a balance between profitability and sustainability however this balance can only be maintained in the long run if the firm can take a holistic approach to sustain the financial flow profit resource flow planet and development flow people for the entire ecosystem comprising poor producers in emerging developing markets global supply chain partners consumers in developed countries and the planet by considering the flows associated with different entities within the ecosystem we classify and summarize recent operations research management science or ms research developments also we identify several gaps for future research in this important area

remanufacturing as a marketing strategy the profitability of remanufacturing systems for different cost technology and logistics structures has been extensively investigated in the literature we provide an alternative and somewhat complementary approach that considers demand related issues such as the existence of green segments original equipment manufacturer competition and product life cycle effects the profitability of a remanufacturing system strongly depends on these issues as well as on their interactions for a monopolist we show that there exist thresholds on the remanufacturing cost savings the green segment size market growth rate and consumer valuations for the remanufactured products above which remanufacturing is profitable more important we show that under competition remanufacturing can become an effective marketing strategy which allows the manufacturer to defend its market share via price discrimination

strategic and operational decisions under sales competition and collection competition for end of use products in remanufacturing abstract providing incentives to customers for recycling their end of use products is a commonly adopted strategy by remanufacturers for achieving economic scale of remanufacturing however the entrance of remanufacturers threaten the sales of new products that are produced by original equipment manufacturers oems thus oems may also take back end of use products by providing incentives to restrict the capacities of remanufacturers consequently oems and remanufacturers compete not only on prices in sales market but also on incentives in recycle market therefore we formulate a closed loop supply chain model consisting of an oem and a remanufacturer to investigate their equilibrium prices and incentives moreover we consider that the remanufacturer can strategically focus the economies of scale on the sales market or on the recycle market we derive the equilibrium decisions and profits under each of the remanufacturer s strategies and identify the characteristics of these equilibrium results we further derive the conditions to determine the firms behaviors toward the competition we also find that the higher competitiveness in the sales market will encourage the remanufacturer to focus the economic scale on the recycle market instead of the sales market which is also beneficial to the oem

towards circular economy implementation a comprehensive review in context of manufacturing industry the concept of circular economy ce is to an increasing extent treated as a solution to series of challenges such as waste generation resource scarcity and sustaining economic benefits however the concept of circularity is not of novel as such specific circumstances and motivations have stimulated ideas relevant to circularity in the past through activities such as reuse remanufacturing or recycling main objectives of this work are to provide a comprehensive review of research efforts encompassing aspects of resources scarcity waste generation and economic advantages to explore the ce landscape in the context of these three aspects especially when they are considered simultaneously based on an idea of a comprehensive ce framework propose an implementation strategy using top down and bottom up approach in a concurrent manner to fulfill this objective a comprehensive review of state of the art research is carried out to understand different ideas relevant to ce motivation for the research and context of their recurrence main contributions of this paper are a comprehensive ce framework and a practical implementation strategy for a regenerative economy and natural environment the framework emphasizes on a combined view of three main aspects i e environment resources and economic benefits it also underlines that joint support of all stakeholders is necessary in order to successfully implement the ce concept at large scale the proposed framework and implementation strategy also identify new avenues for future research and practice in the field of ce

trade in and save a two period closed loop supply chain game with price and technology dependent returns abstract consumers evaluate the convenience of changing their products according to the price paid as well as the technology quality level when the consumers wish to capitalize the products residual value they should return them as early as possible accordingly we develop a model of closed loop supply chain clsc where consumers seek to gain as much as possible from their returns and the return rate is a function of both price and quality we model a two period stackelberg game to capture the dynamic aspects of a clsc where the manufacturer is the channel leader we investigate who namely manufacturer or retailer should collect the products in the market thus we identify the best clsc structure to adopt when the return rate is both price and quality dependent our results demonstrate that it is always worthwhile for companies to collect products and adopt an active return approach for returns we investigate the effect of retail competition in both forward and backward channels and show the impact of eliminating the double marginalization on market outcomes

revenue management for durable goods using trade ins with certified pre owned options abstract the economics research suggests that firms can use trade ins as a revenue management device for price discrimination between new and replacement buyers of durabprle goods offering different prices to different groups of customers creates a market segmentation effect this study examines such an effect by considering trade ins and certified pre owned options for a durable goods firm where certified pre owned cpo represents the used goods market generated from the return flow of trade in transactions the optimal pricing and or trade in rebate is determined and the strategic choice between the two options is examined an analytical model is developed that incorporates the key durable goods features into model formulation specifically the deterioration rate or durability in a reverse measure and the variation in quality of the used goods our research findings indicate that i the magnitude of trade in rebates increases with the deterioration rate and quality variation ii the segmentation effect outweighs the cannibalization effect when the deterioration rate is moderately high iii the strategic choice of trade ins and cpo options is critically dependent on these two features and iv the majority of profit improvement is generated from trade in provisions although the cpo option can serve as a second profit boosting device

contemporary topics in finance a collection of literature surveys finance plays a critical function in economies and continues to evolve in practice complemented by research policy and regulation the articles in this special issue provide up to date reviews of contemporary topics in finance unconventional monetary policy implicit bank guarantees and financial fraud are in various ways associated with rethinks stimulated by the global financial crisis the topics of inflation risk premia finance and productivity angel investing venture capital relationship lending and microfinance have benefitted from increased research associated with more data and use in practice the final two topics of crowdfunding and crypto currencies are the products of recent technological developments

low carbon production with low carbon premium in cap and trade regulation abstract manufacturers face a choice of whether to reduce their carbon emissions through employing low carbon technologies though many carbon regulations are set up to curb carbon emissions some firms choose not to take low carbon production because the additional cost of low carbon progressing is high however low carbon production would be a better alternative when we consider consumer s low carbon premium in the cap and trade system in this work we solve the manufacturer s multi product joint pricing and production problem when consumers value the low carbon product higher than the ordinary product our findings provide firms with conditions where low carbon production is profitable furthermore we find that the cap and trade would constrain the total carbon emissions and promote low carbon production simultaneously under certain conditions

new hampshire s tax base limits an example of the leviathan model this study views the lack of an income tax on wages and salaries and a general sales tax in new hampshire as tax base limits i use the leviathan model to analyze the differences between the fiscal system in new hampshire and the fiscal systems in vermont maine and massachusetts vermont maine and massachusetts do not have the tax base limits that new hampshire has from 1957 to 1989 new hampshire had lower state and local government tax and expenditure levels than the other three states more rapid population growth lower welfare expenditures but comparable levels of expenditures for several of the major public services and a more competitive structure of state and local government

instant winners legal change in transition and the diffusion of state lotteries this paper investigates the determinants of legal change in a public choice framework an empirical model explaining the timing and probability of decisions to adopt state operated lotteries is developed employing a tobit estimator and explicitly considering the effects of state specific constitutional and political structures spending and tax policies and federal revenue importation evidence is presented showing that legal change is much like economic change lotteries are more likely to be adopted and to be adopted earlier where the costs are lowest relative to expected benefits state legislatures appear to be the main beneficiaries of this public choice process

corporate chartering an exploration in the economics of legal change the corporate form of business organization characterized principally by limited liability share transferability and perpetual life existed far in advance of its official recognition by government in the early nineteenth century and before the unincorporated joint stock company offered through private contracts many of the advantages typically thought to reside exclusively in the corporation 1 despite these deep historical roots however the legal framework surrounding the corporation as we know it today is a relatively recent phenomenon permission to incorporate was long granted sparingly by the state and when granted was accompanied by restrictions on the amount of authorized capital on the scope of operations and on the length of the corporate franchise permission to incorporate for any lawful purpose was not common until 1875 2 thus while corporateness flourished early regulation delayed the beginning of the chartered corporation s rise to prominence until not much more than a century ago

financial fraud a literature review financial fraud a literature review this paper describes the empirical universe of financial fraud as it has been documented in the academic literature specifically it describes the different forms of fraudulent behaviour in the context of financial market activities the prevalence and consequences of such behaviour as identified by previous research and the economic and market structures that scholars believe facilitate it to structure the discussion a conceptual distinction is made between three types of financial fraud false financial disclosures financial scams and financial mis selling the findings of the literature review highlight a number of recent developments that scholars think have facilitated the occurrence of financial fraud including 1 the development of new fundamental conflicts of interest and perverse incentive structures in the financial industry 2 an influx of unsophisticated gullible participants in the financial marketplace 3 the increasing complexity involved in financial market transactions as a result of rapid technological legal and financial innovation and an ever widening menu of financial products 4 an increase in the use of justified secrecy in the form of a mystification of trading models adopted by fund managers

the extent of the market and the supply of regulation we present a model in which setting up and running a regulatory institution takes a fixed cost as a consequence the supply of regulation is limited by the extent of the market we test three implications of this model first jurisdictions with larger populations affected by a given regulation are more likely to have it second jurisdictions with lower incremental fixed costs of introducing and administering new regulations should regulate more this implies that regulation spreads from higher to lower population jurisdictions and that jurisdictions that build up transferable regulatory capabilities should regulate more intensely consistent with the model we find that higher population u s states have more pages of legislation and adopt particular laws earlier in their history than do smaller states we also find that the regulation of entry the regulation of labor and the military draft are more extensive in countries with larger populations as well as in civil law countries where we argue that the incremental fixed costs are lower

manufacturer s return policies and retail competition manufacturers returns policies are a common feature in the distribution of many products the obvious rationale for returns policies is insurance practitioners not surprisingly have a different perspective and view returns as a cost of doing business in this paper we study the strategic effect of returns policies on retail competition and highlight its profitability implications for a manufacturer the setting for our research is the distribution of products with uncertain demand limited shelf lives and retail competition our objective is to provide a better understanding of when manufacturers should adopt returns policies the insights are obtained with a model based on the economics of strategy and decision making under uncertainty we show that when retailing is competitive and there is no uncertainty in demand a returns policy subtly induces retailers to compete more intensely the provision of a returns policy reduces retail prices without affecting wholesale prices thereby reducing retailer margins and improving manufacturer profitability the intuition is that with a returns policy cournot like levels of retail stocks cannot be sustained each retailer will order stocks so that it will not be constrained by stocks and so intensifying retail competition when however demand is uncertain and there is a single retailer a returns policy encourages the retailer to over stock and so decreases upstream manufacturer profits while the provision of a returns policy leads to lower retail margins the optimality of returns policy depends on the overall uncertainty and marginal cost a returns policy reduces the dispersion in retail prices between the high and low states of demand and the range of retail prices in the returns case is contained within the range of retail prices for the no returns case in the general setting when there are competing retailers and demand is uncertain there is a trade off for the manufacturer between the benefits more intense retail competition and the costs excessive stocking of a returns policy we find that a manufacturer should accept returns when the marginal production cost is sufficiently low and demand uncertainty is not too great to validate the results of our theory we conduct an empirical test with data from a major u s retailer the tests confirm our prediction that a returns policy intensifies retail competition and reduces retailer margins our theory and empirical test should interest practitioners and researchers in distribution especially those concerned with managing retail competition

a theory of corporate scandals why the usa and europe differ a wave of financial irregularity in the usa in 2001 2 culminated in the sarbanes oxley act a worldwide stockmarket bubble burst over this same period with the actual market decline being proportionately more severe in europe yet no corresponding wave of financial scandals involving a similar level of companies occurred in europe given the higher level of public and private enforcement in the usa for securities fraud this contrast seems perplexing this paper submits that different kinds of scandals characterize different systems of corporate governance in particular dispersed ownership systems of governance are prone to the forms of earnings management that erupted in the usa but concentrated ownership systems are much less vulnerable instead the characteristic scandal in such systems is the appropriation of private benefits of control this paper suggests that this difference in the likely source of and motive for financial misconduct has implications both for the utility of gatekeepers as reputational intermediaries and for design of legal controls to protect public shareholders the difficulty in achieving auditor independence in a corporation with a controlling shareholder may also imply that minority shareholders in concentrated ownership economies should directly select their own gatekeepers copyright 2005 oxford university press

relicensing as a secondary market strategy secondary markets in the information technology industry where used or refurbished equipment is traded have been growing steadily for original equipment manufacturers oems in this industry the importance of secondary markets has grown in parallel not only as a source of revenue but also because of their impact on these firms competitive advantage and market strategy recent articles in the press have severely criticized some oems who are perceived to be actively trying to eliminate the secondary market for their products other oems have policies that enhance their secondary markets the goal of this paper is to understand how an oem s incentives and optimal strategies vis a vis the secondary market are shaped contingent on her relative competitive advantage product characteristics and consumer preferences the critical trade off that we examine is whether the indirect benefit from maintaining an active secondary market the resale value effect can outweigh the potentially negative effect of the sales of used products at the expense of new product sales the cannibalization effect to that end we develop a durable good model where the oem can directly affect the resale value of her product through a relicensing fee charged to the buyer of the refurbished equipment we analyze the oem s strategy in both the monopoly and the duopoly cases characterize the optimal relicensing fee set by the oem and draw conclusions on the conditions that favor stimulating or deterring the secondary market this paper was accepted by candace a yano operations and supply chain management

evolution and spontaneous uniformity evidence from the evolution of the limited liability company we examine whether the unguided state by state evolution of limited liability company statutes has led to efficient interstate uniformity our evidence suggests significant uniformity has been produced in cases where the net benefits of uniformity are positive and that such uniformity has not been produced by herd behavior our results are consistent with alchian s intuition about the role of market processes and suggests that the survival of efficient rules fostered by the rational behavior of decentralized economic actors are produced by forces beyond the control or foresight of individual lawmakers or legislatures

supply chain design for unlocking the value of remanufacturing under uncertainty abstract owing to the technological innovations and the changing consumer perceptions remanufacturing has gained vast economic potential in the past decade nevertheless major oems in a variety of sectors remain reluctant about establishing their own remanufacturing capability and use recycling as a means to satisfy the extended producer responsibility their main concerns seem to be the potential for the cannibalization of their primary market by remanufactured products and the uncertainty in the return stream in terms of its volume and quality this paper aims at assisting oems in the development of their remanufacturing strategy with an outlook of pursuing the opportunities presented by the inherent uncertainties we present a two stage stochastic closed loop supply chain design model that incorporates the uncertainties in the market size the return volume as well as the quality of the returns the proposed framework also explicitly represents the difference in customer valuations of the new and the remanufactured products the arising stochastic mixed integer quadratic program is not amenable to solution via commercial software therefore we develop a solution procedure by integrating sample average approximation with the integer l shaped method in order to gather solid managerial insights we present a case study based on bsh a leading producer of home appliances headquartered in germany our analysis reveals that while the reverse network configuration is rather robust the extent of the firm s involvement in remanufacturing is quite sensitive to the costs associated with each product recovery option as well as the relative valuation of the remanufactured products by the customers in the context of the bsh case we find that among the sources of uncertainty the market size has the most profound effect on the overall profitability and it is desirable to build sufficient expansion flexibility in the forward network configuration

optimal strategies for trade old for remanufactured programs receptivity durability and subsidy due to its environmental financial and marketing benefits businesses and governments have increasingly embraced remanufacturing however the weak demand for remanufactured reman product severely hinders the implementation of remanufacturing lately trade old for remanufactured tor programs are growing in popularity as they can boost reman product demand in this paper we investigate the conditions when a firm should offer a tor program and how to best implement it our main findings are 1 firms should offer tor programs only when reman product receptivity and new product durability satisfy a certain condition 2 in addition to the reman product receptivity the new product durability also plays a significant role in motivating consumers to participate in tor programs and finally 3 high product remanufacturability and government subsidies are strong incentives for firms to offer their tor programs our analysis provides insights for firms and governments on how to use tor programs to benefit businesses consumers and the environment

competitive advantage of qualified weee recyclers through epr legislation abstract most of waste appliances in china are handled by unqualified recyclers rather than by qualified ones equipped with advanced but costly technology to address this problem china implements a series of take back legislations in the framework of extended producer responsibility epr with a self financing subsidy scheme to analyze the performance of the legislations we develop a two period model with a selling period run by a manufacturer and a recycling period conducted by two recyclers we show that the self financing condition gives an upper limit for the subsidy we also show that this limit is not monotone in the recyclers competitiveness difference and there may be a gap between the upper limit and the optimal subsidy that maximizes the social welfare i e a larger subsidy does not necessarily render a larger welfare further we numerically show that the legislations improve the environment performance but decrease the total profits of the manufacturer and recyclers interestingly the legislations may or may not decrease the consumer surplus

the economics of online crime this paper will focus on online crime which has taken off as a serious industry since about 2004 until then much of the online nuisance came from amateur hackers who defaced websites and wrote malicious software in pursuit of bragging rights but now criminal networks have emerged online black markets in which the bad guys trade with each other with criminals taking on specialized roles just as in adam smith s pin factory specialization has led to impressive productivity gains even though the subject is now bank card pins rather than metal ones someone who can collect bank card and pin data electronic banking passwords and the information needed to apply for credit in someone else s name can sell these data online to anonymous brokers the brokers in turn sell the credentials to specialist cashiers who steal and then launder the money we will examine the data on online crime discuss the collective action aspects of the problem demonstrate how agile attackers shift across national borders as earlier targets wise up to their tactics describe ways to improve law enforcement coordination and we explore how defenders incentives affect the outcomes

a comparative analysis of greening policies across supply chain structures abstract in this paper we examine an apparel serial supply chain whose players initiate product greening we consider situations in which the players cooperate or act individually our problem is motivated by recent developments in the supply chains of global apparel players we build game theoretic models and show how greening levels prices and profits are influenced by channel structures we also study the impact of greening costs and consumer sensitivity towards green apparels we propose a two part tariff contract to coordinate the green channel our key contribution lies in the model of decision making of various supply chain structures and analyzing its impact on the players and supply chain the problem throws interesting insights into the strategies of apparel players and their key decisions

on the robustness of the consumer homogeneity assumption with respect to the discount factor for remanufactured products abstract the strategic closed loop supply chain clsc literature makes the assumption that a consumer s willingness to pay wtp for a remanufactured product is a fraction of his her wtp for the corresponding new product and this fraction called discount factor is assumed to be constant among consumers recent empirical research challenges this assumption by showing that there is considerable variability in discount factors among consumers this paper considers a complex model in the clsc literature strategic remanufacturing under quality choice and compares its solution under constant discount factors with the solution that assumes a probability distribution for the discount factors which is analytically intractable and must be obtained numerically we consider quality choice and remanufacturing for both monopoly and competitive cases overall we find remarkable consistency between the results of the constant and variable discount factor models thus we make a convincing argument that the constant discount factor assumption is robust and can be used due to its tractability

coordinating a socially responsible closed loop supply chain with product recycling abstract this paper analyzes the effects of corporate social responsibility csr and explores channel coordination in a socially responsible manufacturer retailer closed loop supply chain clsc by considering two areas profit maximization and social responsibility through product recycling the manufacturer is socially responsible and exhibits it by recycling of used product that it collects through the retailer using the reverse channel it is found that the channel s non profit maximizing motive through csr practice generates higher profit margin than the profit maximizing objective and revenue sharing contract resolves channel conflict recycling is a key factor for the wholesale price and hence pure profit of the manufacturer because variation of it may lead to decrement or increment even negative wholesale price thus there must be a limit of recycling for optimal benefit for best channel performance the manufacturer provides the retailer all revenues that it generates through recycling in the form of reward thus csr is purely a costly endeavor to the manufacturer moreover unlike the pure profit maximizing supply chain csr has the ability to vary surplus profit share

competitive advantage through take back of used products abstract motivated by a recent antitrust ruling against hill rom one of the two dominant american suppliers of hospital beds we develop a stylized model to investigate the consequences of used product take back on firms industry and customers our findings suggest that by taking back and reselling refurbished products a manufacturer can increase both profit margins and sales to the detriment of a non interfering competitor in our model customers are always better off under product take back but it depends on the degree of competition whether firms use the benefits of take back primarily to increase their margins or to pass them on to the customers by lowering their prices the first firm to offer take back in some cases can deter its competitors from following this profitable strategy especially if it has an existing advantage in terms of lower production cost or higher market share contrary to the claim of hill rom s competitor we find a legitimate business justification for hill rom s reduction of new product prices

pricing and quality decisions and financial incentives for sustainable product design with recycled material content under price leadership abstract design for recycling has been promoted by companies and governments around the world as one of the most important practices for achieving sustainability the success or failure of such a practice however depends heavily on the financial incentives for firms to design products with more recycled or recyclable material contents an interesting phenomenon that can be observed in many markets with products made predominately from either virgin or recycled materials is the existence of price leadership in this paper we utilize an interdisciplinary approach with both theoretical and empirical analyses to study the pricing and design decisions for products with virgin and recycled material contents in a duopoly market consisting of both the environmentally conscious green and non environmentally conscious brown consumers under price leadership our analytical results show that the brown segment s efficient quality provides an anchor product position for the price leader regardless of whether the price leader is a brown or green firm the price follower s financial incentive for becoming a green or brown firm will then lead to different cases of price leadership with very different environmental consequences specifically the arrangement where the brown and green firms are the price leader and follower respectively leads to more environmentally friendly design decisions than those under the other arrangement where the duopolists switch their pricing roles in addition we conduct an empirical analysis to explore the specific types of price leadership in the markets of aluminum cardboards and pet based on the equilibrium pricing and quality decisions we analyze the financial incentives for the more environmentally friendly case of price leadership to be realized and derive important insights to formulating strategies and policies to implement the practice of design for recycling from the interdisciplinary perspective

managing new and remanufactured products we study a firm that makes new products in the first period and uses returned cores to offer remanufactured products along with new products in future periods we introduce the monopoly environment in two period and multiperiod scenarios to identify thresholds in remanufacturing operations next we focus our attention on the duopoly environment where an independent operator io may intercept cores of products made by the original equipment manufacturer oem to sell remanufactured products in future periods we characterize the production quantities associated with self selection and explore the effect of various parameters in the nash equilibrium among other results we find that if remanufacturing is very profitable the original equipment manufacturer may forgo some of the first period margin by lowering the price and selling additional units to increase the number of cores available for remanufacturing in future periods further as the threat of competition increases the oem is more likely to completely utilize all available cores offering the remanufactured products at a lower price

is leasing greener than selling based on the proposition that leasing is environmentally superior to selling some firms have adopted a leasing strategy and others promote their existing leasing programs as environmentally superior to green their image the argument is that because a leasing firm retains ownership of the off lease units it has an incentive to remarket them or invest in designing a more durable product resulting in a lower volume of new production and disposal however leasing might be environmentally inferior because of the direct control the firm has over the off lease products which may prompt the firm to remove them from the market to avoid cannibalizing the demand for new products motivated by these issues we adopt a life cycle environmental impact perspective and analytically investigate if leasing can be both more profitable and have a lower total environmental impact we find that leasing can be environmentally worse despite remarketing all off lease products and greener than selling despite the mid life removal of off lease products our analysis also provides insights for environmental groups and entities that use different approaches to improve the environmental performance of business practices we show that imposing disposal fees or encouraging remanufacturing under some conditions can actually lead to higher environmental impact we also identify when educating consumers to be more environmentally conscious can improve the relative environmental performance of leasing this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

political action committee spending and senate roll call voting this paper addresses how pac spending affects the roll call voting behavior of u s senators using a theoretical framework which draws broadly on the voting literature we develop models that explain senatorial voting behavior in a pre pac and post pac world testing both models we find weak support for a downs black view of voting participation in the first model the second model supports the alteration of voting incentives resulting from pac spending we find that pacs have a positive effect on voting participation the conjecture remains whether pacs change voting outcomes but it is clear that they buy voting participation