spurious volatility in historical unemployment data this paper shows that the stabilization of the unemployment rate between the pre 1930 and post 1948 eras is an artifact of improvements in data collection procedures prewar methods are used to construct postwar unemployment data that are consistent with the historical data the constructed postwar series is nearly as volatile as the pre 1930 unemployment data the constructed postwar data are systematically more volatile than the actual postwar data because the cyclical behavior of the labor force and productivity are misspecified in the construction procedures the relationship between the actual and constructed postwar unemployment series is used to construct new historical data

competing models of international lending activity abstract four competing models of the world bank s lending to developing countries are constructed and econometrically estimated by pooled time series and cross section data the analysis suggests that a model combining economic and political determinants performs best besides per capita income inflation balance of payment and budget deficit external debt and past growth political determinants such as the capitalist climate or political instability are also important as well as a recipient country s former status as a colony or dominion this politico economic model is successfully used to forecast the distribution of ibrd loans and ida credits among the developing countries

an inventory model embedded in designing a supply contract to reduce lead time and its variability modern supply and transportation contracts often specify the frequency of and volume available for future deliveries in advance even when final demand is somewhat uncertain yano and gerchak yano c a y gerchak 1989 transportation contracts and safety stocks for just in time deliveries manufacturing and oper management 2 314 330 we explore the joint optimization of contract parameters and inventory control policy in such environments we first model and derive the optimal periodic review inventory policy corresponding to a given supply contract which generates piecewise linear convex ordering costs the optimal policy has two critical levels and there is a range of stock levels for which the quantity ordered equals the contract volume to numerically compute the critical levels we model consecutive inventory levels as a markov chain whose steady state distribution is used to compute the holding shortage and transportation costs we then use the

structure behavior and voter turnout in the united states electoral participation in the united states is examined to provide a clearer account of the effect of the registration requirement on individual voting behavior pooling nes data from 1980 1984 and 1988 i first model with traditional and selection bias techniques the full electorate to distinguish among three groups nonregistrants registered nonvoters and voters analyses limited to recent movers then reported to understand more fully the forces associated with the actual decision calculi of registering and voting the influences of many factors commonly accepted as important determinants of voting are disentangled and their effect at each stage is ascertained factors yielding inconsistent effects in previ research or believed to be unimportant such as race gender attitudes toward the candidates and trust government are shown to deserve closer scrutiny by electoral scholars

impact of transportation contract on inventory systems with demand cancellation abstract supply contracts often specify the quantity of inventory for shipments where retailers are liable to pay for ordering costs if order quantity exceeds the contracted size we analyze a periodic review system where the firm manages its demand that are reserved with a one period leadtime together with a multi tier supply contract we show that the optimal inventory policy has the primary structure of finite generalized base stock policy whose critical numbers depend on reservation parameters the single multiple periods and the infinite horizon models are studied the presence of ordering costs needs a different approach from that in yuan and cheung 2003 to analyze the infinite horizon model

analysis of supply contracts with quantity flexibility this paper explores a class of supply contracts under which a buyer receives discounts for committing to purchases in advance the further in advance the commitment is made the larger the discount as time rolls forward the buyer can increase the order quantities for future periods of the rolling horizon based on updated demand forecast information and inventory status however the buyer pays a higher per unit cost for the incremental units such contracts are used by automobile and contract manufacturers and are quite common in fuel oil and natural gas delivery markets we develop a finite horizon dynamic programming model to characterize the structure of the optimal replenishment strategy for the buyer we present heuristic approaches to calculate the order volume in each period of the rolling horizon finally we numerically evaluate the heuristic approaches and draw some managerial insights based on the findings

presidential and congressional vote share equations three vote share equations are estimated and analyzed in this paper one for presidential elections one for on term house elections and one for mid term house elections the sample period is 1916 2006 considering the three equations together allows one to test whether the same economic variables affect each and to examine various serial correlation and coattail possibilities the resulting three equation model can then be analyzed dynamically which is done in section 4 the main conclusions are briefly 1 there is strong evidence that the economy affects all three vote shares and in remarkably similar ways 2 there is no evidence of any presidential coattail effects on the on term house elections the presidential vote share and the on term house vote share are highly positively correlated but this is because they are affected by some of the same variables 3 there is positive serial correlation in the house vote in that the previous mid term house vote share positively affects the on term house vote share and the previous on term house vote share positively affects the mid term house vote share 4 the presidential vote share has a negative effect on the next mid term house vote share the most likely explanation for this is a balance argument where voters are reluctant to let one party become too dominant ruled out as possible explanations for this fourth result is any reversal of a coattail effect since there is no evidence of an effect in the first place and a regression to the mean since the positive serial correlation in the house vote implies no such regression also it is not simply voting against the party in the white house because the presidential variable is a vote share variable not a 0 1 incumbency variable

new lending to less developed countries the effect of the imf among the institutions which determine the international financial environment the international monetary fund imf or the fund is arguably the most prominent its effect on capital flows however has not been analyzed in detail this paper examines empirically the effect of the imf on lending to less developed country ldc governments previous studies of capital flows have led to mixed results regarding the effect of the imf the overwhelming majority of early investigators concluded that the imf was able to induce new capital flows to ldcs through the use of its conditional lending agreements the problem with this complementarity hypothesis was the absence of strong theoretical support 1 and the weakness of the empirical evidence proponents of the complementarity hypothesis relied primarily on anecdotal evidence although some limited systematic support was offered by mccauley 1986 despite the limitations of the evidence the hypothesis that imf conditional arrangements induced new lending became a stylized fact since the late 1980s more sophisticated empirical evidence has arisen to challenge the complementarity hypothesis papers by hajivassiliou 1987 faini de melo senhadji semlali and stanton 1991 and ozler 1993 indicated that the presence of fund agreements may actually be viewed unfavourably by capital markets from a borrower s point of view imf agreements appeared to have an adverse effect on new lending and risk premia the most serious difficulty with accepting this new evidence is that the research was not designed to examine specifically the complementarity hypothesis of particular concern is the fact that the presence of the imf was often used explicitly as a proxy for past or present financial difficulties the empirical analysis provided in this paper is designed to overcome these difficulties

optimal inventory policy with supply uncertainty and demand cancellation we consider a periodic review model where the firm manages its inventory under supply uncertainty and demand cancellation we show that because of supply uncertainty the optimal inventory policy has the structure of re order point type that is we order if the initial inventory falls below this re order point otherwise we do not order this is in contrast to the work of yuan and cheung 2003 who prove the optimality of an order up to policy in the absence of supply uncertainty we also investigate the impact of supply uncertainty and demand cancellation on the performance of the supply chain using our model we are able to quantify the importance of reducing the variance of either the distribution of yield or the distribution of demand cancellation the single multiple periods and the infinite horizon models are studied

what is the probability your vote will make a difference i introduction what is the probability that one vote will make a difference this is of interest in the utility theory of voting and also for campaign strategists who must assess the costs and benefits of attempting to persuade or turn out voters in particular states 1 in a presidential election the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win times the probability the vote in your state is tied conditional on your state being necessary broadly speaking there are three ways of estimating the probability of a decisive vote the first approach and the oldest in the literature 2 is to set up a theoretical model for the joint distribution of the popular vote margin in the separate jurisdictions in this case the 50 states plus the district of columbia and then analytically compute the probability of each state being nationally decisive and locally tied such models offer important insights but are not directly useful for presidential elections given that our interest is in the particularities of individual states in 2008 rather than on general properties of an electoral system the second approach is purely empirical an estimate of the form y n where n is the number of elections in some large historical sample and y is the number that were tied elections are very rarely tied so one can instead use an estimate such as y 2 000 n where y is now the number of elections decided by less than 1 000 votes such an empirical analysis can be embedded into a regression of vote differential on election level predictors mulligan and hunter 2003 use such a model for estimating the average probability of a decisive vote in legislative elections and gelman katz and bafumi 2004 use the distribution of aggregate vote margins to study the dependence of the probability of a tie on the number of voters 3 unfortunately the complex structure and the small number of presidential elections rule out a purely empirical approach in this case the third method which we use here is to set up a forecasting model for the current election the uncertainties for the 50 statewide elections in such a model should be correlated or equivalently the model should have a national error term and possibly regional error terms in addition to any independent state errors given a forecast that is a joint probability distribution one can calculate the probability of decisive vote using simulation or in a setting such as a national election in which the probability of a tied election is tiny one can use a mix of simulation and analytic calculations as was done by gelman king and boscardin 1998 4 ii method we use a state by state election forecast computed on october 24 2008 based on the latest opinion polls silver 2008 earlier in the campaign polls are not particularly informative and it is better to use regression based forecasts at least to account for possible national swings see lock and gelman 2008 and for further discussion wlezien and erikson 2004 and the references therein by late october however polls are close to the actual election outcome and so it is reasonable to construct a forecast distribution using poll aggregation 5 the result of our forecasts is a 10 000 x 51 matrix representing 10 000 computer simulations of the election with each simulation including the vote margin for obama e g a margin of 0 208 in alabama corresponds to obama and mccain receiving 60 4 and 39 6 respectively of the two party vote in the state we convert this percentage to a numerical vote margin by multiplying by the voter turnout in the state which we estimate by taking the two party turnout from 2004 and adding 4 corresponding to population increase and another 4 to account for an anticipated increase in turnout this year 6 as discussed earlier the simulations for the states are correlated the joint probability distribution of the 51 election outcomes includes uncertainty about the national swing as well as state by state fluctuations

voter turnout in us presidential elections does carville s law explain the time series we estimate a time series model of voter turnout for 34 us presidential elections 1880 2012 employing a variety of econometric techniques our major results are as follows 1 a negative and significant structural shift in voter turnout occurs in 1972 and is too large to be explained by the lowering of the voting age 2 the 1972 shift is the only statistically significant structural shift to occur since the first decade of the twentieth century 3 short term macroeconomic conditions significantly impact turnout with unemployment having a positive effect 4 turnout in recent presidential elections has not deviated significantly from the post 1972 norm 5 turnout is positively related to the expected closeness of the election outcome but contrary to some theoretical predictions closeness exhibits no trend over time

closeness expenditures and turnout in the 1982 u s house elections students of elections have repeatedly found that the closeness of an election is modestly correlated with turnout this may be due to a direct response of instrumentally motivated voters but recent theoretical work casts doubt on the adequacy of this explanation another possibility is that elite actors respond to closeness with greater effort at mobilization we explore the latter possibility by using fec and state data on campaign expenditures in house senate and gubernatorial races our results indicate that closeness has an effect at both the mass and elite levels we also provide quantitative estimates of the effect of senate and gubernatorial expenditure on house turnout

macroeconomic conditions voter turnout and the working class economically disadvantaged party vote in developing countries working and lower status citizens are more sensitive to macroeconomic fluctuations than their better off counterparts in the developing world due to the higher personal stakes involved this heightened sensitivity affects fluctuations in voter turnout and voter choice across developing democracies macroeconomic downturns result in increased voter participation as more lower status voters express their grievances at the polls this benefits political parties and coalitions with expressly working and lower class appeals this article describes the impact of shifts in voter turnout on party support the impact of macroeconomic shifts on voter turnout and the impact of macroeconomic shifts on support for parties that are working class economically disadvantaged oriented using regression analysis of aggregate pooled time series data from 10 countries in latin america the caribbean africa and asia although increased turnout primarily helps parties that are working class economically disadvantaged orient

the economic and political determinants of imf and world bank lending in the middle east and north africa mena assumes both political and economic significance politically it is arguably the epicentre of world crisis chronically war prone and the site of the world s most protracted conflicts hinnebusch 2003 p 1 economically it owns the bulk of the world s oil reserves driving in particular the usa economic engine in light of the region s geopolitically and economically strategic position in the world economy it is clear that economic and political factors are inextricably linked when it comes to the manner in which the west particularly the usa responds to the region s needs

politics economics and u s participation in multilateral development banks in the 1970s the u s executive branch was forced to make a significant change in the procedure it uses to influence decisions by the multilateral development banks this procedural change from exclusive reliance on behind the scenes pressure to open voting in bank councils reflects two more fundamental alterations the relative diminution of u s power in bank councils and especially the development of increased congressional interest in formulating u s policy toward the banks as a result of these two changes the united states has identified publicly many of the policies it seeks to promote through the banks taken as a whole the u s voting record indicates an abandonment of the verbal commitment to the liberal concept of maintaining the banks as apolitical financial institutions since the concept has never been a reliable guide to u s behavior in bank councils its abandonment does not signify a major change in the relationship between the banks and the united states government rather it signifies an opening of the u s political process one that encourages public debate and multiple advocacy in the making of u s policy toward the banks

public information and electoral bias abstract we present a theory of voting that predicts that elections are more likely to be close and voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate these findings suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences e g through pre election polls or expert forecasts may undermine the democratic process our analysis reveals that if the distribution of political preferences is common knowledge then the unique type symmetric equilibrium leads to a stark neutrality result in which each alternative is equally likely to win the election by contrast when citizens are ignorant about the preference distribution the majority is more likely to win the election and expected voter turnout is lower welfare is therefore unambiguously higher when citizens possess less information about the preference distribution

the high politics of imf lending analysts have long suspected that politics affects the lending patterns of the international monetary fund imf but none have adequately specified or systematically tested competing explanations this paper develops a political explanation of imf lending and tests it statistically on the developing countries between 1985 and 1994 it finds that political realignment toward the united states the largest power in the imf increases a country s probability of receiving an imf loan a country s static political alignment position has no significant impact during this period suggesting that these processes are best modeled dynamically an analysis of two subsamples rejects the hypothesis that the imf has become less politicized since the end of the cold war and suggests that the influence of politics has actually increased since 1990 the behavior of multilateral organizations is still driven by the political interests of their more powerful member states

econometrics and presidential elections this paper discusses an econometric equation that explains votes for president as a function of economic events and incumbency information the history of the equation is reviewed the update after the 1992 election is discussed and a prediction for the 1996 election is made conditional on an economic forecast

economic determinants of imf financial arrangements abstract we analyze factors that lead to imf approval of financial arrangements we account for both economic variables that induce a country to seek an imf arrangement demand side factors and macroeconomic policy commitments that the imf considers when deciding whether to approve it supply side factors using a pooled sample of annual observations for 91 developing countries over 1973 1991 we obtain maximum likelihood bivariate and univariate probit estimates of the approval of an imf arrangement for a given country in a given year a number of demand side and supply side variables are statistically significant determinants of the approval of an imf arrangement

a production inventory system with markovian capacity and outsourcing option we study the optimal production inventory outsourcing policy for a firm with markovian in house production capacity that faces independent stochastic demand and has the option to outsource we find very simple optimal policy forms under fairly reasonable assumptions in addition when the capacity markov process is stochastically monotone the policy parameters decrease in the firm s current capacity level under additional assumptions all these results extend to the infinite horizon and undiscounted cost cases we analyze comparative statics and the necessity of some technical conditions and discuss when the outsourcing option is more valuable

the catalytic effect of lending by the international financial institutions for many less developed countries ldcs and countries in transition cits external financing is frequently an effective constraint on economic growth and development capital inflows may be used to overcome shortages of domestic saving thereby permitting higher levels of investment as well as shortages of foreign exchange thereby permitting larger quantities of imports

economic adversity and voter turnout does economic adversity affect whether people vote data from the november 1974 current population survey are used to estimate the effect that unemployment poverty and a decline in financial well being have on voter turnout each economic problem suppresses participation these individual level findings are corroborated with aggregate time series data from presidential and midterm elections since 1896 when a person suffers economic adversity his scarce resources are spent holding body and soul together not on remote concerns like politics economic problems both increase the opportunity costs of political participation and reduce a person s capacity to attend to politics

the welfare state turnout and the economy a comparative analysis while the economic voting literature is voluminous comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of how or whether the economy affects turnout i address this issue by examining national elections in 29 countries using time series data the initial findings are replicated by a case study of american presidential and midterm elections since 1896 it is argued that the effect of economic adversity depends upon the degree of welfare state development this relationship is argued to be nonlinear so that mobilization occurs at either extreme while withdrawal obtains in the middle range the importance to democratic theory the study of elections and the politics of welfare policy are discussed

optimal policy for a periodic review inventory system under a supply capacity contract transportation and production contracts often specify the frequency and volume reserved by the supplier for a particular customer s deliveries this practice motivated henig et al henig m y gerchak r ernst d pyke 1997 an inventory model embedded in designing a supply contract management sci 43 184 189 to study a periodic review inventory control model where ordering cost is zero if the order quantity does not exceed a given contract volume and is linear in the excess quantity otherwise this paper addresses the same problem but with a fixed cost if the order quantity is above the contract volume the fixed cost may represent the cost of disruption for the supplier finding more trucks arranging extra processing capacity persuading other customers to wait etc as well as additional administrative costs also suppliers may impose such costs simply to induce desired behavior by buyers this order cost function is neither convex nor concave the classical inventory models with fixed costs are special cases with contract volume zero we partially characterize the optimal policy for this system and develop a simple effective heuristic policy we also apply the model to a production control problem in which an incentive is provided for not ordering over a certain quota