industry characteristics and interest group formation an empirical study the role of interest groups in the political process has been the subject of much analysis in both political science and economics however few studies have examined directly the factors which influence the variation in interest group formation across industrial sectors and between countries using data on 75 industrial sectors in 10 countries we examine the way in which variations in interest group formation are explained by variations in industrial and political characteristics in cross sectional empirical relationships we test for the significance of a variety of industry and political variables our results indicate that industry characteristics such as the proportion of total demand purchased by households and the concentration ratio are related to variations in interest group formation we discuss the implications that our results have for recent theoretical work on the effect of interest groups on economic policy

interest groups and the rise and decline of growth interest groups are known to exert a sclerotic impact on mean growth a la olson 1982 it is unknown however what impact if any groups exert on the volatility of growth an important hindrance to development in this article we first consider what impact we should expect olson groups to have on the volatility of growth we then estimate the relation between groups and growth volatility in a cross country panel using system generalized method of moments the findings indicate that groups are associated with growth stability in addition the findings suggest that interest groups may be a source of the stability observed in democracies

secular cost changes and the size of government towards a generalized theory abstract baumol s cost disease account of government growth is contrasted with that of kau and rubin who focus on decreasing costs of tax collection over time the apparent paradox wherein the first theory explains government growth by cost increases and the second by way of cost decreases is technically resolved why both theories seem to be able to stand up to empirical tests even though they use similar data is then explained finally public choice analysis is employed to reveal further potential for the ultimate construction of one all embracing secular cost change theory of government growth

pressure groups and redistribution abstract the simple pressure group model of political redistribution can predict more with less restrictive assumptions instead of ready made pressure groups composed of individuals who vote their pocketbooks we posit heterogeneous agents each of whom decides which group to join and how much effort to expend on political activity our model then examines social affinity conditions that foster pressure group formation political sympathies based on social affinity imply testable effects of growth rate and income distribution on progressive transfers effects that prove substantial in pooled time series cross section regressions for 13 oecd countries 1960 1981

electoral politics interest groups and the size of government electoral politics interest groups and the size of government i introduction interest groups have been considered main actors in the political drama for some time now by political scientists as in bentley 1908 schattschneider 1935 and truman 1951 and more recently by economist also such as olson 1965 and stigler 1975 despite the widespread consensus on their importance there have been few formal attempts to analyze their impact on public policies thus borooah and van der ploeg 1983 90 were moved to declare that theory based on the importance of different interest groups is badly needed in economics an important exception is becker s 1983 1985 analysis of interest group competition becker draws insights about the nature of the trade offs that occur when interest groups compete for political influence but becker consciously avoids incorporating into his model political institutions such as voting voting rules and candidates 1983 391 4 1985 330 rather he assumes that the political process operates as a veil through which the underlying strengths and demands of various interest groups are revealed this paper takes a different tack but one complementary to becker s approach the analysis is based on an explicit model of the political process that includes interest groups in the model interest group influence is a potential supply of votes for which parties or candidates compete each party seeks a winning coalition of voters and thus engages in implicit logrolling tullock 1959 572 an equilibrium exists in the competition for the support of interest groups and the nature of the equilibrium electoral platforms is identified below embodied in the characterization of the equilibria is a set of parameters that can be said to measure the strengths of the various interest groups and which enable one to identify how candidates change their policy positions in response to a change in the strength of an interest group it is therefore possible to analyze simultaneously the existence of an electoral equilibrium its nature including its normative properties and changes in equilibrium due to shifts in the balance of forces between competing groups 1 in contrast to becker 1983 1985 these analytical features are not assumed outright rather they are based on an underlying model of elections the theoretical underpinnings for this model are discussed in section ii interest groups are often alleged to be responsible in part for recent increases in the size of government in western democracies 2 therefore in sections iii and iv a model of the political process is used to study the impact of an increase in the influence of a particular interest group on government size in the simple models of the public sector considered here increasing group influence per se does not cause the size of the government to increase but an increase in the government s size does result when i there are constraints on the government s ability to change tax shares in response to a shift in group power or ii there is a publicly provided good which benefits one untaxed group and that group s sole concern with government policy is to maximize the amount of the good that it gets the paper concludes by considering some of the normative implications of the results ii interest groups in the electoral process there are two sets of actors in the model parties and interest groups and two sets of relationships which must be analyzed the relationships between interest groups and the parties and the relationship between the parties themselves with respect to the first question this paper investigates the determinants of each interest group s influence on the platforms proposed by the parties with respect to the second it explores whether the competition for votes between the parties produces an equilibrium and if so what its properties are

speculation incomplete currency market participation and nonfundamental movements in nominal and real exchange rates abstract this paper studies possible nonfundamental movements in nominal and real exchange rates arising from a world economy with speculation incomplete participation in international currency markets and nontraded goods the model is capable of generating equilibria which display comovements in nominal and real exchange rates not unlike those observed in actual economies

immigration redistribution and universal suffrage the effect of immigration on redistribution has been widely debated this paper contributes to this debate by testing two explanations which are that i immigration tends to reduce redistribution due to people s higher levels of xenophobia and that ii immigration affects redistribution because immigrants do not have the right to vote since the demand for redistribution depends on the expected gap between median voter income and mean income immigrants affect the demand for redistribution because as non citizens they do not change the median voter s income but as economic stakeholders they do affect the mean income four empirical consequences of i and ii are tested at the individual level evidence from the european values survey in 45 countries confirms ii showing that immigrants expected competitiveness on the labor market affects preferences for redistribution and that it is amplified when the perceived number of immigrants is high in contrast i is globally rejected since the impact of the citizens declared level of solidarity with immigrants tends to be weak and depends on the type of measurement or specification used

local government service production the politics of allocative sluggishness a partial adjustment model with endogenous speed of adjustment is developed to analyze how pressure from interest groups and mass media influence the adjustment process of local governments a survey questionnaire to the local politicians is used to measure the pressure indicators based on a combined cross section and time series data base for norwegian local governments the sluggishness of the adjustment process is estimated the dynamics of the adjustment process is shown to reflect the activity of interest groups and media pressure pressure groups related to primary education explain an important part of the sluggishness observed pressure groups promoting kindergartens and health care care for the elderly stimulate reallocations

the effect of the expansion of the voting franchise on the size of government this paper examines the claim that expansion of the voting franchise has been an important factor in the growth of government state government spending and state and local spending are explained using a panel of 46 states for 1950 88 elimination of poll taxes and literacy tests led to higher turnout particularly among the poor and a poorer pivotal voter as predicted we find that these changes a fall in the income of voters relative to state income and the ouster of republicans from state government led to a sharp rise in welfare spending but no change in other spending

are estimates of calorie income fxelasticities too high a recalibration of the plausible range abstract the wide range of calorie income elasticities in the literature results in large part from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie income variable pairs for a sample of philippine farm households ranged from 0 03 to 0 59 estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards first because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted by construction both to calorie availability and total expenditures and second because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income the calorie intake total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0 08 0 14 range

the provocative public sector domestic political protest and public sector growth in the oecd 1965 1982 the results shown in tables 1 through 8 above are consistent in that gg is repeatedly shown to be significant whether making cross national comparisons of dpp or predicting intra national variations over time therefore hypotheses 1a and 1b are confirmed the confirmation of hypotheses 2a and 2b shows that taking into account public sector size government growth is most provocative in countries where it represents a major socio economic change i e where the public sector is small government growth has a neutral impact where the role of the public sector is long established i e where the public sector is large

lobbying and asymmetric information informational lobbying the use by interest groups of their alleged expertise or private information on matters of importance for policymakers in an attempt to persuade them to implement particular policies is often regarded as an important means of influence this paper analyzes this phenomenon in a game setting on the one hand the interest group is assumed to have private information which is relevant to the policymaker whilst on the other hand the policymaker is assumed to be fully aware of the strategic incentives of the interest group to mis report or conceal its private information

budget spillovers and fiscal policy interdependence evidence from the states abstract this paper formalizes and tests the notion that states expenditures depend on the spending of similarly situated states we find that even after allowing for fixed state effects year effects and common random shocks among neighbors a state government s level of per capita expenditure is positively and significantly affected by the expenditure levels of its neighbors ceteris paribus a one dollar increase in a state s neighbors expenditures increases its own expenditure by over 70 cents

an examination of the factors affecting the formation of interest groups in oecd countries perhaps the best way to summarize the empirical results is to classify the hypotheses into three groups those which can be readily accepted because they are supported in all tests those which can be readily rejected because no test results support them and those upon which one should remain agnostic because the test results are not consistent in the first group are population pop decentralization of government dcnt and length of time of modernization date one can state quite confidently that these three variables are determinants of interest group activity in the second group are the variables measuring characteristics of the political system poly dem1 dem2 pfrc one can with ease reject the hypotheses to which these variables are relevant there is a large group of variables which stand in the middle group however for these variables there are gradations of success in the tests the variables on socioeconomic development inc agri news and number of industries and political subdivisions nind regp are only significant in the one variable tests especially important is their failure to obtain the correct signs in the tests reported in table 3 the variables on ethnic fractionalization efrc and olson s hypothesis on destruction of groups ndfo have the correct signs in table 3 and are significant in table 1 thus it is more difficult to reject efrc and ndfo as determinants of interest group activity than inc nind and regp finally it should be mentioned that once appropriate simultaneous equations techniques are applied government size is no longer supported as a significant variable this paper will conclude with comments of a more conjectural nature on the implications of the results in the case of three specific variables first the results on hypothesis 3 suggest that population affects the number of interest groups independently of indirect effects through other variables this direct effect occurs because groups become proportionately smaller and more homogeneous as population increases hence one can expect the political economy of larger countries to be significantly different from that of smaller countries the results suggest that larger countries will have a denser array of interest groups and that these groups because of their homogeneity will find it easier to decide on and pursue policies in the narrow interests of their members secondly the results support olson s claim that there will be a gradual accumulation of interest groups in developed democracies given that olson attributes to interest groups a large role in determining the economic fortunes of a country the fact that his accumulation hypothesis is supported is a result of some significance finally if one accepts the two stage least squares results it has been shown that changes in government size do not induce changes in interest group activity an important conclusion can be reached when this result is taken in combination with the results of other studies which show that interest groups induce changes in the size of government mccormick and tollison 1981 and mueller and murrell 1983 these results do not support the capture theory of government that governmental institutions are created perhaps in the public interest and then dominated by interest groups rather the results support the theory that the institutions themselves are the creatures of interest group activity

political competition and pork barrel politics in the allocation of public investment in mexico this paper examines the effect of political competition in local elections in re gional allocation of public investment the study employs data on mexican elections covering the period 1990 95 characterised by an increase in electoral competition and coupled with increasing demands for decentralisation throughout the states empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that regional allocation of public investment by central government was driven by political opportunism and local pork barrel politics a positive relationship was found between the regional allocation of public investment and support for the central ruling party this might indicate that local spending inefficiencies were partially explained by the specific support for the incumbent party

political competition and state government size do tighter elections produce looser budgets we test implications of politicalcompetition theory concerning government size usingdata from u s states we find that greaterpolitical competition in the race for governor actsas a check against bigger government evidence onthe effectiveness of legal limits on expendituresand or revenues growth is mixed the democraticparty is associated with bigger government but onlywhen party representation in both the governor shouse and the legislature is strong the flypapereffect of grants is found to be strong our resultshave implications for models of fiscal illusion

persistence in government spending fluctuations new evidence on the displacement effect in spite of peacock and wiseman s 1961 nber study demonstrating the displacement effect simplistic theoretical and empirical distinctions between temporary and permanent spending are common in this paper impulse response functions from arma models as well as cochrane s non parametric method support peacock and wiseman s conclusion by showing 1 government spending in the aggregate displays strong persistence to temporary shocks 2 simple decomposition methods intended to yield a temporary spending series have a weak statitistical foundation and 3 persistence in spending has increased during this century also as a basic fact of government spending behavior the displacement effect lends support to interest group and bureaucracy models of government spending growth

the line item veto and public sector budgets evidence from the states abstract the paper examines the claim that gubernatorial line item veto power reduces state spending analysis of a rich set of state budget data indicates that long run budgets are not altered by an item veto and that in the short run the item veto s potency is contingent upon the political setting in certain circumstances governors with political incentives to use an item veto alter spending and revenues in a statistically significant and quantitatively important fashion these results suggest that state budgets have not been importantly altered as a result of the existence of the line item veto and shed doubt on the use of the line item veto to reduce federal government spending

the population ecology of gucci gulch or the natural regulation of interest group numbers in the american states theory the theory of population ecology in contrast to economic theories of groups is used to predict the number of interest groups in the united states hypotheses interest group density is a function of potential constituents potential government goods and services the stability of the political system government age and government size methods regression analysis of u s state data for interest groups in construction agriculture manufacturing welfare the environment and local governments results interest group density conforms to the predictions based on population ecology constituents government goods and services and political stability but not those based on economic theories of group mobilization

program conditionality and food security the impact of progresa and procampo transfers in rural mexico this paper examines the progresa and procampo cash transfer programs in mexico and evaluates their impact on household food security and nutrition these two programs differ in their targeting and design progresa is aimed at women and program conditionality is linked to current consumption and human capital investment procampo benefits male farmers and program conditionality is linked to agricultural production the main question addressed by the paper is whether a cash transfer program geared to agricultural production can have the same impact on food security as a cash transfer program geared to consumption through purchases our results suggest that monetary payments linked to a productive asset land can have as large or larger impact on food security as cash transfers not linked to a productive asset we show that both programs boost total food consumption and caloric intake in similar proportions however increased food security is achieved through different channels for progresa through purchases while for procampo through investment in home production this suggests that the choice of program design depends on objectives beyond total food consumption and caloric intake such as consumption from specific food categories diversity of food consumption investment in agricultural production and the degree of access to retail food markets

is variety the spice of life implications for calorie intake the income elasticity of calories generally is substantially smaller than the income elasticity of food expenditure one reason may be an increasing concern for food variety as incomes increase food variety can be linked with two characteristics of food indifference curves 1 curvature and 2 location of the curves relative to the axes estimates suggest increasing taste for variety as food budgets increase therefore such taste for variety apparently underlies in part the low income elasticities for calorie demand which in turn cast doubt on the world bank assertion that the nutrient intakes of poor populations will improve rapidly with income copyright 1989 by mit press

the growth of government in italy evidence from 1861 to 1979 that the public sector has grown both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the economy is an undisputable fact that both growth rates have accelerated in recent history is also an unchallenged fact more cautious must we be about why these trends have occurred and are persisting we have tested three partially competing theories of government growth using italian annual data from 1861 to 1979 and assessed that the redistribution model explains the facts better than either the public goods model or the specialized interest hypothesis although the latter tells the most convincing story about the causes underlying transfers to firms we have also tried to discriminate between two competing views of a politician the value free intermediary found in the median voter literature and the entrepreneur emphasized in the theory of agency costs the bits of evidence we gathered are more consistent with a politician entrepreneur than a politician intermediary

evaluating efficient public good provision theory and evidence from a generalised conditional efficiency model for public libraries abstract provision of most public goods e g health care libraries education police fire protection utilities can be characterized by a two stage production process in the first stage basic inputs e g labor and capital are used to generate service potential e g opening hours materials which is then in the second stage transformed into observed outputs e g school outcomes library circulation crimes solved as final outputs are also affected by demand side factors conflating both production stages likely leads to biased inferences about public productive in efficiency and its determinants hence this paper uses a specially tailored fully non parametric efficiency model allowing for both outlying observations and heterogeneity to analyse efficient public good provision in stage one only we thereby employ a dataset comprising all 290 flemish public libraries our findings suggest that ideological stance of the local government wealth and density of the local population and source of library funding i e local funding versus intergovernmental transfers strongly affect library productive efficiency

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

equilibrium and efficiency in an organized vote market we study an organized market for votes in which trade is directed by a market specialist this market mechanism always produces an equilibrium outcome and whenever vote buying occurs the alternative chosen is pareto superior to the alternative that would be chosen without trade we then characterize the equilibrium outcomes in a one dimensional policy space and show that if the distribution of ideal points is skewed enough then the equilibrium with vote buying differs from the equilibrium without vote buying the median ideal point this difference reflects the ability of an intense minority to obtain a policy it prefers in exchange for side payments

economic growth regressions for the american states a sensitivity analysis i introduction researchers motivated by a variety of questions turn to data on the economic performance of the american states to analyze their ideas empirically the appeal of cross state empirical analysis derives from the fact that while states differ in relevant dimensions they are not so different as to make omitted variables an overwhelming source of error for example the state economies operate under the same monetary regime the federal reserve comparable legal institutions the u s constitution and borders open to the flow of productive factors knowledge and products cross state analysis avoids the myriad structural differences that encumber cross national empirical analysis thus investigators feel secure in considering a relatively small number of control variables in attempting to establish a statistical relationship between state economic performance and a particular variable of interest the availability of uniform and accurate time series data for the states adds to the appeal of cross state regression models despite the advantages associated with evaluating institutionally similar economies researchers who rely on state regressions find little systematic guidance concerning which variables to include and other basic specification issues for instance do demographic and geographic characteristics vary sufficiently across states to require independent controls do cultural or climatic conditions affect growth or are these variables correlated with other factors that may affect growth such as labor force participation rates or education levels a review of the extensive literature reveals that few studies control for the variables analyzed by other researchers these specification differences make it hard to evaluate and compare the results of existing studies bartik 1991 and phillips and goss 1995 illustrate this problem as they attempt to garner the effect of taxes on state economic development from dozens of studies that employ alternative specifications and methodologies they use meta regression analysis mra to test whether specification changes and alternative variables significantly affect the estimated elasticity of state growth with respect to taxes the mra technique focuses on the sensitivity of the estimated coefficients for state tax variables to model variation in this paper we employ a technique to assess the sensitivity of numerous control variables identified in the state growth literature we also introduce several new control variables the approach identifies which variables are robust to small changes in the conditioning information set our procedure closely follows that in levine and renelt 1992 which for its part relies on the extreme bounds analysis eba suggested by learner 1983 1985 1 the main difference is that we employ annual panel data on the american states pooling cross sectional and time series data whereas levine and renelt employ cross country data averaged over 20 year or even longer time intervals the cross country studies such as those assessed in levine and renelt that average long time periods generally seek to identify factors associated with long run steady state growth the u s state studies using annual panel data do not share a comparable unifying purpose relationships estimated from yearly data reveal short term responses and pick up business cycle effects which confounds drawing implications about growth theory with this qualification in mind the results presented below indicate which variables included in past studies are robust and provide a set of core variables as a starting point for future research that relies on state growth regressions and annual panel data finally the findings demonstrate that several important conclusions in the literature depend on how variables are measured for example the relationship between state growth and government size reverses sign depending on whether we denominate government size in per capita terms or as a share of state income

estimating the effect of job training programs using longitudinal data ashenfelter s findings reconsidered this paper is an examination of how autoregressive earnings models commonly used to evaluate job training programs can produce badly biased estimates of both the magnitude and the temporal pattern of program impacts ashenfelter s results are used to illustrate this point and a new more appropriate model is used to reanalyze his data of particular importance is the finding that the decay in ashenfelter s estimated training effect for men was produced by a time varying bias in his model

special interest groups and growth this paper explores empirically the relation between special interest groups and economic growth our analysis exploits new data on the number of groups observed across countries and time in order to mitigate the identification problems associated with earlier studies also in contrast to earlier work we examine the impact of groups on two sources of growth capital accumulation and technological change in addition to the impact of groups on output growth the findings are consistent with olson s the rise and decline of nations the political economy of economic growth stagflation and social rigidities new haven yale 1982 claim that societies with greater numbers of interest groups grow slower accumulate less capital and experience reduced productivity growth relative to others

gender headship and intrahousehold resource allocation abstract household head as reported in household surveys may not always identify the main economic provider and decision maker within the household research based on this definition of headship may lead to misleading conclusions on the link between gender and poverty treating female headed households as a homogenous group can also be inappropriate results from jamaica show that it is not female headedness per se that is associated with child welfare but the absence of a potential female decision maker within the household

the political economy of centralization and the european community since 1972 the share of central government expenditure in total public expenditure has continued to increase in most industrial countries in an international cross section analysis it has a significant positive effect on the share of government spending in gdp the actors who have an interest in centralization are analyzed the dynamics of centralization are attributed to a response asymmetry and two thresholds popitz law of the attraction of the larger budget is tested with respect to the ec commission high ranking politicians come mainly from the smaller member states the voters attitudes toward european unification are analyzed in a pooled regression

pressure politics and government spending in belgium in this article we tried to offer an explanation for the evolution in belgian government spending over the period 1961 1984 this explanation was based on a demand model featuring the median voter and a supplement with a political module in the traditional part of the model price income and population variables were used for the political module we called upon the pressure group theory of mueller and murrell 1983 while we also developed our own theory

partisan politics and public finance changes in public spending in the industrialized democracies 1955 1989 this paper evaluates the role that partisan politics plays in altering public spending levels the analysis covers over three decades of data on the developments of the public sectors in 16 oecd countries the results of the analysis lend firm support to the partisan politics model of special note is the distinction between the electorate and the government ideological preferences and the dominant role that the former plays the results also suggest contrary to conventional wisdom that partisan political influences have not been eliminated with the tightening of linkages to the international economy

ethnic diversity public spending and individual support for the welfare state a review of the empirical literature we review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on public spending and on individual support for the welfare state the survey puts a particular focus on the fast growing literature that uses experiments to study the effects of ethnic diversity many of these studies have appeared since the pioneering survey by alesina and la ferrara and have not been covered by a survey before

does better nutrition raise farm productivity household level data from sierra leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity this is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis which has found only weak empirical support a farm production function is estimated accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice instruments include prices household demographic characteristics and farm assets the latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity the exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity providing solid support for the nutrition productivity hypothesis the marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake one result is a fall in the effective price of food a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

explaining the growth of government in sweden a disequilibrium approach previous studies aimed at explaining the growth of government in a particular country have failed to distinguish between explanatory variables acting on the supply and demand side respectively alternatively they have tested one explanation at a time implying explanatory equations that are misspecified in addition no allowance has been made for the fact that the interaction between supply and demand can hardly be assumed to be a self equilibrating process where the price of public goods and services adjusts to equate the two instead a framework of disequilibrium seems more appropriate for the analysis of the growth of government

federalism and the size of government over the last few decades the size of the public sector in both absolute and relative terms has increased in all of the western economies this has led to considerable investigation of the factors determining government size factors considered have included income elasticity of voter demand for public goods i e wagner s law relative price changes threshold effects e g wars or depressions interest group demands e g public sector employees or unions 17 productivity differentials 1 and redistributional motivations 18 10 one factor which has received little more than passing interest is government structure that is centralization of government activities as opposed to decentralization or federalism authors such as fratianni and spinelli 7 musgrave and musgrave 12 beck 2 and buchanan 4 make no mention of government structure as a factor in the determination of government size when considered the impact of government structure on government size is treated more as an afterthought for example mueller and murrell 11 incorporate a centralization variable in only two of their twenty two regression equations and then only in their two stage least squares equations and offer little analysis of its expected impact on government size exceptions to this standard treatment of federalism include brennan and buchanan 3 oates 15 nelson 13 14 and marlow 9 brennan and buchanan consider the structure of government and its impact on public sector size in the context of a revenue maximizing government model they argue that with mobile voters and local public goods decentralization of government taxing and expenditure powers would serve to constrain the size of the public sector in a tiebout like world any attempt on the part of one jurisdiction to exploit its citizenry would result in instantaneous and complete migration on the part of the citizenry to an alternative nonexploitive jurisdiction this competition among jurisdictions for the patronage of the citizenry limits the extent of fiscal exploitation possible and as such the size of the public sector brennan and buchanan note however that w ithin a constitutionally designed federal structure one would predict that there would be constant pressures by competitive lower level governments to secure institutional rearrangements that would moderate competitive pressures 3 182 these institutional rearrangements would take the form of collusive agreements between the central and lower level governments which assign to the central government what were previously lower level revenue raising powers subject to the revenues being returned to the lower level governments by

competencies cracks and conflicts regional mobilization in the european union over the past 5 years a new and unexpected form of interest representation has developed in the european union subnational governments that mobilize directly in brussels the authors propose explanations for this phenomenon drawing on theories of public choice resource mobilization and multilevel governance the first set of hypotheses is concerned with the material and cultural resources that may induce a subnational government to organize in the european arena the second set of hypotheses explains regional representation as an outcome of overlapping competencies tensions and conflicts in a system of multilevel governance logistic analysis of the probability of regional representation provides support for the second set of hypotheses the authors find that subnational representation is positively associated with the degree of overlap between the competencies of subnational and supranational governments and with the political distinctiveness of a region and the relative strength of citizens regi

rent seeking and political tenure first estimates this paper computes a measure of rent seeking based on costs of tenure within a political tenure type model a new incumbency variable is introduced and a variant to existing datasets is presented consistent ml rent seeking estimates are computed for our sample of oecd democracies the statistical advances in limited dependent variable models in particular the decomposition of the tobit estimates enabled us to compute rent seeking estimates as costs of tenure the tobit partial derivatives and to compute the impact of explanatory variables on the probability of being above the limit which we interpret as the probability of tenure

interest groups and the size of government the results of the previous section estimates of a three equation model from 23 observations must obviously be regarded as tentative the consistent positive relationship between number of interest groups and size of government observed with changing sets of included independent variables changing samples of nations and treating the number of interest groups as either exogenous or codetermined does imply rather unequivocally that interest groups are able to influence public policies in such a manner as to lead to increased government size beyond helping to reinforce this conclusion the results of the previous section should be regarded as first steps in the development of a model of the polity that can explain participation in the political process by interest groups and citizens as well as the size of government

is the median voter a clear cut winner comparing themedian voter theory and competing theories in explaining localgovernment spending this paper attempts to test the power of the median model againstthe respective strength of other alternate models based onredistributive political institutional and interest group theoriesin explaining the demand for public spending in new york statecounties during 1990 1980 and 1970 to execute the comparison ofthe performance of median voter model with that of each of thenonmedian voter ones various nonnested tests such as j and jatests n tilde w and encompassing tests have been employed results of the study show that although the median voter model hasa marginal edge over the rival models based on the alternativetheories it may not be relied upon solely when many otherinstitutional redistributive and interest group factors are alsorelevant for explaining public spending the results of this studydiffer from those in congleton and bennett 1995 we do not findthat interest group models are substantially weaker than the medianvoter model

the effect of the food stamp program on the nutrient intake of the eligible elderly an objective of the food stamp program recognized in its originating legislation is to increase the nutrient intake of the poor economic theory suggests this might be achieved through income effects and program related effects this paper using data from the food stamp cashout project tests the effectiveness of food stamps and direct cash transfers in achieving this goal for a sample of elderly households food stamp program effects were negligible and nutrient intake did not increase with income in either program controlling for the endogeneity of participation with a selection bias technique did not affect these results

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity