the nature of diversified business groups a research design and two case studies diversified business groups dominate the private sectors of most of the world s economies several of these economies have undergone sudden policy changes that significantly increase domestic competitive intensity the authors demonstrate how the changes in corporate scope that accompany such competitive shocks can be used to weigh the importance of different explanations for the existence of diversified business groups the authors illustrate their reasoning by studying the restructuring of two of india s largest business groups following a comprehensive post 1991 package of policy reforms the case studies also elucidate aspects of the restructuring process that should inform larger sample empirical analyses copyright 1998 by blackwell publishing ltd

internal capital markets and the competition for corporate resources this article examines the role of corporate headquarters in allocating scarce resources to competing projects in an internal capital market unlike a bank headquarters has control rights that enable it to engage in winner picking the practice of actively shifting funds from one project to another by doing a good job in the winner picking dimension headquarters can create value even when it cannot help at all to relax overall firm wide credit constraints the model implies that internal capital markets may sometimes function more efficiently when headquarters oversees a small and focused set of projects this article analyzes the process by which internal capital markets channel limited resources to different uses inside a company in so doing it seeks to address two related sets of questions first what is the fundamental economic rationale for creating an internal capital market that is under what circumstances can it make sense to combine several technologically distinct projects under one roof and have them seek funding from corporate headquarters as opposed to setting them up as stand alone companies that each raise external financing on their own second given this rationale what is the optimal size and scope of an internal capital market should headquarters be involved in funding a large number of projects or just a few and should these projects be unrelated to one another or in similar lines of business the answers to both sets of questions flow from the insight that in a credit constrained setting where not all positive npv projects can be financed headquarters can create value by actively reallocating scarce funds across projects for example the cash flow generated by one division s activities may be taken and spent on investment in another division where the returns are higher or alternatively one division s assets may be used as collateral to raise financing that is then diverted to the other division simply put individual projects must compete for the scarce funds and headquarters job is to pick the winners and losers in this competition

centralized versus decentralized provision of local public goods a political economy approach abstract this paper takes a fresh look at the trade off between centralized and decentralized provision of local public goods it argues that the sharing of the costs of local public spending in a centralized system will create a conflict of interest between citizens in different jurisdictions when spending decisions are made by a legislature of locally elected representatives this conflict of interest will play out in the legislature depending on precisely how the legislature behaves the result may be excessive public spending or allocations of public goods characterized by uncertainty and misallocation across districts the extent of the conflict of interest between districts is affected by spillovers and differences in tastes for public spending thus the relative performance of centralized and decentralized systems depends upon spillovers and differences in tastes for public spending but for different reasons than suggested in the existing literature

institutional features of congressional decisions the fight to prohibit smoking on airlines a pervasive theme of the congressional politics literature is that the committee system is fundamental in determining the policy status quo such an assertion hinges crucially upon committees controlling their jurisdictions congressional delegation is undermined if a committee can assert authority over any issue domain at any time yet representatives may possess an incentive to support a policy proposal that would change the status quo even if it entails disregarding procedures indeed standard conceptualizations of how members of congress make their voting choices assume that only the benefits and costs associated with a policy matter and they do not consider institutional factors such as whether a bill emerged from the correct committee

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

what can we learn from the grand policy experiment lessons from so2 allowance trading stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0895 3309 28199822 2912 3a3 3c69 3awcwlft 3e2 0 co 3b2 tthe journal of economic perspectives is currently published by american economic association your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals aea html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgtue jun 26 16 25 17 2007

an analysis of the impact of congressional term limits we examine the impact of a six term tenure limit on members of the u s house of representatives the first part of this study develops a methodological framework for simulating the quantitative impact of term limits the second part of this study uses this framework to estimate the effects of term limits on i the value of holding office ii turnover and iii the size of the democratic majority in the house both steady state and transition period effects are explored i introduction the widespread support for term limitations seems to have caught both popular commentators and academic researchers by surprise 1 why do voters want them and what is the likely impact of such legislation a small but growing literature concentrates on the first of these two questions adams and kenny 1986 dick and loft 1993 in contrast this paper addresses the second in particular it investigates the empirical consequences of imposing a twelve year six term tenure limit on the members of the u s house of representatives both the degree and timing of the impact of the alternative regimes are investigated here the issue of timing arises because term limits can have very different effects depending upon how they treat currently serving congressmen we focus our investigation on the two legislative regimes that we believe have the greatest chance of being implemented limited grandfathering and complete grandfathering 2 assuming term limit legislation is passed in 1992 we trace out the time paths of the effects associated with each of these regimes as we shall see there are important transitional differences between the two the paper proceeds as follows section ii addresses the methodology used in this analysis section iii considers the impact of term limits on i the value of holding office ii turnover and iii the democratic majority in the house section iv concludes ii methodology the first concern of this paper is to model the seniority structure of the house in the absence of congressional term limits let n t identify the number of congressmen in their nth term at time t let r define the proportion of congressmen that successfully move from term n to term n l note that there are a number of reasons for not continuing to an additional term besides electoral defeats there are voluntary departures to seek other elective office or private sector employment retirements and deaths given any set of continuation rates r sub 1 r sub 2 and an initial distribution of representatives across terms n sub 1 t n sub 2 t one can construct what the seniority structure of congress will look like any number of periods into the future for instance the number of congressmen in their jth term at time t m is given by mathematical expression omitted where n sub 1 t 1 m j identifies the number of representatives who enter congress in time period t 1 m j t 1 and j and m o ifj m 1 one simply takes the number of congressmen currently serving their j m th term and multiplies this by the appropriate product of continuation rates if j m 1 one needs to identify the number of congressmen who will enter congress in time period t l m since congress always has 435 members the number of arrivals must always equal the number of departures the number of first term congressmen who leave office at the end of time period t is given by 1 r sub 1 n sub 1 t similarly the number of second term congressmen who leave office at the end of time period t is given by 1 r sub 2 n sub 2 t thus the number of representatives who will enter congress in time period t l is given by mathematical expression omitted equations 1 and 2 allow one to recursively solve for n sub 1 t 1 m j for all m j 1 i

why so much stability majority voting legislative institutions and gordon tullock gordon tullock nearly a half century ago raised questions about arrow s theorem a phantom has stalked the classrooms and seminars of economics and political science he followed this up by asking in light of arrow s theorem why so much stability in this paper a more nuanced understanding of the operating characteristics of majority rule in institutional settings anticipated and stimulated by tullock is spelled out a major distinction is made between preference cycles and voting cycles suggesting why arrow s phantom still stalks but that tullock s intuitions are germane as well

decisiveness attitude expression and symbolic responses in contingent valuation surveys abstract despite suggestions that respondents to contingent valuation studies often follow alternate models of individual decision making few theoretical models have been developed the paper presents a theoretical model of symbolic and attitude expressive contingent valuation responses drawing on relevant contributions in psychology and political science it is argued that the highly symbolic and emotional nature of many environmental issues often activates the need for individuals to express their attitudes and values which when coupled with a perceived non decisiveness of individual questionnaire responses can result in value expressive considerations dominating some cvm responses at the expense of the desired outcome appraisal economic tradeoffs the implications for some topical issues in cvm are explored

an expressive voting theory of strikes i introduction economists usually make the realistic assumption that individuals commonly choose to further their material interests other things equal they will choose the higher paying job make the investment with a higher expected return for a given risk and so on recent work however has pointed out that individuals do not always pursue their immediate selfish interests evolutionary pressures for example may promote emotional outbursts which have little immediate benefit social pressures may lead to behavior which is not pareto optimal but which is individually rational in short recent work has shown that behavior which at first looks irrational need not be for further discussion see akerlof 1984 chs 4 and 9 etzioni 1988 frank 1988 simon 1990 this paper considers emotional behavior which cannot be explained by its long term benefits it instead focuses on behavior which is not costly when practiced by one person but is when practiced by many unlike other works i do not require that individuals usually act emotionally or that they do so at significant cost to themselves i only require that when the cost of emotional behavior is sufficiently small individuals will pursue it indeed in my model individuals rationally calculate when to behave emotionally in particular under some circumstances the action of any one individual has negligible effects on his wealth though the similar actions of numerous persons will have significant effects individuals may then free ride letting emotional motives guide their activity this paper presents one important application of such behavior the decision of a union member to vote for a strike indeed it has long been recognized that though union members may vote for strikes to increase wages emotional considerations can also be important in 1921 hansen claimed that strike decisions are motivated primarily by a sense of grievance about wages ashenfelter and johnson 1969 37 write that union leaders may prefer to call a strike because under strike conditions the leadership may at least appear as adversaries against management in a crusade which may even raise their political stock and will unify the workers newspapers tell of strikes that appear to have little economic rationale for example the wall street journal march 17 1989 reported that with the eastern airlines walkout now nearly two weeks old what boils to the surface is an intense highly personal anger a feeling that their self respect honor and dignity have been undercut by a management obsessed with pinching pennies the new york times april 23 1989 reported that four years after the end of a strike against united airlines union pilots were harassing non union pilots the harassment ranged from verbal abuse and refusal to shake hands to more serious breaches like not advising a pilot that he is approaching an altitude assigned by air traffic controllers work by getman goldberg and herman 1976 suggests that a worker in union representation elections is more likely to favor unionization the more effectively the company threatened the loss of jobs following unionization this view of non instrumental union behavior is also consistent with a large body of evidence which finds that union members are less likely to ratify a contract the worse the relations between management and labor indeed cappelli and sterling 1988 find that the state of labor relations in a plant is the strongest predictor of union voting outcomes similarly kaufman and martinez vazquez 1988 find that union members are least likely to vote in favor of wage concessions in plants with adversarial labor relations though much evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that strike votes are not based solely on economic considerations the approach suffers from two faults as a basis for an economic theory first intuition suggests that the emotional gain from a strike is likely to be far smaller than the monetary cost of a strike a strike may cost a worker over 1 000 a week in lost wages 1 yet we rarely find people wasting that much money in emotional outbursts

managerial incentive problems a dynamic perspective the paper studies how a person s concern for a future career may influence his or her incentives to put in effort or make decisions on the job in the model the person s productive abilities are revealed over time through observations of performance there are no explicit output contingent contracts but since the wage in each period is based on expected output and expected output depends on assessed ability an implicit contract links today s performance to future wages an incentive problem arises from the person s ability and desire to influence the learning process and therefore the wage process by taking unobserved actions that affect today s performance the fundamental incongruity in preferences is between the individual s concern for human capital returns and the firm s concern for financial returns the two need be only weakly related it is shown that career motives can be beneficial as well as detrimental depending on how well the two kinds of capital returns are aligned it is well understood by now that informational externalities may place special demands on the organization of economic exchange simple price mediated markets will frequently fail in the presence of asymmetric information in that case more elaborate contractual arrangements have to be used as substitutes for the price system lately considerable effort has been devoted to the analysis of contracting under incomplete information with the objective to understand the range of economic institutions that emerge in response to the failure of the price system the analysis of moral hazard has played a prominent role in this development moral hazard problems arise when for some reason or another transacting parties cannot contract contingent on the delivery of the good for instance in buying labour services it may be that the amount of labour supplied is not directly observable precluding a simple exchange of wage for labour as a partial remedy to this problem an imperfect mutually observed signal about the supply of labour can be used as a proxy in the contract frequently output is taken as such a proxy the drawback is that output is often influenced by other factors than labour input which induce undesirable risk into the contract one is therefore faced with a tradeoff between allocating risk associated with incomplete observability and providing incentives for a proper supply of labour gaining insight into this tradeoff is important not only for understanding contracting in the small e g managerial incentive schemes but also because it is closely related to the fundamental tension between equity and efficiency in the society as a whole while our understanding of moral hazard has advanced a lot in past years it is clear that much work remains an important question that has received little attention until

bureaucratic discretion or congressional control regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission this paper extends stigler and peltzman s approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature the model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications the paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior the first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion the second assumes that congress controls agency decisions the recent behavior of the federal trade commission provides the empirical setting substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over ftc decisions

proportional representation with citizen candidates we construct a simple model incorporating bothcitizen candidates and proportional representation andinvestigate its properties in a basic case with auniform distribution of citizen ideal points and purepolicy motivations and in further cases which allowof office rents and other distributions ofpreferences the idea of citizen candidates developedby osborne and slivinski 1996 besley and coate 1997 endogenises the decision to stand as acandidate and allows explicit study of the number andtype of candidates as an equilibrium phenomenon theidea of proportional representation allows a moreflexible relationship between the pattern of votescast and the final policy outcome and also providesa richer model of political representation ourdiscussion points to the widespread possibility ofequilibria involving non median policy outcomes provides insights into the relationship betweenproportional representation and the equilibrium numberof candidates and also provides an explicit accountof the trade off between candidate benefitsdistributed on a winner take all basis and those thatare mediated through proportional representation

political preferences for the pork barrel a generalization this paper provides a rational explanation for the observation of oversized coalitions often approaching unanimous size in the realm of distributive policies distributive policies are those which concentrate benefits in specific geographic areas states congressional districts while spreading costs through general taxation the explanation offered here that legislators may rationally prefer universalism to hard ball coalition politics generalizes earlier work of weingast and fiorina in particular it extends their results to pork barrel politics i e projects that are economically inefficient and demonstrates how packages of economically inefficient projects can nevertheless be politically popular the main theoretical feature that induces preferences for universalism is uncertainty over the composition of winning coalitions and consequently the desire for the political insurance that universalism provides

optimal incentive contracts in the presence of career concerns theory and evidence this paper studies optimal incentive contracts when workers have career concerns concerns about the effects of current performance on future compensation we show that the optimal compensation contract optimizes total incentives the combination of the implicit incentives from career concerns and the explicit incentives from the compensation contract thus the explicit incentives from the optimal compensation contract should be strongest for workers close to retirement because career concerns are weakest for these workers we find empirical support for this prediction in the relation between chief executive compensation and stock market performance

regulation and legislative choice regulation has economic and political dimensions both of which i endogenize in this hierarchical model in which a legislature chooses by majority rule the mandate of an agency that faithfully regulates a firm with private information about its costs sufficient conditions are given for an equilibrium to exist if there is a strong electoral connection between the benefits delivered to constituents and their electoral support the legislature will choose a regulatory mandate that favors consumer over producer interests and results in regulation that does not maximize expected total surplus political interest in delivering benefits to constituents through factor employment results in a regulatory mandate that yields greater expected total surplus

the anatomy of government failure government failure is a much bigger problem than its contemporary treatment implies setting aside natural disasters most of the great catastrophes of human history have been government failures of one sort or another we argue that many so called market failures are government failures because government defines the institutions in which markets succeed or fail the concept of government failure has been trapped in the cocoon of the theory of perfect markets narrowly defined deviations from market perfection have been designated market failures for which government corrections may or may not really be a solution government failure in the contemporary context means failing to resolve a classic market failure we propose an alternative approach for evaluating whether government fails the pareto standard if an available pareto improvement is not chosen or is not implemented that is a government failure we organize government failure into two types substantive and procedural substantive failures include the inability or unwillingness to maintain order to maintain sound fiscal and monetary policies and to reduce risks of transaction costs which we classify as corruption agency and rent seeking procedural failures are inadequacies of available social choice mechanisms causing collective decisions to be arbitrary capricious or manipuated we conclude with some reflections on human rationality and the implications of behavioral economics

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

bureaucrats legislators and the size of government some recent theories have blamed the growth of government on budget maximizing bureaucrats who are assumedly capable of imposing their most preferred budget output combination on legislatures subject to cost and demand constraints however theoretical examination of the range of bargaining outcomes that might occur between bureau and legislature shows that budget maximizing behavior does not necessarily lead to super optimal levels of production nor do the suggested reforms of competition and privatization necessarily improve the situation in this bargaining model the central determinants of governmental growth are not budget maximizing bureaucrats but the legislature s decisions regarding mode of oversight and form of internal organization

the politics of 1992 fiscal policy and european integration the internal market in europe will greatly increase the international mobility of resources how will this affect fiscal policy in different countries we consider taxation of capital in a two country model where a democratically chosen government in each country chooses tax policy higher capital mobility changes the politico economic equilibrium in two ways on the one hand it leads to more tax competition between the countries this economic effect tends to lower tax rates in both countries on the other hand it alters voters preferences and makes them elect a different government this political effect offsets the increased tax competition although not completely

the economics of split ticket voting in representative democracies in u s elections voters often vote for candidates from different parties for president and congress voters also express dissatisfaction with the performance of congress as a whole and satisfaction with their own representative the authors develop a model of split ticket voting in which government spending is financed by uniform taxes the benefits from this spending are concentrated while the model generates split ticket voting overall spending is too high only if the president s powers are limited overall spending is too high in a parliamentary system the authors model can be used as the basis of an argument for term limits copyright 1997 by american economic association

the median voter setters and non repeated construction bond issues the median voter model pervades the literature concerning the estimation of demands for collective expenditures but with some unanswered criticism the general issue addressed in this paper is whether observed collective expenditure levels and the characteristics of observed majorities are more adequately described by the median voter model or the romer and rosenthal setter model on a sample of non repeated hospital construction referenda bond issues the median voter model and the romer and rosenthal setter model are compared in both full information and uncertainty contexts little empirical support of the setter model is found indeed the evidence supports the absence of expenditure maximizing behavior the specific conclusions are 1 the standard median voter model explains quite well for this sample of non repeated bond issues 2 the explanatory power of the median voter model appears to vary across both voting arrangements and types of reversion threats 3 the explanation of hospital expenditures which have been judged too large may be due to how benefits and costs are distributed among voters and 4 the preponderance of large majorities for hospital construction in the face of evidence that such facilities typically become a burden on the general tax fund is consistent with setters offering the median ideal in the presence of a reversion below the ideal

instrument choice political reform and economic welfare the purpose of this paper is to formally examine the effect of placing constraints such as the line item veto or a balanced budget amendment on legislative behavior there are two basic findings that emerge from the analysis first constraints on one type of instrument such as spending will in general result in more widespread use of other kinds of instruments such as regulation second it is naive to conclude that constraints on legislative behavior will promote economic efficiency and or reduce the growth of government the primary contribution of the paper is to suggest how changes in the political environment can affect instrument choice economic welfare and the size of government

reconciling voters behavior with legislative term limits a puzzle exists over why voters continually re elect their congressional and state representatives although these same voters often support initiatives to limit the number of terms that their legislators may serve residents of california colorado and oklahoma voted in 1990 to limit the terms of their state legislators to tenures ranging from six to twelve years 1 in california these same voters however re elected 87 of 91 or 96 percent of all incumbent state representatives and senators whose terms they sought to limit 2 among re elected incumbents 67 or 77 percent had served as long as or longer than the maximum term prescribed under their state s term limit initiative voters defeated only two incumbents who would have been removed under the terms of california s tenure restrictions had they been in effect similar voter behavior characterized recent state elections in colorado and oklahoma 3 more generally these seemingly contradictory voter preferences also are apparent in public opinion polls at the federal level while 62 percent of voters immediately prior to the 1990 general elections indicated their intentions to reelect their congressman that same poll showed that only 24 percent said they approve of the way congress is handling its job gallup and newport 1990 pp 36 37 support for term limit initiatives and the low public esteem of legislators as a group both appear to be inconsistent with voters strong preferences for their own representative and the regular reelection of incumbents

the political economy of environmental regulation towards a unifying framework there are several theories that attempt to explain various aspects of environmental policy building on insights from this theoretical work and recent advances in our understanding of instrument performance this paper constructs a more complete theory of environmental regulation there are two primary contributions of this research the first is to provide more satisfactory explanations for a number of observed patterns of environmental policy for example there is as yet no satisfactory theory about the emergence of incentive based mechanisms such as marketable permits and effluent fees the second contribution of this paper is to develop a parsimonious framework for understanding many important aspects of environmental policy this framework suggests the outputs of environmental policy emerge from a struggle between key interest groups

executive veto and spending limitation positive political economy with implications for institutional choice the consequences of institutional change in the budgetary process are not generally determinate independent of the preferences of political actors nonetheless this study shows for a general class of preference configurations that the legislative branch cannot be made better off by a spending limitation unless the executive is empowered with a line item veto in the absence of executive item veto authority there is no incentive for the legislature to constrain spending

rational deterrence theory and evidence the causes and effects of the use of force raise crucial questions of substance and method issues are multiple and often are confused with each other thus while many case study findings contradict second wave deterrence theory they are consistent with some rational deterrence theories many findings however cannot be squared with the assumptions of rationality policies are suboptimal and behavior is often inconsistent furthermore the actor s values beliefs and calculations are exogenous to rational theories and can only be supplied by empirical analysis

leadership and conflict we model the choice of leaders of groups within society where leaders influence both the mode of interaction between groups either peaceful compromise or costly conflict and the outcome of these interactions group members may choose leaders strategically instrumentally or they may choose leaders expressively we characterize the equilibria of the instrumental choice model and also argue that leadership elections may overemphasise the role of expressive considerations in the choice of leader and that this may result in increased conflict between groups

the political economy of benefits and costs a neoclassical approach to distributive politics this essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions the model emphasizes the economically arbitrary from a welfare point of view importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation we explore the implications of a legislator s objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale

institutional ecological economics abstract new institutional economics and its forerunners have we argue made important contributions to the evolving agenda of ecological economics the conceptualisation of environmental problems as instances of interdependence and the acknowledgement of positive transaction costs are key insights into the nature of environmental problems we also discuss how plurality of behavioural motivations and limited cognitive capacity have important implications for environmental decision making and its analysis we show how evolutionary and collective action theories offer complementary takes on the choice and change of environmental governance institutions and how the concept of social capital can enrich analyses of environmental governance we conclude that an emerging institutional ecological economics has the greatest relative advantage in analysing the design implementation and effectiveness of environmental governance solutions

redistribution tax under non benevolent governments i analyze redistribution policies of majority governments in one kind of representative voting system i employ these assumptions members gain special benefits in the majority parties act strategically by using redistribution transfers the member s utility function is given in a quasi linear function the government s objective functions are the weighted summation of utilities and i classify governments according to the weight the four main results are a stable majority dose not support myopic government the stable redistribution policy of benevolent government is expressed by a scope of transfers the stable transfer of non benevolent governments depends on private utilities of the majority and opportunity costs of the minority and the altruistic government is not displayed by any other majority because it offers the total welfare of the majority to the minority as a subsidy

are ceos really paid like bureaucrats a common view is that there is little correlation between firm performance and ceo pay using a new fifteen year panel data set of ceos in the largest publicly traded u s companies we document a strong relationship between firm performance and ceo compensation this relationship is generated almost entirely by changes in the value of ceo holdings of stock and stock options in addition we show that both the level of ceo compensation and the sensitivity of compensation to firm performance have risen dramatically since 1980 largely because of increases in stock option grants

reallocation of corporate resources and managerial incentives in internal capital markets abstract diversified firms often trade at a discount with respect to their focused counterparts the literature has tried to explain the apparent misallocation of resources with lobbying activities or power struggles we show that diversification can destroy value even when resources are efficiently allocated ex post when managers derive utility from the funds under their purview moving funds across divisions may diminish their incentives the ex ante reduction in managerial incentives can more than offset the increase in firm value due to the ex post efficient reallocation of funds this effect is robust to the introduction of monetary incentives moreover we show that asymmetries in size and growth prospects increase the diversification discount

the political economy of hatred this paper develops a model of the interaction between the supply of hate creating stories from politicians and the willingness of voters to listen to hatred hatred is fostered with stories of an out group s crimes but the impact of these stories comes from repetition not truth hate creating stories are supplied by politicians when such actions help to discredit opponents whose policies benefit an out group egalitarians foment hatred against rich minorities opponents of redistribution build hatred against poor minorities hatred relies on people accepting rather than investigating hate creating stories hatred declines when there is private incentive to learn the truth increased economic interactions with a minority group may provide that incentive this framework is used to illuminate the evolution of anti black hatred in the united states south episodes of anti semitism in europe and the recent surge of anti americanism in the arab world

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

managerial incentives and internal capital markets capital budgeting in multidivisional firms depends on the external assessment of the whole firm as well as on headquarters assessment of the divisions while corporate headquarters may create value by directly monitoring divisions the external assessment of the firm is a public good for division managers who consequently are tempted to free ride as the number of divisions increases the free rider problem is aggravated and internal capital markets substitute for external capital markets in the provision of managerial incentives the analysis relates the value of diversification to characteristics of the firm the industry and the capital market

executive veto legislative override and structure induced equilibrium in this study the structure induced equilibrium approach for modeling democratic institutions is extended to allow for the added structural features of executive veto and legislative override a multidimensional model is presented for a budgetary process involving three actors a legislature an appropriations committee and an executive in order to focus attention on the role of the veto and override possibilities simplifying assumptions are made with regard to other aspects of the agenda formation process in particular the committee has monopoly agenda power a closed amendment control rule is operative and perfect foresight expectations are held by the committee and the executive given these assumptions utility maximization by the several actors generates a budget outcome characterized as a structure induced equilibrium the general model is illustrated geometrically with a two dimensional example permitting budget outcomes to be analyzed for various combinations of veto rules and override provisions the analysis demonstrates that budget outcomes are sensitive to alternative specifications of veto rules and override provisions in the illustration executive veto power is shown to vary directly with both the permissiveness of the veto rule and the stringency of the override provision similar relationships however are not found to exist for total budget expenditures

emotional arousal as a source of bounded rationality abstract this paper proposes an alternative psychological explanation for bounded rationality according to herbert simon bounded rationality arises from human cognitive limitations following the suggestion of institutional economist john r commons i argue that extremes in emotional arousal also contribute to bounded rationality this idea is formalized and developed using the yerkes dodson law from psychology examples from the popular press and the academic literatures of law management and economics are presented to illustrate the impact of this type of bounded rationality on human behavior

partisan cycles in congressional elections and the macroeconomy in the postwar united states the president s party has always done worse in the midterm congressional elections than in the previous congressional election republican administrations exhibit below average and democratic administrations above average economic growth in the first half of each term whereas in the latter halves the two see equal growth our rational expectations model is consistent with these two regularities in presidential elections voters choose between two polarized candidates they then use midterm elections to counterbalance the president s policies by strengthening the opposition in congress since presidents of different parties are associated with different policies our model predicts a spurious correlation between the state of the economy and elections our predictions contrast with those of retrospective voting models in which voters reward the incumbent if the economy is doing well before the election our model performs empirically at least as well as and often better than alternative models

the role of the median legislator in u s trade policy a historical analysis in this historical analysis of u s trade policy we apply the median voter model to explain legislative decision making in this model the level of tar protection is expected to change with changes in the median legislator we show that this simple model does a remarkable job of explaining trade policy until the mid 1930s when it breaks down we offer several possible explanations for the breakdown of this model focusing particularly on the impact of domestic and international institutional changes that may have altered the role of the median legislator in trade policy formation

economic theories of voter turnout i the voting paradox why would the rational individual bother to spend time and resources to become well informed go to the polls on the election day and maybe even wait in a queue why would a rational voter vote downs 1957 ii the paradox of indeterminacy if they vote why do they care who they vote for kirchgassner 1992 kirchgassner and pommerehne 1993 iii the paradox of ignorance to the extent that information is costly the rational voter must be ignorant about relevant aspects of his decision making downs 1957

rational choice theory and the paradox of not voting at least since downs s 1957 seminal work an economic theory of democracy rational choice theorists have appreciated the paradox of not voting in a large election the probability that an individual vote might change the election outcome is vanishingly small if each person only votes for the purpose of influencing the election outcome then even a small cost to vote like a minor schedule conflict or mildly bad weather should dissuade anyone from voting yet it seems that many people will put up with long lines daunting registration requirements and even the threat of physical violence or arrest in order to vote given the central place of voting within political economy the lack of an adequate rational choice model of large elections with costly voting presents an obvious problem for the most part theorists have bypassed the turnout problem either by eliminating voters as strategic actors or by assuming that the decision to vote is independent of other strategic choices the problem with the first approach is that the empirical literature on voting behavior provides considerable evidence of apparently strategic behavior in primary elections there is evidence that voters condition their vote choice on the viability of candidates abramson aldrich paolino and rohde 1992 in a seminal and comprehensive study cox 1997 shows that voting patterns and election outcomes are broadly consistent with patterns of behavior predicted by strategic voting models for example under plurality rule in which the candidate with the most votes wins the election

internal versus external capital markets this paper presents a framework for analyzing the costs and benefits of internal versus external capital allocation we focus pritnarily on comparing an internal capital market with bank lending while both represent centralized forms of financing in the former case the financing is owner provided while in the latter ceise it is not we argue that the ownership aspect of internal capital allocation has three important consequences 1 it leads to more monitoring than bank lending 2 it reduces managers entrepreneurial incentives and 3 it makes it easier to efficiently redeploy the assets of projects that are performing poorly under existing management

political solutions to market problems for some market failures serve as a rationale for public intervention however the fact that self interested market behavior does not always produce felicitous social consequences is not sufficient reason to draw this conclusion it is necessary to assess public performance under comparable conditions and hence to analyze self interested political behavior in the institutional structures of the public sector our approach emphasizes this institutional structure warts and all and thereby provides specific cautionary warnings about optimistic reliance on political institutions to improve upon market performance

the politics of infrastructure investment the role of product market competition abstract in spatial competition public infrastructure plays a crucial role in determining product market outcomes in our model consideration of infrastructure s impact on the product market drives the preferences of consumers in their dual role as voter taxpayers the spatial heterogeneity of consumers produces conflicting political interests and in many cases inefficient outcomes however across both exogenous and endogenous market environments product market competition consistently leads to higher levels of publicly funded infrastructure than monopoly collusion furthermore competition s boost to the popular support for infrastructure investment is often excessive while monopoly leads to underinvestment

the capital budgeting process incentives and information we study the capital allocation process within firms observed budgeting processes are explained as a response to decentralized information and incentive problems it is shown that these imperfections can result in underinvestment when capital productivity is high and overinvestment when it is low we also investigate how the budgeting process may be expected to vary with firm or division characteristics such as investment opportunities and the technology for information transfer there is general agreement that investment decisions are the most important decisions made by corporations the choice of projects and the level of investment is critical not just for stakeholders of the firm but also for the economic well being of society as a whole it has been alleged that u s firms invest too little and tend to overemphasize short term results for example porter 1992 citing poterba and summers 1992 asserts that u s firms use hurdle rates to evaluate investment projects that are higher than their estimated costs of capital to understand the investment behavior of firms one must consider both the process by which external capital is made available to firms and the process by which internally and externally raised capital is allocated to investment projects within the firm considerable attention has been paid to how firms raise external capital the fundamental insight in this area is the celebrated result of modigliani and miller mm that capital structure is irrelevant in the absence of capital market frictions accordingly in the three decades since their contribution research on how external capital is raised has focused on market frictions including information and incentive problems relatively little research has focused on the internal allocation process and its relationship to the organization of the firm modern finance theory prescribes allocating capital according to the net present value npv rule just as the mm result itself provides no theory of the arrangements under which

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

arm s length relationships we show that lowering the cost of acquisition of information that a principal obtains about the performance of an agent may make it more difficult for the principal to commit to threats hence it will weaken incentives and can therefore be counterproductive this phenomenon is explored in a framework where improving the quality of information makes a commitment not to renegotiate less credible applications to the theory of the firm are briefly explored

logical deficiencies in spatial models a constructive critique a fundamental property of any good theoryis logical consistency however two commonassumptions in the rational choice approach topolitical analysis that induced preferences overpolicy are separable and that such preferences areindependent of changes in exogenous factors are notconsistent with the archetypal assumptions ofindividual utility maximization these particularpathologies of spatial models of politics have notbeen well recognized in the political scienceliterature

a model of political competition with citizen candidates the authors develop a model of electoral competition in which citizens choose whether or not to run as candidates a winner implements her favorite policy the equilibrium number of candidates depends negatively on the cost of running and positively on the benefits of winning for some parameter values all equilibria under plurality rule have exactly two candidates whose positions are distinct two candidate elections are more likely under plurality rule than under a runoff system the candidates positions are less differentiated under a runoff system there exist equilibria under both systems in which some candidates have no chance of winning