on the efficiency of law a public choice perspective economists have not yet developed a comprehensive theoretical framework incorporating transaction cost economics within a public choice perspective for predicting when there will be an efficiency problem with the law transaction cost reasoning and the rent seeking insight have not been applied systematically in a dynamic institutional context to evaluate when the law will be used to increase or not minimize problems of bounded rationality and opportunism this paper takes a first step at identifying and remedying this deficiency the paper first provides a critical review of relevant theoretical contributions made by becker 1983 1985 posner 1977 priest 1977 rubin 1977 1982 williamson 1975 1985 and others we then show how analysis of the efficiency of law can be synthesized into a broader whole by incorporating transaction cost economics more fully into existing understanding of rentseeking in the political realm thus within the public choice paradigm this paper develops a deeper transaction cost analysis of the efficiency of law building on prior research by the authors crew and rowley 1988a 1988b twight 1983 1988 the paper identifies variables that position legal rules on a spectrum that ranges from those that are predominantly transaction cost

the effects of devaluation on the trade balance a critical view and re examination of mile s new results abstract in a often cited article miles 1979 claims to have shown empirically the validity of the global monetarist proposition that devaluations do not affect the balance of trade this paper first uses mile s own framework of analysis to reveal serious deficiencies in his methodology and tests that cast doubt on the validity of his results in a respecified trade balance equation we show that devaluations do affect the trade balance in the traditionally predicted direction the pivotal difference between the two specifications arises from our inclusion of relative price effects and longer lag structure for the exchange rate variable

the less volatile u s economy a bayesian investigation of timing breadth and potential explanations using a bayesian model comparison strategy we search for a volatility reduction in u s real gross domestic product gdp growth within the postwar sample we find that aggregate real gdp growth has been less volatile since the early 1980s and that this volatility reduction is concentrated in the cyclical component of real gdp sales and production growth in many of the components of real gdp display similar reductions in volatility suggesting the aggregate volatility reduction does not have a narrow source we also document structural breaks in inflation dynamics that occurred over a similar time frame as the gdp volatility reduction

on the mis measurement of legislator ideology and shirking in this paper we show that current statistical measures of legislator s shirking are implicitly based on the electoral concept of a unique majority rule equilibrium point in the policy space where elections are contested we note that such equilibria do not exist generically and present statistical results showing that cross sectional regressions where legislators voting indices are predicted by district average demograhic and economic data are mis specified we also discuss a weaker equilibrium construct the uncovered set and present statistical evidence showing that differences in voting behavior between senators from the same state are positively related to the heterogeneity of the electorate we argue that current evidence alleged to show shirking by senators is equally consistent with senators who perfectly represent an idiosyncratic constituency that cannot be represented by district average data

a note on distribution in a vote bidding game with general interest and single issue voters abstract this paper explores the strategies of candidates bidding for votes from a population made up of single issue voters and voters who respond in a probabilistic manner

bank integration and state business cycles we investigate how integration of bank ownership across states has affected economic volatility within states in theory bank integration could cause higher or lower volatility depending on whether credit supply or credit demand shocks predominate in fact year to year fluctuations in a state s economic growth fall as its banks become more integrated via holding companies with banks in other states as the bank linkages between any pair of states increase fluctuations in those two states tend to converge we conclude that interstate banking has made state business cycles smaller but more alike i introduction the united states banking system was once anything but united until 1978 every state in the union barred banks from other states so instead of one national banking system we had more like 50 little banking systems one per state 1 once states opened their borders to out of state banks bank holding companies marched in and bought up or merged with banks all over the country in 1975 just 10 percent of the bank assets in the typical state were owned by a multistate bank holding company by 1994 this interstate bank asset ratio had risen to 60 percent figure i our paper investigates how the advent of interstate banking integration in the united states has affected economic volatility within states with the united states balkanized banking system the fate of a state and its banks were closely tied as went the state so went the banks the farm price deflation in the early 1980s bankrupted many farmers and many farm banks falling oil prices in the mid 1980s wiped out a lot of texans and a lot of texas banks shocks to commodity prices probably caused these contractions but frictions in the banking sector may have aggravated them by allowing a freer flow of bank capital and lending among states we maintain that interstate banking will reduce the drag that banking frictions can have on economic contractions

competition in political and economic markets do anomalies play an important role in explaining economic and political choices are political decisions more prone to anomalies irrationality and inefficiency than economic decisions in their integration of results derived from experimental psychology and applied political economy frey and eichenberger 1990 argue that social scientists ought to answer these questions in the affirmative after examining a large body of choice data frey and eichenberger conclude that individuals deviate from the axioms of rational choice in their view the resultant anomalies in individual behavior are unaffected by the aggregation which occurs in the economic marketplace they conclude that political decision making systems correct no larger a proportion of these anomalies than are corrected by the economic market in many institutional settings outlined in their paper decision making systems can be expected to magnify individuals deviations from rational behavior system wide irrational behavior will then produce less frequent trading and a less efficient allocation of resources in this note we examine two components of frey and eichenberger s argument first we reconsider their evidence for irrational behavior in light of a larger body of experimental data which includes choices made in market settings second we argue that competition in political markets will tend to eliminate aggregate anomalies just as it does in economic markets experimental economists often generate data which distinguish between choices individuals indicate in unstructured environments and transactions individuals consummate in markets initial statements regarding choices are often inconsistent with subsequent trading behavior these data indicate that the economist s maximization paradigm based on tenets of rational choice is

a spatial model of legislative voting with perceptual error this paper presents a unidimensional spatial model of voting in which members of congress vote based on an imprecise perception of roll call alternatives the model is applied to the senate roll call votes of 1977 to estimate the ideal points of the senators and to examine the role of a liberal conservative dimension in describing votes on economic issues relative to social issues in light of the spatial model the paper argues that standard models of roll call voting are not based on a theory of choice and hence that it is difficult to interpret their results alternatives to standard models based on the spatial model are developed and are used to analyze the role of ideology in deciding a specific economic issue coal strip mining

explaining output volatility the case of taxation this paper presents strong empirical evidence that the observed heterogeneity of output volatility across countries and over time is partly endogenous in particular based on a closed form solution we obtain a long run equilibrium relationship between taxes and output volatility in the stochastic neoclassical growth model by showing that asymptotically the variance of output growth rates is affected by the level of taxes without affecting the mean we estimate the tax semi elasticities on output volatility and provide convincing empirical evidence that taxes are important to understand differences in output volatility among oecd countries

the stability of the demand for international reserves abstract empirical studies based on data from the 1960s and 1970s yielded estimated demands for international reserves that have been regarded as stable functions of a limited set of variables exept during the period surrounding the collapse of the bretton woods system this paper examines the stability of these estimated demands by extending the samles to include data from the 1980s the new estimation results indicate that the emergenceof external payments difficulties and reduced access to international financial markets of many countries have been accompanied by changes in the changes in the estimated demands for reserves that were as large as those that occurred during the collapse ofthe bretton woods system

toward a public choice theory of monopoly regulation its many dimensions from the perspective of market economics this new thrust was consolidated in 1976 by s peltzman who developed a formal market model in which regulations were viewed as commodities brokered via political markets in response to bids and counter bids by those who stood to gain or to lose from specific regulation outcomes the subsequent contribution by becker 1983 added insights and institutional flesh to the stigler peltzman embryo confirming regulation as an integral component of mainstream market economics an important implication of such contributions especially those from the chicago perspective is that regulation for the most part confirms resource efficiency within market process that political markets in the absence of entry barriers are just as effective as are competitive commodity markets in achieving economic efficiency defined within a comparative institutions framework nowhere is this complacency more apparent than in the conclusion drawn by becker 1983 from a detailed formal analysis of competition among pressure groups for political influence

environmentalism democracy and pollution control this paper makes two empirical contributions to the literature based on predictions generated by a lobby group model first we investigate how environmental lobby groups affect the determination of environmental policy in rich and developing countries second we explore the interaction between democratic participation and political electoral competition the empirical findings suggest that environmental lobby groups tend to positively affect the stringency of environmental policy moreover political competition tends to raise policy stringency in particular where citizens participation in the democratic process is widespread

partisan bias and expressive voting abstract we conduct an experiment to characterize the expressive voting behavior of political partisans we find that participants who are asked to vote on the answer to factual questions tend to offer more partisan responses than those who must answer as decisive individuals we further test whether voters exploit corrective information that sometimes challenges their partisan views when information is available we observe smaller partisan gaps and more correct responses especially when the information is free when information is costly to acquire we find that voters generally choose to remain uninformed consistent with the downsian theory of rational ignorance

the choice of exchange rate regimes in developing countries a multinomial panel analysis abstract this paper analyses the choices of exchange rate regimes in developing countries since 1980 static and dynamic random effects multinomial panel models are estimated using simulation based techniques explanatory variables include oca fundamentals stabilization considerations currency crises factors and political and institutional features the results reveal strong state dependence in regime choices we also find evidence for non monotonic relationship between regime determinants and the degree of regime flexibility

a monetary approach to the crawling peg system theory and evidence this paper develops and estimates a model of the joint determination of the exchange rate international reserves and the rate of inflation under a crawling peg system the framework presented which is an extension of previous work on the monetary approach generates short run deviations from purchasing power parity that occur simultaneously with movements in both international reserves and the exchange rate the model is estimated by full information maximum likelihood on the basis of quarterly data for brazil

the demand for international reserves and monetary equilibrium some evidence from developing countries traditionally two alternative explanations have been offered for the behavior of international reserves through time on the one hand the literature on the demand for international reserves postulates that reserves movements respond to discrepancies between desired and actual reserves onthe other hand according to the monetary approach to the balance of payments changes in international reserves will be related to excess demands or excess supplies for money the purpose of this paper is to empirically integrate these two basic explanations for international reserves movements this is done by estimating a dynamic equation that explicitly allows reserves movements to reflect the monetary authority s excess demand for international reserves and the public s excess demand for money the results obtained using a sample of 23 developing countries that maintained a fixed exchange rate during period 1965 1972 confirm the hypothesis that reserves movements respond both to monetary factors and to differences between actual and desired reserves these results indicate that the exclusion of monetary considerations from the dynamic analysis of international reserves will yield biased coefficients this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

an explanation for why senators from the same state vote differently so frequently abstract this paper explains why rational well informed voters elect politicians with divergent platforms given well defined constituencies and the costliness of any individual politician creating transfers across all interest groups we show that different politicians from the same district can successfully represent vastly different constituencies and still have each politician producing the support maximizing level of transfers our explanation focuses on how obtaining wealth transfers reduces successful constituencies returns to obtaining additional transfers the evidence strongly rejects alternative explanations based upon the median voter and polarized policy preference approaches

drift control of international reserves abstract we develop a model of optimal reserve holdings where the reserve authority controls the upward and downward drift of international reserves and chooses the trigger points that induce changes in drift we argue that this drift control model better describes the dynamic behavior of reserves than does the popular buffer stock model we present an innovative mathematical tool for analyzing the drift control based on martingale stopping theory since the reserve authority has more instruments with drift control than with a buffer stock strategy it can manage reserves at significantly lower cost

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

the dynamics of hours worked and technology the response of hours worked to technology shocks in the postwar us economy has increased over time we offer a structural interpretation of this important time varying macroeconomic moment the time varying patterns captured by a structural var are consistent with those obtained from a parsimonious rbc model with a less than unitary elasticity of substitution between capital and labour the observed changes in the response of hours are attributable to increases in the magnitude of the degree of capital labour substitution finally we conjecture that the observed time variation in is related to changes in the skill composition of the work force and biases in technological change

endogenous choice of amendment agendas types of voters and experimental evidence a stylized model of three parties choosing an amendment agenda and voting over three policy alternatives is analyzed the analysis yields a classification of five types of voters random sincere strategic risk averse and eus expected utility sophisticated proposed by enelow j polit 43 1062 1089 1981 laboratory experiments suggest that the choice of agendas can be partially explained by the sincere voting model 26 of voters and strategic voting model 47 of voters even when players preferences are common knowledge risk aversion may explain choices of up to 56 of the voters finally the eus voting model explains up to 73 of the observed voting behavior

towards an understanding of the role of standard setters in standard setting abstract we investigate the effect of standard setters in standard setting we examine how certain professional and political characteristics of fasb members and sec commissioners predict the accounting reliability and relevance of proposed standards notably we find fasb members with backgrounds in financial services are more likely to propose standards that decrease reliability and increase relevance partly due to their tendency to propose fair value methods we find opposite results for fasb members affiliated with the democratic party although only when excluding financial services background as an independent variable jackknife procedures show that results are robust to omitting any individual standard setter

incomplete information and ideological explanations of platform divergence one of the paradoxes of formal spatial voting models is the robustness of the theoretical result that candidates will converge toward centrists positions and the empirical observation of persistent policy divergence of candidates a solution is that candidates are ideological have policy preferences when candidates have policy preferences and incomplete information about voter preferences then platform divergence is theoretically predicted experimental tests of the ideological model are presented it is shown that platform divergence is significant when candidates are ideological and have incomplete information about voter preferences however candidate positions are more convergent on average than the theory predicts suggesting that subjects value winning independently of the expected payment

the great diversification and its undoing we investigate the hypothesis that macroeconomic fluctuations are primitively the results of many microeconomic shocks we define fundamental volatility as the volatility that would arise from an economy made entirely of idiosyncratic sectoral or firm level shocks fundamental volatility accounts for the swings in macroeconomic volatility in the major world economies in the past half century it accounts for the great moderation and its undoing the initial great moderation is due to a decreasing share of manufacturing between 1975 and 1985 the recent rise of macroeconomic volatility is chiefly due to the growth of the financial sector jel e23 e32 e44 this article explores the hypothesis that changes in the microeconomic composition of the economy during the postwar period can account for the great moderation and its unraveling both in the united states and in the other major world economies we call fundamental volatility the volatility that would be derived only from microeconomic shocks if aggregate shocks come in large part from microeconomic shocks augmented by amplification mechanisms then aggregate volatility should track fundamental volatility to operationalize this idea the key quantity we consider which constitutes one departure from other studies is the following definition of fundamental volatility

demand for environmental goods evidence from voting patterns on california initiatives this article studies voting behavior on 16 environmental ballot propositions in california in order to characterize the demand for environmental goods the environment is found to be a normal good for people with mean incomes but some environmental goods are inferior for those with high incomes at least when supplied collectively an important price of environmental goods is reduced income in the construction farming forestry and manufacturing industries income and price can explain most of the variation in voting there is little need to introduce preference variables such as political ideology

impact of macroeconomic policies upon agricultural trade and international agricultural development international commodity markets in the early 1980s have experienced a severe cyclical downturn high real rates of interest have discouraged stock holding and disinflation has caused asset market participants to shift out of commodities into financial assets this is only the most recent bout of turbulence since we passed from the stable bliss of the 1950s and 1960s the basic question is whether this instability results from a seemingly unending series of shocks or is there a more general basic explanation which transcends individual events

austria s demand for international reserves and monetary disequilibrium the case of a small open economy with a fixed exchange rate regime using a vector error correction approach i estimate austria s demand for international reserves over the period 1985 1 1997 4 and test for short run effects of the disequilibrium on the national monetary market i find that austria s long run reserve demand can be described as a stable function of imports uncertainty and the opportunity cost of holding reserves with strong economies of scale the speed of adjustment takes a value of 38 per cent the results confirm that an excess of money demand supply induces an inflow outflow of international reserves as postulated by the monetary approach to the balance of payments

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

do devaluations improve the trade balance the evidence revisited do devaluations improve the trade balance the evidence revisited this paper reexamines the effectiveness of devaluation in trade balance adjustment the question is addressed in a framework which improves the previous empirical literature in several respects the evidence indicates that devaluations have been a successful tool in inducing trade balance adjustment in particular nominal devaluations are found to result in significant real devaluations that last for at least three years and the real devaluation induces significant trade flows that are distributed over a two to three year period the evidence comes from two different samples 1953 73 and 1975 84 involving twenty seven countries and sixty devaluation episodes 1 introduction do devaluations affect real magnitudes in particular the trade balance a devaluation may effect the trade balance through two channels devaluation of the real exchange rate and a direct effect on domestic absorption the traditional approach stresses the first channel a nominal devaluation is assumed to change the real exchange rate a relative price and thus improve competitiveness in turn if relative prices the terms of trade in a two country two good model affect the trade balance devaluation will be successful in the sense of improving the trade balance ceteris paribus the absorption effect becomes the sole or most important channel in the monetary approach in a world in which all goods and assets are perfect substitutes prices are exogenously given for the small country and wages and prices are flexible in both nominal and real terms a devaluation increases the price level by the same percentage the increase in the price level reduces real balances and thus domestic absorption dornbusch 1973 883 has argued that if such a real balance effect is not present then it might stand to reason that the effects of devaluation are negligible not that there must be other powerful avenues through which it exerts its effects emphasis added the controversy over the effects of devaluation on the trade balance arises because according to frenkel and johnson 1976 42 the monetary approach rejects the emphasis given to the role of relative prices in the analysis of devaluation global monetarists argue that neither of the links in the chain postulated by the traditional approach is likely to hold in practice see laffer 1977 the major disagreement centers on the question of the effectiveness of nominal devaluation to affect the real exchange rate and the importance of the latter in influencing trade flows theoretical arguments have not settled the issue the question is as strongly debated today as it was forty years ago see for example branson 1983 katseli 1983 kaldor 1983 nashashibi 1983 and mckinnon 1981 nor does it seem that the available empirical evidence leads to a consistent answer the best known studies cooper 1971 laffer 1977 salant 1977 miles 1979 gylfason and risager 1984 reach contradictory conclusions 1 cooper and gylfason and risager find that devaluations improve the trade balance or current account while laffer and miles conclude exactly the opposite salant finds that devaluations improve the trade balance but not as often as the overall balance of payments in the face of such diverse findings frenkel 1984 suggests that a reexamination of the issue would be useful indeed himarios 1985 shows that a close examination of miles s widely quoted study reveals serious deficiencies that once addressed lead to opposite results this paper provides new evidence concerning the effectiveness of devaluation in trade balance adjustment the approach differs from past studies in several respects it differs from cooper s laffer s and salant s studies in that it accounts for the effects of other variables that affect the trade balance

the new economics of organization over the last ten years or so an important new approach to the study of organizations has emerged within economics it is perhaps best characterized by three elements a contractual perspective on organizational relationships a theoretical focus on hierarchical control and formal analysis via principal agent models this paper provides political scientists with an overview of the new economics of organization and explores its implications for the study of public bureaucracy so far positive political theory has not contributed much to our understanding of public bureaucracy in part this is due to the unsympathetic treatment that rational modeling and most other modes of quantitative analysis have long received from students of public administration the other side of the coin however is that positive theorists have not made much of an effort to develop theories of bureaucracy their concerns have centered around two basic mechanisms of social choice voting and markets and they have devoted little systematic attention to a third mechanism that is clearly important for understanding how societies and other aggregates make collective decisions this third and relatively unexplored mechanism is hierarchy movement toward a positive theory of hierarchies would fill a serious gap in the social choice literature while at the same time making a theoretical contribution that strikes to the essence of public bureaucracy indeed of all organizations in fact significant steps toward a positive theory of hierarchies have very recently been taken but by economists not political scientists in small numbers of course economists made contributions to the study of public bureaucracy some time ago with the pioneering works of downs 1967 tullock 1965 and niskanen 1971 but this new wave of theoretical work is different it is already a large complex body of literature that is the focus of innovation and excitement among a growing number of economists and it reflects an unusual degree of theoretical coherence and cumulative effort work in this tradition tends to receive orientation from a distinctive economic approach to the analysis of organizations an approach perhaps best characterized by three elements a contractual perspective on organizational relationships a focus on hierarchical control and formal analysis via principal agent models this approach has emerged from recent attempts to move beyond the neoclassical theory of the firm which assumes away all organizational considerations to a theory of economic organizations that can explain why firms corporations and other enterprises behave as they do propo

monetary and exchange rate policies for international financial stability a proposal w v ithout a common monetary standard the remarkable integration of western european north american and the industrialized asian economies in both commodity trade and financial flows is less efficient and becoming untenable dissatisfaction with wildly fluctuating relative currency values euphemistically called floating or flexible exchange rates is a prime cause of the resurgence in protectionism in 1986 87 the overvalued yen forced japanese industrialists to close factories retire workers and write off once valuable investments in plant and equipment this parallels what their american counterparts were forced to do between 1981 and 1985 when the dollar suddenly became overvalued similarly the paring down of the british manufacturing base was precipitated when the pound unexpectedly became a strong petrocurrency in 1979 81 in agriculture japan and european countries are determined to insulate their domestic prices of farm products from unsettling international influences including volatile fluctuations in the yen dollar or mark dollar exchange rates thus unless exchange stability is first achieved the american government s attempt to broaden the general agreement on tariffs and trade to encompass agriculture and services is likely to fail but what keeps the three major industrial blocs from developing a common monetary standard to prevent exchange rate fluctuations although many people

intertemporal optimizing models of trade and current account balance a survey abstract this study surveys the intertemporal optimizing models of trade and current account balance that were developed calibrated and empirically tested since they came into vogue in the 1980s the implications of these models often differ from those of static and dynamic conventional non optimizing models the literature on optimizing models has not only grown reasonably fast but has also witnessed significant advances in methodology and these models have culminated into a distinct strand of new open economy macroeconomics the studies conducted until the late 1980s have used deterministic perfect foresight models while several studies conducted since the 1990s relax the perfect foresight and certainty equivalence assumptions and develop stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models to account for uncertainty confronting the optimizing agents the future research needs to explore the possibility of tracing any preferred specification of household preferences model the effect of time varying discount factor on household utility function and intertemporal budget constraint examine the role of costs in international trade place a parallel emphasis on the empirical verifications of theoretical propositions examine the relative performance of optimizing vis a vis non optimizing models and rationalize the extreme propositions of perfect and imperfect capital mobility in the wake of moderately open capital accounts

the international convergence of inflation rates during fixed and floating exchange rate regimes abstract according to the assets approach to the balance of payments exchange rate under a fixed exchange rate regime inflation must grow at the same rate in each of the participating countries at least in the long run the model implies that reserve currency inflation causes world inflation the mechanism by which inflation is transmitted when currencies are allowed to float is more complex the long run international convergence of inflation is studied using modern time series techniques on post war data from the g 7 countries the evidence on the convergence of inflation during the fixed regime portion of the sample is strong and consistent with the notion of reserve currency causality i e from the us to the rest of the world the evidence of convergence over the floating portion of the sample is also quite strong but no single currency can be characterized as the common underlying source of world inflation implying the inflation rates are endogenous

protecting capital from itself u s attempts to regulate the eurocurrency system in 1979 and 1980 the u s government attempted to regulate the eurocurrency system in order to stabilize the international monetary and financial systems and for u s domestic monetary purposes the conflict between the u s government especially the treasury department and the federal reserve board and u s based transnational banks tnbs illustrates tnbs contradictory interests which are neither self evident nor easily discernible even to tnbs themselves the state comes to play a mediating role vis a vis tnbs in an only partially successful attempt to transform contradictory interests into coherent policy resulting in conflict between the state and tnbs the origins of u s regulatory initiatives are rooted in multilateral attempts to supervise banks between 1974 and 1978 and the failure of such coordination during the 1978 dollar crisis from the conflict between u s officials and u s tnbs emerge varying concepts of tnbs interests after examining the reasons for the failure of the u s proposals i conclude by suggesting some implications of tnbs contradictory interests for statist and social conflict theories of the advanced capitalist state few theories of the state have adequately taken into account the complexity and contradictory interests of transnational capital

a roll call analysis of the endangered species act amendments public choice economics view legislative process as a transaction in the political market interest groups demand regulation in their favor and lobby lawmakers the lawmakers analyze an assortment of factors and supply legislation to the winning group thereby maximizing their rent from the political market this article examines endangered species act esa amendments from a public choice perspective congressional voting on the esa amendments are assessed using a model based on political incentive and ideology the results show that the lawmakers voting behavior is correlated with their party affiliation ideology and several characteristics of their home state such as number of endangered species proportion of urban population contribution of the natural resources and construction sectors in gross state product and geographical location copyright 2001 oxford university press

volatility accounting a production perspective on increased economic stability this paper examines the declining volatility of u s output growth from a production perspective at the aggregate level increased output stability reflects decreased volatility in both labor productivity growth and hours growth as well as a significant decline in the covariance the decline in output volatility can also be traced to less volatile labor input and total factor productivity growth and the smaller covariance between them at the industry level the decline in volatility appears widespread with about 80 of component industries showing smaller contributions to aggregate output volatility after 1984 although most of the aggregate decline reflects smaller covariances between industries there is also strong evidence of a decline in the correlation between hours and labor productivity growth across industries the paper concludes with a discussion of potential explanations jel e0 e3

are political statements only expressive an experiment abstract many forms of political communication are thought to be expressive rather than instrumental we present evidence suggesting the presence of a perceived instrumental benefit of individual political communication subjects may send a sometimes costly comment on another person s choice of how to donate to two rival political groups subjects who may comment before the choice is made when they may have some persuasive impact are more than twice as likely to comment as those who may only send a message after the decision when the timing of the messages pre or post decision remains fixed but the experimenter alone receives the message there is no difference in the proportion of messages sent pre and post decision moreover most of the comments made to the decision maker prior to the decision use an imperative construction while few do so after the decision is made or when writing to the experimenter alone taken together these results indicate that political expression is both expressive and instrumental

the square root law uncertainty and international reserves under alternative regimes canadian experience 1950 1976 abstract a transactions precautionary model of demand for international reserves is developed and tested against canadian data the results indicate that i the demand for reserves is characterized by economies of scale with respect to the volume of transactions that are invariant to the exchange rate regime but ii structural change took the form of a relatively larger responsiveness of reserves holdings under fixed rates to a measure of permanent variability in transactions

expressive voting and government redistribution testing tullock s charity of the uncharitable models of expressive voting postulate that voters will consume ideological stances on issues by voting for them even when they are against the voter s own narrow selfinterest if the probability of being a decisive voter is low when a voter is unlikely to sway the outcome the odds that avoter will incur any real personal cost a higher tax burden for example from her own expressive vote is small we testand find support for tullock s straightforward empiricalimplication of this model that government welfare transfer payments are inversely related to the probability of being thedecisive voter

diverging trends in aggregate and firm volatility this note documents the diverging trends in volatility of the growth rate of sales at the aggregate and firm levels we establish that the upward trend in firm volatility is not simply driven by a compositional bias in the sample studied we argue that this new fact brings into question the proposed explanations for the decline in aggregate volatility and that given the symmetry of the diverging trends at the micro and macro levels a common explanation is likely we conclude by describing one such theory

currency substitution and instability in the world dollar standard comment myron ross correctly points out in his comment that u s price inflation is better predicted by the american money supply mlus than by the broader ten country world money supply mlw over the whole statistical time series from 1960 to 1980 provided in mckinnon s 1982 article specifically he showed that american price inflation is more highly correlated with mlus lagged one or two years than with mlw similarly lagged however mckinnon s present tense assertion that in general growth in the world money supply is a better predictor of american price inflation than is american money growth applies only to the weak dollar standard of the 1970 s and early 1980 s as his preceding discussion intended but failed to indicate clearly only in this later period of volatile exchange rates and price level instability in the united states do alternative hard currencies such as the yen and deutsche mark become competitive as international stores of value and units of account hence international currency substitution associated with the ebb and flow of speculation against or for the dollar significantly destabilized the demand for mlus in the 1970 s and 1980 s and only in this later period might one expect the sum of these internationally substitutable monies ml to predict world and perhaps even american price inflation better than does mlus in contrast during the strong dollar standard of the 1950 s and 1960 s the dollar was unchallenged as international money exchange rates were by and large convincingly fixed speculation for or against the dollar was incapable of substantially altering u s interest rates or of directly affecting the demand for mlus because cyclical international influences did not then destabilize the demand for dollars mlus was by itself a fairly efficient predictor of american prices thus ross s statistical results for the period 1960 to 1980 show somewhat greater predictive strength in mlus compared to ml because the 1960 s data outweigh the dissimilar data of the 1970 s let us instead partition the sample of imf data around the year 1970 whence began the transition from fixed to fluctuating exchange rates and the maturation of alternative monetary systems in europe and japan after applying similar statistical correlation procedures to those used by ross we show a striking structural shift in the world s monetary system the explanatory power of mlw increases sharply as that of mlus declines moderately tan 1982 for the early period of 1960 to 1970 table 1 shows simple correlation coefficients between annual percentage changes in money supplies and changes in american and world wholesale price indices the mlus provides a good explanation of u s prices and of world prices one to two years hence whereas the broader definition of mlw in which mlus enters with a 50 percent weight does surprisingly poorly being insignificantly correlated with american or world prices apparently money growth in industrial countries other than the united states was not then an independent source of worldwide inflationary pressure during the strong dollar standard table 2 shows the same simple correlations between percentage changes in prices and money for the weak dollar standard of stanford university please note that a typographical error giving the last word in the original title as market appeared on the cover of the june 1982 issue of this review the title was correct in the table of contents and on the article

the great increase in relative wage volatility in the united states abstract over the past 25 years real average hourly wages in the united states have become substantially more volatile relative to output microdata from the current population survey cps is used to show that this increase in relative volatility is predominantly due to increases in the relative volatility of hourly wages across different groups of workers compositional changes of the workforce by contrast account for only a small fraction of the increase in relative wage volatility simulations with a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model illustrate that the observed increase in relative wage volatility is unlikely to come from changes outside of the labor market e g smaller exogenous shocks or more aggressive monetary policy by contrast greater flexibility in wage setting due to deunionization and a shift towards performance pay contracts as experienced by the u s labor market is capable of accounting for a substantial fraction of the observed increase in relative wage volatility greater wage flexibility also decreases the magnitude of business cycle fluctuations suggesting an interesting new explanation for the great moderation

computers productivity and input substitution i introduction the last two decades has been a puzzling time for many productivity analysts while computer prices fell at extraordinary rates and firms invested hundreds of billions of dollars in new computer equipment aggregate productivity growth remained sluggish this computer productivity paradox has generated a large literature that examines the economic impact of the computer revolution 1 this paper offers a simple solution to the computer productivity paradox by making careful distinction between computers as an output from one sector and an input to other sectors data for 35 manufacturing and service sectors for 1947 1991 show that sectoral differences are crucial in understanding the impact of computers aggregate analysis is inappropriate since it obscures basic distinctions between a shifting production function in the computer producing sector multi factor productivity growth and movements along production functions in the computer using sectors substitution and capital accumulation once these differences are isolated the growth impact of computers is readily observable the computer producing sector experienced fundamental technological progress and now produces cheaper better computers the sectoral data show this as rapid multi factor productivity mfp growth for 1973 1991 although aggregate mfp growth remains below historic averages the computer producing sector has clearly done its part mfp growth in this sector is many times the economy average and has contributed over one third of aggregate mfp growth for 19811991 the sectoral detail shows that the slowdown in aggregate productivity would have been much more severe were it not for such large mfp gains in the computer producing sector for the other sectors of the economy computers affect growth in a more traditional although less glamorous way when the price of real computing power fell so dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s firms responded by substituting away from relatively expensive labor and non computer capital and investing heavily in cheap computers for these sectors the computer revolution affects output growth not by raising mfp but by inducing firms to accumulate computers at extraordinary rates real computer services for example grew in excess of 20 per year in 14 out of 35 sectors for 1973 1991 although virtually all sectors are rapidly accumulating computer equipment computers remain small in levels in 1991 for example computer investment was only 10 of private fixed investment so the growth contribution of computers remains small relative to sectoral aggregates of labor and non computer capital the rapid rates of accumulation however are clearly making computers a more important source of growth across sectors with this heavy investment also came the wide spread expectation that computers would fundamentally alter the way firms operate and lead to higher mfp the reality has been very different as the most computer intensive sectors show steep declines in mfp growth after 1973 with three quarters of all computers concentrated in three service sectors trade fire and other services however this finding must be interpreted with caution as griliches 1994 notes output in these sectors is largely unmeasurable and thus mfp growth will be understated nonetheless it is quite reasonable that even computer using sectors where output is easier to measure show no mfp gains computer investment creates a capital input that enters the production function like any other purchased input since constant quality deflators embody productivity improvements in investment the direct impact is seen through the rapid capital accumulation only if the adoption of computers leads to production externalities or spillovers would computer investment also increase mfp growth the data however show no evidence of this ii computers and growth the national statistics most clearly show the computer revolution in the investment data

currency composition of foreign exchange reserves abstract this paper analyses the factors that govern the choice of the currency composition of official foreign exchange reserves first we introduce a new panel dataset on the key currencies in foreign exchange reserves of about 60 economies in the 1999 2017 period second we show that the currency composition of reserves relates strongly to the co movement of the domestic currency with key currencies and the currency invoicing of trade these factors represent attributes of the dollar or the euro rather than of the united states or the euro area they exert about equal effects on the currency composition of foreign exchange reserves we demonstrate that these findings are robust to a host of other possible factors

everyone likes a winner an empirical test of the effect of electoral closeness on turnout in a context of expressive voting under instrumental voting closer elections are expected to have higher turnout under expressive voting however turnout may increase with decreasing closeness when voters have a preference for winners an empirical test using data on belgian municipal elections supports this we find that turnout reaches a local maximum when the largest party in the election obtains just over 52 of the seats and then falls supporting the instrumental closeness argument there is however another turning point the presence of a highly dominating party receiving at least two thirds of the votes stimulates turnout despite the fact that dominance implies lower closeness

rational moralists the role of fairness in democratic economic politics in this paper we empirically test for the influence of fairness considerations on the willingness to redistribute income in private and in democratic decisions in contrast to standard explanations of income redistribution our theory takes into account that prices shift decisively as we move from the sphere of private contributions to politics at the polls it is nearly costless to observe social norms therefore we expect individuals to behave more fairly in the political sphere than in the market place we present experimental evidence which is consistent with this hypothesis in distributive struggles social norms moderate the inclination of human beings to behave like gangsters

the ideological component of senate voting different principles or different principals evidence exists on both sides of the question of whether or not legislator specific ideologically driven shirking of constituent interest occurs in this paper we use a well known model of such shirking by senators as our point of departure and add measures of inter state constituent interests the role of campaign contributions and hence the importance of whether or not senators are up for reelection we find some evidence that the model provides a stronger explanation for senators up for reelection than for those who are not and that campaign contributions help determine voting decisions by these legislators finally accounting for inter state constituent interests shirking is not a significant variable in the voting decisions of senators facing reelection thus it appears that the reelection interests of some senators have been mistaken for ideologically driven shirking

moving through the political participation hierarchy a focus on personal values this study empirically explores the determinants of political participation using data from the european social survey we investigate the relationship between political participation and personal values using the schwartz 1992 values inventory a political participation hierarchy is theorized and activities are categorized into four levels of participation none weak medium and strong based on the cost of participating and how unconventional the activity is empirical analysis points to individuals who are more open to change and more self transcendent being more likely to participate sub sample analysis contrasting east and west europe suggests that the role for personal values is more subdued in the east with respect to moving individuals from not participating to at least voting furthermore the use of a generalized ordered logit model in this study illustrates the complex nature of many of the determinants of political participation in particular we find that the influence of the maj

the shifts in lead lag properties of the u s business cycle we document shifts in the lead lag properties of the u s business cycle since the mid 1980s specifically 1 the well known inverted leading indicator property of real interest rates has completely vanished 2 labor productivity switched from positively leading to negatively lagging output and labor inputs over the cycle and 3 the unemployment rate shifted from lagging productivity negatively to leading positively many contemporary business cycle models produce counterfactual cross correlations revealing that popular frictions and shocks provide an incomplete account of business cycle comovement determining the underlying sources of these shifts in the lead lag properties and their consequences for macroeconomic forecasts is therefore a promising direction for future research jel e24 e32 e43

legislator voting and shirking a critical review of the literature we set out to critically review the progress in answering two related questions what determines how legislators vote and how can shirking by legislators be measured in the first category the hypothesis that legislators shirk in order to indulge their personal ideological preferences has led researchers astray the theoretical underpinning is shaky on two counts first legislators who indulge their preferences at the expense of their constituents preferences put themselves at a competitive electoral disadvantage second the original two stage procedure used to measure ideological shirking is severely flawed among many other problems the residual measure of shirking implicitly assumes that the median voter is the relevant constituent principal for the legislator agent

new estimates of the demand for non gold reserves under floating exchange rates abstract the demand for non gold reserves in per cent of imports is found to depend on fundamental factors such as real imports and on disturbance factors including changes in exchange rates and in the terms of trade in a way that differs between groups of countries these reserve percentages and not just import prices are raised through faster m2 growth in the united states than in other industrial countries conversely a higher us unemployment rate associated with global slack generally depresses reserve percentages giving us policy significant influence over the evolution of international reserves

moral bias in large elections theory and experimental evidence in this article we provide evidence that voters in large elections tend to vote against their material self interest and to vote for a morally or ethically appealing alternative it may seem puzzling that voters might behave differently in small elections than they do in large ones however we show that such behavior is a logical consequence of voters having a conflict between obtaining a better material outcome and choosing a moral action we develop a simple model of this conflict and show that decreasing the probability that a single vote is decisive i e pivot probability reduces the importance of outcomes relative to actions in voter decision making because pivot probability is generally small in large elections alternatives that are understood by voters to be morally superior are more likely to win in large elections than in small ones thus compared to the preferences of voters election results will be biased in favor of moral alternatives 1 the model produces a set of predictions that we test in a laboratory experiment to clarify ideas consider a situation in which two outcomes are possible a and b assume that b gives

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

an experimental study of expressive voting in this paper we report results of an initial attempt to test the theory of expressive voting our experiment involves requiring subjects to vote between receiving a in cash or having b donated to charity on their behalf across subjects we vary the probability that their vote will decide which disbursement is made as the probability of being decisive is lowered the opportunity cost of giving expression to charitable sentiment decreases hence the likelihood of voting in accordance with such sentiment is expected to increase we find weak support for the hypothesis but the results do not replicate when we alter the parameter settings limitations of our design are discussed

demand for international reserves and exchange rate intervention policy in an adjustable peg economy abstract this paper develops and estimates a model of the joint determination of the official and black market exchange rates private and government demand for international reserves and the rate of inflation under an adjustable peg system the framework presented combines and extends aspects of the monetary approach to the balance of payments and exchange rate determination with the theory of the demand for international reserves the role of expectations about devaluation is taken into account the model is estimated by full information maximum likelihood on the basis of quarterly data for turkey

long run implications of investment specific technological change an attempt is made to disentangle its effects from the more traditional hicksneutral form of technological progress the balanced growth path for the model is characterized and calibrated to u s national income and product account nipa data the quantitative analysis suggests that investment specific technological change accounts for the major part of growth jel e13 030 041 047

political shirking opponent quality and electoral support several recent papers in the public choice literaturesuggest that legislators shirk or vote in a mannercontrary to constituent interest this paper exploresthe relationship between senatorial shirking andelectoral consequences i model political shirking opponent quality and election outcomes assimultaneous and find significant evidence of arelationship between shirking over the senatorial termand electoral outcomes however i find that voterspunish recent shirking much more than they punishearly term shirking and that senators apparently actconsistently with this relationship

self interest altruism and health risk reduction an economic analysis of voting behavior while classical economic theory suggests that the demand for private goods is motivated by economic self interest a growing body of literature suggests that the demand for public goods is driven both by self interest and by altruistic motives the political arena has been a major testing ground for this hypothesis recently a number of studies have tried to empirically isolate and determine the importance of economic versus ideological factors in explaining political choices by representatives kau and rubin 1979 peltzman 1984 kalt and zupan 1984 while congressional voting records have provided a rich source of data for empirical analysis a consensus opinion on the importance of self interest versus altruism has not been reached and remains controversial altruistic motivations have also been

determinants of exchange rate practices some empirical evidence from thailand although thailand has achieved a spectacular average annual growth rate of 8 in the past two decades due largely to the opening of the economy to international trade there is not yet a consensus on the exchange rate regime that is most suited to the restoration of sustained growth in thailand this study empirically investigates the predictors of exchange rate regimes in thailand using quarterly data spanning the period 1990 1 and 2002 3 results indicate that the government is likely to choose a pegged exchange rate regime in periods of monetary shocks and unsustainable public finance whereas an open economy with a degree of economic development and foreign reserves will encourage the government to opt for a flexible exchange regime in thailand

too much of a good thing the adequacy of international reserves in the aftermath of crises this paper has a number of purposes first it revisits the older theory of reserve adequacy and optimality to see whether this can still be used and perhaps strengthened in ways that would inform the current debate second it explores the connection between reserve adequacy and currency crisis in the light of recent experience and empirical research third it critically investigates alternative rule of thumb measures of reserve adequacy fourth and drawing on the foregoing analysis it examines the extent to which crisis countries should seek to replenish and build up their international reserves in the post crisis period additional owned reserves represent a guaranteed and unconditional source of liquidity is this what is needed

service sector protection considerations for developing countries the inclusion of services in the uruguay round of multilateral trade negotiations has focused attention on the protection of domestic service suppliers against competition from foreign suppliers issues arising from these negotiations however may obscure another and more important issue the case for unilateral liberalization this article first surveys methods of protection in the service sector and then examines the likely cost of protection particular attention is given to developing countries what evidence there is suggests that the costs of protection may be high the article also discusses economic principles that could guide a review of policy toward international transactions in the service sector quantitative restrictions or bans on foreign service suppliers whether they wish to supply through trade or establishment cannot easily be defended in economic terms and provide an obvious first target

separating economic from political influences on government decisions abstract the public interest theory is a poor predictor of government decisions relative to interest group theories but a sophisticated public interest theory is a more serious alternative to the former testing the sophisticated theory s predictions is problematic however when public interest is coincident with an interest group s interests a four step method is developed that disentangles public interest and interest group interests by separating economic from political incentives applying the method to the national forest service decisions about wilderness designations indicates whether interest groups were successful in influencing allocation decisions and whether allocation decisions were in the public interest

non binding linked issues referenda analysis and an application non binding referenda petitions are an instrument of direct democracy that allows citizens to signal preferences to politicians outside the electoral cycle this paper provides a simple theoretical and empirical analysis of a particular form of non binding referenda so called linked issues petitions it analyzes the ability of issue linkage to increase participation levels above those of single issue petitions and applies the analytical insights to a controversial referendum held in austria in 2002 that linked issues of transboundary nuclear risk and eastern enlargement of the european union

voting when money and morals conflict an experimental test of expressive voting abstract moral considerations may matter much in voting because the costs of expressing support for a morally worthy cause may be low in a referendum these costs depend on whether a voter expects to affect the outcome of the referendum to test the low cost theory of expressive voting we experimentally investigate a proposal to tax everyone and to donate tax revenues the analysis of expectations and voting decisions shows that the low cost theory fails to explain voting decisions instead we find that voters tend to approve of the proposal if they expect others to approve too

coalitions in congressional voting scholars of congress generally agree on four points concerning roll call votes first roll call votes are important to members of congress who care about reelection public policies or both second members have neither sufficient resources nor incentives to acquire process and interpret information about the content and consequences of hundreds of roll call votes considered on the floor each year 1 third insufficient resources and incentives induce members to apply simple decision rules on most votes fourth a voting model should conform to the choices members make under uncertainty 2 the scholars however differ in their specification of the simple rules members adopt familiar specifications include voting decisions rooted in two or three party alignments one or more policy dimensions self interest or ideology and cue taking to varying degrees most command an intuitive appeal and empirical support clearly it is important to evaluate each model based on its a refutable implications or b performance relative to the competing models to test a unidimensional voting model in which members vote based on an imprecise perception of the issues involved 4 this paper adopts the first approach it seeks to refute a pair of comparative static implications of the model two reasons account for the adoption of approach a and not b first to the extent feasible a comparison of the unidimensional model with the competing voting models appears in poole and rosenthal 1985a 1985b second the likelihood ration test considered to be statistically unambiguous requires that competing models generate a nested set of hypotheses see amemiya 1981 unfortunately models of roll call voting with substantially different origins 5 seldom meet this requirement

do voters affect or elect policies evidence from the u s house there are two fundamentally different views of the role of elections in policy formation in one view voters can affect candidates policy choices competition for votes induces politicians to move toward the center in this view elections have the effect of bringing about some degree of policy compromise in the alternative view voters merely elect policies politicians cannot make credible promises to moderate their policies and elections are merely a means to decide which one of two opposing policy views will be implemented we assess which of these contrasting perspectives is more empirically relevant for the u s house focusing on elections decided by a narrow margin allows us to generate quasi experimental estimates of the impact of a randomized change in electoral strength on subsequent representatives roll call voting records we find that voters merely elect policies the degree of electoral strength has no effect on a legislator s voting behavior for example a large exogenous increase in electoral strength for the democratic party in a district does not result in shifting both parties nominees to the left politicians inability to credibly commit to a compromise appears to dominate any competition induced convergence in policy

campaign war chests as a barrier to entry in congressional races i introduction issues surrounding the nature and degree of competition in political races have been examined extensively in both the economic and political science literature with most attention focused on the interplay between incumbent and challenger expenditures and electoral success this study extends our understanding of political competition by investigating the impact of an incumbent s war chest on a challenger s decision to mount a campaign 1 for this purpose a war chest is defined as a pool of unencumbered funds accumulated prior to the start of a campaign for elective office 2 sorauf 1988 182 has observed that early receipts even without early spending discourage competition in the primary and attractive challengers in the general election jacobson 1985 26 has argued the most effective strategy for keeping a seat in congress is to avoid serious opposition contemporary critics and reformers of campaign financing practices use such words as frighten intimidate and overpower to describe the role of an incumbent s war chest 3 despite this kind of attention little is actually known about the degree to which war chests diminish entry or reduce the quality of a challenge we present three alternative mechanisms to explain how an incumbent s war chest might deter entry each is based upon a war chest serving as a credible commitment to spend heavily if challenged specifically war chests may either represent excess capacity in financing a campaign or serve as a signal of non observable incumbent characteristics that define a formidable opponent aside from determining whether an incumbent is challenged a war chest might also affect the quality of the challenger for example potential candidates with prior political experience may be unwilling to risk their political capital on a long shot proposition to test for these effects on entry into house races a trichotomous logit model is estimated the choices are uncontested race contested by an ordinary challenger and contested by an experienced challenger although the empirical model is not sufficiently rich to fully distinguish among competing mechanisms the regression results are robust incumbent war chests negatively affect the likelihood of a contested race and the quality of the challenger ii war chests as a barrier to entry becker 1958 106 in comparing economic and political competition observed i n an ideal political democracy competition is free in the sense that no appreciable costs or artificial barriers prevent an individual from running for office in the theory of the firm entry occurs when the expected postentry stream of profits minus the cost of entry is positive analogously an individual will enter a political race when the expected gain from holding office is positive expected gain as defined by baron 1989 is a function of campaign costs the probability of winning and the personal valuation placed by the candidate on the office the first two determinants are partly endogenous depending upon the strategic interplay of the candidates the third aside from its direct effects indirectly affects the first two for example persons hungry for office may be committed to expending greater effort and funds on their campaigns thus increasing their probability of winning similarly as lott has emphasized nontransferable brand name capital would be another factor creating a commitment to aggressively pursue office thereby affecting campaign costs and the probability of winning 4 that some challengers are deterred however need not imply the existence of a political market failure in a contestability sense the lack of a viable challenger on the ballot does not imply a lack of competition good representation will discourage entry similarly the fact that some incumbents will aggressively seek re election frightening away potential challengers is not a sign that competition is lacking

earning through learning in legislatures this inquiry applies gary becker s theoretical notions of general and specific training to the experiential learning that occurs within political institutions in particular the u s congress in the process we isolate economic facets of these legislative experiences that influence the rental value of human capital derived from congressional training we identify four factors that structure legislators post elective wages pre congressional salary year of entry tenure and variables closely related to general training in congress specifically assignment to powerful legislative committees acquisition of broad skill packages investment in expanding skill set proficiencies and to a lesser extent life cycle driven declines in such investments

international reserves before and after the global crisis is there no end to hoarding we evaluate the impact of the global financial crisis gfc and recent structural changes in the patterns of hoarding international reserves ir we confirm that the determinants of ir hoarding evolve with developments in the global economy during the pre gfc period of 1999 2006 gross saving is associated with higher ir in developing and emerging markets the negative impact of outward direct investment on ir accumulation is consistent with the recent trend of diverting international assets from the international reserve account into tangible foreign assets the joneses effect lends support to the regional rivalry in hoarding ir as a motivation and commodity price volatility induces precautionary buffer hoarding during the 2007 2009 gfc period previously significant variables become insignificant or display the opposite effect probably reflecting the frantic market conditions driven by financial instability nevertheless the propensity to import and gross saving continue to display strong and even larger positive effects on ir holding the results from the 2010 2012 post gfc period are dominated by factors that had been mostly overlooked in earlier decades while the negative effect of swap agreements and the positive effect of gross saving on ir holdings are in line with our expectations we find a change in the link between outward direct investment and ir in the pre and post crisis period the macro prudential policy tends to complement ir accumulation developed countries display different demand behaviors for irs higher gross saving is associated with lower ir holding possibly reflecting high income countries tendency to deploy their savings in the global capital markets the presence of sovereign wealth funds motivates developed countries to hold a lower level of ir our predictive exercise affirms that an emerging market economy with insufficient ir holdings in 2012 tends to experience exchange rate depreciation against the u s dollar when many emerging markets were adjusted to the news of tapering quantitative easing in 2013