consensus building how to persuade a group many decisions in private and public organizations are made by groups the paper explores strategies that the sponsor of a proposal may employ to convince a qualified majority of group members to approve the proposal adopting a mechanism design approach to communication it emphasizes the need to distill information selectively to key members of the group and to engineer persuasion cascades in which members who are brought on board sway the opinion of others the paper unveils the factors such as the extent of congruence among group members and between them and the sponsor and the size and governance of the group that condition the sponsor s ability to maneuver and get his project approved

buying supermajorities in finite legislatures i analyze the finite voter version of the groseclose and snyder vote buying model i identify how the optimal coalition size varies with the underlying preference parameters derive necessary and sufficient conditions for minimal ma1onty and universal coalitions to form and show that the necessary condition for minimal majorities found in groseclose and snyder is incorrect

vote buying supermajorities and flooded coalitions in a recent paper banks 2000 adopting the framework of our model groseclose and snyder 1996 derives several new and noteworthy results in addition he provides a counterexample to our proposition 4 here we explain the error in our proposition but note that we can correct it easily if we invoke an additional assumption in equilibrium the winning vote buyer constructs a nonflooded coalition that is she does not bribe every member of her coalition we conclude with a brief discussion of the substantive implications of banks s proposition 1 we note that it provides additional support for our general claim that minimal winning coalitions should be rare in a vote buying game

alternative models of input allocation in multicrop systems irrigation water in the central plains united states abstract this paper compares three models of input allocation in multicrop systems in addition to the variable input and satisficing models analyzed in previous research an allocatable fixed input model of short run input use is derived the empirical application studies irrigation water use in the central plains region of the united states based on results from model specification tests and prediction accuracy measures the allocatable fixed input model dominates both other models in explaining multicrop water allocation in addition the paper presents an alternative approach to the study of deficient data on multicrop production by transferring econometric results from analysis of non deficient crop level data input allocations in deficient data sets can be predicted

buying negative agenda control in the u s house we explore the foundations of the legislative party cartel as theorized by cox and mccubbins 1993 2005 to determine how majority party moderates who suffer net policy losses from the majority leadership s use of negative agenda control are kept from defecting from the cartel arrangement first we identify formally the group of majority party members who are net policy losers we find that those members occupying the initial 30 of the space within the majority party blockout zone that space closest to the floor median are hurt on a pure policy basis by the cartel arrangement second we find that members in this 30 zone are rewarded disproportionately by majority party leaders relative to members in other intervals on the same side of the floor median via side payments in the form of campaign contributions in addition majority party members within the 30 zone receive side payments commensurate with their particular policy loss

the analysis of committee power an application to senate voting on the minimum wage a widely noted empirical regularity of congressional behavior is that standing committees exert disproportionate influence on congressional choices the observed phenomenon has a number of labels committee influence committee power and from the parent chamber s perspective deference to committees and a large body of theoretical and empirical research has sought to determine when and why it exists this paper takes as given only the weakest form the observation namely that committee power exists sometimes it does not directly address the questions of when and why committee power exists although much of the relevant literature is reviewed rather it focuses on a prerequisite to the resolution of disputes about committee power how can committee power be assessed empirically section i reviews three classes of explanations and identifies obstacles to convincing empirical tests of the accounts section ii introduces an econometric approach for analyzing committee power section iii applies the technique to a sequence of votes on minimum wage legislation in the senate in 1977 section iv extends the technique to multi dimensional choice spaces section v is a discussion and summary

a carrot and stick approach to agenda setting this paper models a legislature in which the same agenda setter serves for two periods showing how he can exploit a legislature completely in the first period by promising future benefits to legislators who support him in equilibrium a large majority of legislators vote for the first period proposal because they thereby maintain the chance of belonging to the minimum winning coalition in the future legislators may therefore approve policies by large majorities or even unanimously that benefit few or even none of them the results are robust but institutional arrangements such as entitlements can reduce the agenda setter s power by reducing his discretion to reward and punish legislators and rules such as sequential voting can increase a legislator s ability to resist exploitation

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

why did the elites extend the suffrage democracy and the scope of government with an application to britain s age of reform a new rationale is presented for why an elite may want to expand the franchise even in the absence of threats to the established order expanding the franchise can turn politicians away from particularistic politics based on ad personam redistribution within the elite and foster competition based on programs with diffuse benefits if these programs are valuable a majority of the elite votes in favor of an extension of the franchise despite the absence of a threat from the disenfranchised we argue that the evolution of public spending and of political competition in nineteenth century britain is consistent with our model i introduction at the beginning of the nineteenth century in most countries narrow elites had a disproportionate influence on public affairs even in england where parliament was an influential institution suffrage was mostly the privilege of the wealthy and some members of parliament were elected in boroughs with as few as 100 voters while cities such as manchester did not have any representative a century later most western countries had universal male suffrage with female suffrage to arrive shortly thereafter what brought about this democratic revolution in many cases the elites were forced out of power after violent revolutions however there are important examples such as england where democratization took the form of gradual extensions of the suffrage and these were accompanied by little overt violence it is the peculiar pride of england that the record of social and political reform is to be found on the statute book not in the annals of revolution cheyney 1931 p vii such peaceful democratizations are difficult to rationalize within the benchmark political economic models in those models extending the franchise dilutes the elite s power to influence policy and results

committee assignments constituent preferences and campaign contributions committee assignments constituent preferences and campaign constributions the familiar economic model of regulation as developed by stigler 1971 peltzman 1976 and becker 1983 posits an essentially frictionless market process for regulatory policy formation in which a single regulator legislator chooses policy to maximize net support from competing groups in this paper we extend the supply side of this model by considering the effect of legislative institutions and unorganized constituent preferences on the ability of incumbents in the house of representatives to serve specific interest groups we then test this formulation by examining the recent history of interest group campaign contributions to these legislators our theoretical model concentrates on how a legislator allocates time between serving specific interest groups outside his district and serving his constituency we do not model interest group decisions directly assuming simply that they purchase their desired amount of service from the lowest cost suppliers our model sorts legislators by the supply price at which they can serve a particular group this price depends on the preferences of the voters in the legislators district and the productivity of the legislator in producing policy service for each group 1 the empirical section tests the model by examining the pattern of interest group campaign contributions to house incumbents from 1978 through 1984 our regression analysis tends to confirm both implications of the theory first the pattern of campaign contributions from specific interest groups to legislators is shaped by the division of substantive legislative and regulatory jurisdictions represented by the system of house standing committees second voter preferences influence the pattern of contributions by affecting the supply price at which a legislator can offer policy to interest groups legislators with sympathetic or indifferent constituencies are able to offer a lower price and are therefore able to attract larger sums than those with hostile constituencies these results are important for two reasons first the influence of congressional institutions such as committees on policy is not widely accepted while several studies faith levins and tollison 1982 weingast and moran 1983 weingast 1984 grier 1989 and robert 1990 have documented the effects of changes in a particular committee on policies under its jurisdiction this work considers the jurisdiction of only a single committee in each case 2 by examining the linkages between congressional committees and political action committees pacs we investigate whether interest groups act as if committees have power second while the chicago model of regulation emphasizes correctly in our view that policy is the result of vote maximizing calculations and the incremental balancing nature of any equilibrium the model is imprecise about which sets of preferences are most important in determining the levels of policy or the size of changes in policies focusing on committees promotes a parsimonious specification of both the political players members of the relevant committee rather than the entire congress and the pivotal voters committee members constituencies more than the nation determining specific policy outcomes the paper is organized as follows section i reviews some issues on the nature and sources of committee influence in the u s congress the second section incorporates committee assignments into a theory of decision making by interest group investors sections iii and iv describe our data and estimation technique and present the empirical results the fifth and final section discusses some implications and conclusions of this research i committee power in congress legislators differ substantively by virtue of their committee assignments committees in congress and particularly in the house of representatives possess disproportionate power over the policy areas in their respective jurisdictions have the right to hold hearings and recommend budget allocations for the bureaus in their jurisdiction goodwin 1970

plata o plomo bribe and punishment in a theory of political influence we present a model where groups attempt to influence policies using both bribes plata spanish for silver and the threat of punishment plomo spanish for lead we then use it to make predictions about the quality of a country s public officials and to understand the role of institutions granting politicians with immunity from legal prosecution the use of punishment lowers the returns from public office and reduces the incentives of high ability citizens to enter public life cheaper plomo and more resources subject to official discretion are associated with more frequent corruption and less able politicians this predicts that violence in a country will typically go together with corruption and worse politicians moreover the possibility of punishment changes the nature of the influence game so that even cheaper plata can lower the ability of public officials protecting officials from accusations of corruption immunity will decrease the frequency of corruption if the judiciary is weak and may increase the quality of politicians these predictions cannot emerge from a traditional model where only bribes are used the positive evils and dangers of the representative as of every other form of government may be reduced to two heads first general ignorance and incapacity or to speak more moderately insufficient mental qualifications in the controlling body secondly the danger of its being under the influence of interests not identical with the general welfare of the community

an examination of the market for favors and votes in congress this paper examines the strategies that horse traders and power brokers adopt in trading favors to pass legislation although the favors that they trade are generally impossible to observe the paper develops a model that allows tests of favor trading with data from the senate vote on the byrd amendment to the 1990 clean air act i conduct such a test the test provides evidence that on this vote i favor trading occurred ii the coalition leaders practiced price discrimination and iii the coalition leaders did not collude with each another

power brokers middlemen in legislative bargaining abstract we study a model of decentralized legislative bargaining over public decisions with transfers we establish the emergence of middlemen in legislative bargaining as a robust equilibrium phenomenon we show that legislative intermediation can impact policy outcomes and can be inefficient to fulfill this role the middleman s policy preferences and bargaining position must be such that its role of intermediary is credible but the political middleman must also directly benefit from policy change the results highlight fundamental differences between the role of intermediaries in politics and exchange economies

the economic impacts of climate change evidence from agricultural output and random fluctuations in weather fisher et al 2012 hereafter fhrs have uncovered coding and data errors in our paper deschenes and greenstone 2007 hereafter dg we acknowledge and are embarrassed by these mistakes we are grateful to fhrs for uncovering them we hope that this reply will also contribute to advancing the literature on the vital question of the impact of climate change on the us agricultural sector fhrs main critiques of dg are as follows i there are errors in the weather data and climate change projections used by dg ii the climate change projections are based on the hadley 2 model and scenarios rather than the more recent hadley 3 model and scenarios iii standard errors are biased due to spatial correlation iv the inclusion of state by year fixed effects does not leave enough weather variation to obtain meaningful estimates of the relationship between agriculture profits and weather v storage and inventory adjustment in response to yield shocks invalidate the use of annual profit data and vi fhrs argue that a better specified hedonic model produces robust estimates unlike the results reported in dg four of these critiques have little basis and we respond to them here in the introduction specifically with respect to ii the more recent daily climate predictions were not available when we wrote dg nevertheless the most important issue is providing the reliable estimates of climate change and in this note we report estimates based on the climate model we used in dg and a more recent one that we gained access to in the meantime iii in the primary table on agricultural profits dg reports two sets of standard errors with the first clustered at the county level and the second based on a variance covariance matrix that accounts for spatial correlation using the method proposed in conley 1999 thus the claim of fhrs 2012 seems overblown nevertheless to ease comparisons of papers in this literature this note will adopt the fhrs convention of reporting estimated standard errors clustered at the county and state levels we find that inference is largely unaffected by the choice between these different assumptions about the variance covariance matrix

spatial models of legislative effectiveness spatial models of policymaking have evolved from the median voter theorem through the inclusion of institutional considerations such as political parties committees and various voting and amendment rules such models however implicitly assume that no policy is more effective than another at solving public policy problems and that all proposers are equally capable of advancing proposals we relax these assumptions by modeling proposal quality and the effort needed to make better proposals the resulting legislative effectiveness model lem offers three main benefits first it can better account for policy changes based on the effectiveness or popularity of the status quo changing our understanding of how to overcome gridlock in polarized legislatures second it generalizes canonical models of legislative politics such as median voter setter negative agenda setting and pivotal politics models all of which emerge as special cases within the lem third the lem offers significant new empirical predictions some of which we initially test and find support for within the u s congress

policy influence and private returns from lobbying in the energy sector in this article i quantify the extent to which lobbying expenditures by firms affect policy enactment to achieve this end i construct a novel dataset containing all federal energy legislation and lobbying activities by the energy sector during the 110th congress i then develop and estimate a game theoretic model where heterogeneous players choose lobbying expenditures to affect the probability that a policy is enacted i find that the effect of lobbying expenditures on a policy s equilibrium enactment probability to be statistically significant but very small nonetheless the average returns from lobbying expenditures are estimated to be over 130

reducing conflicts between climate policy and energy policy in the us the important role of the states the absence of us national action on global climate change policy has prompted initiatives by the us congress cities states and regions toward what is likely to become a long term collaborative effort to harmonize national energy and climate policies this upward evolution in the face of a reluctant administration is historically consistent with the development of national legislation on other environmental and social issues in the us at the heart of this movement is the need to resolve conflicts between high intensity use of low cost fossil energy supplies and the dominating impact of carbon dioxide emissions on global climate change us states are among the largest carbon dioxide emitters in the world and play a critical role in supplying and transforming energy as well as consuming it for economic advantage state governments are also likely to have to shoulder some of the cost of potentially extensive climate damages and bear the brunt of the cost of implementing future federal mandates as a result many are taking proactive stances on the development of climate mitigation policy to prepare for accelerate and or guide national policy as us states show leadership on addressing greenhouse gas emissions they also play an important role in forging policies and measures that reduce economic conflict between energy and climate goals a number have launched or completed greenhouse gas mitigation plans and other major policies in the past few years that address these conflicts through 1 finding ways to reduce mitigation costs including the use of incentive based policy instruments 2 promoting an open and democratic policy process that includes major stakeholders 3 promoting equity across socioeconomic groups regions and generations and 4 promoting interregional cooperation the results are promising and suggest that the state arena for climate and energy policy is evolving quickly and constructively toward alternatives that reduce conflict regional efforts are also unfolding along with greater congressional attention to the lessons learned and commitments made by sub federal actions in the next few years many national energy and climate conflicts are likely to be tested and addressed by states among these pennsylvania is likely to be an important player due to its high profile of energy production and potential for leadership

vote buying in a stylized setting as we noted in the introduction we do not propose to discuss possible implications for the real world of democratic politics that may be drawn from the highly stylized models of vote buying that we have analyzed in this paper to the extent that economic legal or moral thresholds prevent the emergence of the purchase and sale of votes among persons who initially possess property rights in the collective franchise our whole analysis is simply inapplicable if however such thresholds serve only to inhibit but not to prevent totally the emergence of such markets there should be some value in an analysis that embodies the zero transactions costs assumption

universalism and the value of political power although legislatures typically use majority rule to allocate a budget in distributive legislation unanimous consent over the broad allocation of benefits is pervasive i develop a game theoretic model where members strategically interact in a universal coalition to determine allocations with noncooperative bargaining as a threat point for the breakdown of cooperation to quantify the effects of political power on the agreed upon allocation i structurally estimate the model using the bridge bill capital budget in 1992 i find that 16 73 of the budget would be allocated differently if allocations were determined only based on actual needs

the industrial organization of congress or why legislatures like firms are not organized as markets this paper provides a theory of legislative institutions that parallels the theory of the firm and the theory of contractual institutions like market institutions legislative institutions reflect two key components the goals or preferences of individuals here representatives seeking reelection and the relevant transactions costs we present three conclusions first we show how the legislative institutions enforce bargains among legislators second we explain why given the peculiar form of bargaining problems found in legislatures specific forms of nonmarket exchange prove superior to market exchange third our approach shows how the committee system limits the types of coalitions that may form on a particular issue

american policy conflict in the greenhouse divergent trends in federal regional state and local green energy and climate change policy climate change threatens significant impacts on global ecosystems and human populations to address this challenge industrialized nations have ratified the kyoto protocol and undertaken commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases the primary agents linked to anthropogenic alteration of earth s climate by contrast the us government led by the bush administration has rejected mandatory targets for curbing emissions under the protocol and has instead pursued voluntary mitigation measures amid a larger push for clean coal and next generation nuclear technologies these actions in total have fueled global perceptions that the us is not acting in substantial ways to address climate change nevertheless action within the us is indeed moving forward with states cities and regional partnerships filling the federal leadership vacuum this paper reviews the diverse policies strategies and cooperative frameworks that have emerged at regional state and local levels to guide climate protection and identifies the environmental and economic benefits linked to such programs the paper also attempts to explain the existing federal impasse on climate policy with attention given to how sub national efforts may ultimately obviate national governmental inaction r 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

balanced budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition this paper models balanced budget redistribution between socio economic groups as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties equilibrium is unique in the present model and a sufficient condition for existence is given requiring that there be enough stochastic heterogeneity with respect to party preferences in the electorate the validity of hotelling s principle of minimum differentiation and of director s law are examined under alternative hypotheses concerning administrative costs of redistributions and voter s possibilities both of abstaining from voting and of becoming campaign activists for one of the parties the policy strategy of expected plurality maximization is contrasted with the strategy of maximizing the probability of gaining a plurality incomes are fixed and known so lump sum taxation is feasible however constraints on tax transfer differentiation between individuals are permitted in the analysis

income distribution impacts of climate change mitigation policy in the susquehanna river basin economy we examine the cost side income distribution impacts of a carbon tax in the susquehanna river basin srb region of the united states utilizing a computable general equilibrium model we find the aggregate impacts of a 25 ton carbon tax on the srb economy are likely to be negative but modest an approximately one third of 1 reduction in gross regional product grp in the short run and double that amount in the long run however unlike many previous studies we find that the carbon tax is mildly progressive as measured by income bracket changes per capita equivalent variation and gini coefficient changes based on expenditure patterns the dominant factors affecting the distributional impacts are the pattern of output income and consumption impacts that affect lower income groups relatively less than higher income ones an increase in transfer payments favoring lower income groups and decreased corporate profits absorbed primarily by higher income groups

violence bribery and fraud the political economy of elections in sub saharan africa post soviet african democratization has introduced elections into contexts that often lack restraints upon the behavior of candidates resulting in the emergence of voter intimidation vote buying and ballot fraud we propose a model of electoral competition where although some voters oppose violence it is effective in intimidating swing voters we show that in equilibrium a weak challenger will use violence which corresponds to a terrorism strategy similarly a nationally weak incumbent will use repression however a stronger incumbent facing local competition will prefer to use bribery or ballot fraud we discuss the applicability of the model to several african elections

presidential pork executive veto power and distributive politics mitigated to the extent that the president prefers spending in some districts over others the model also generates new insights and predictions about fiscal policy under the separation of powers including the effects of divided government electoral rules and term limitations for the executive

international equity and differentiation in global warming policy ne of the major obstacles to reaching a comprehensive agreement on global warming is the setting of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for individual countries long standing tensions between industrialized and developing countries have raised the issue of equity in burden sharing moreover individual industrialized nations have pleaded special circumstances and have sought differentiation in their obligations this paper analyzes alternative rules for distributing tradable carbon dioxide emissions permits a non linear programming model which distinguishes between allocation based and outcome based rules is used to analyze the relative welfare outcomes the model is applied to the world body of nations and yields several important policy implications

the informational role of supermajorities abstract we study a collective decision making environment where an agenda setter makes strategic proposals to privately informed voters who vote strategically we show that consistent with empirical evidence it can be optimal for the agenda setter to propose supermajorities due to an informational role that we unveil optimal supermajorities can be less costly than minimum winning coalitions even though more voters are awarded a positive share we also examine consequences in terms of quality of decision making we show that the introduction of a strategic agenda setter can lead to socially suboptimal decisions

an integrated analysis of the effects of local water institutions on irrigated agriculture outcomes in the arid western united states abstractirrigation water rights and their governance structures constitute the foundation of local water institutions and profoundly influence water resource allocations irrigated agricultural productivity and other consumptive water uses in the arid climate zones this article explores the regional structures of irrigation water rights and water governance and empirically analyses the priority effects of water rights on irrigated agriculture at the micro level in idaho an arid and semiarid state in the western united states we integrate a unique data set of water rights and water supplies with agricultural features and environmental characteristics into our empirical analysis results indicate that seniority in water resources allocation has significant positive effects on both the average crop revenue and crop water use efficiency local water rights structures differ significantly in seniority and water sources from region to region in response to the heterogeneity in local water rights structures

greenhouse gas emissions trading among pacific rim countries an analysis of policies to bring developing countries to the bargaining table this paper examines the aggregate net costs and individual country cost savings of greenhouse gas emissions trading among pacific rim countries we propose emission permit allocation rules designed to entice developing countries to participate absence of developing country involvement has served as an excuse for the lack by participation by the united states in the first compliance period of the kyoto protocol and may serve as a disincentive to even more countries in subsequent periods our analysis specifies permit allocation rules that could result in no net costs and even cost savings to developing countries for their involvement in the emissions trading market while at the same time providing extensive benefits to industrialized countries through access to lower cost mitigation alternatives

the president and the distribution of federal spending scholarship on distributive politics focuses almost exclusively on the internal operations of congress paying particular attention to committees and majority parties this article highlights the president who has extensive opportunities both ex ante and ex post to influence the distribution of federal outlays we analyze two databases that track the geographic spending of nearly every domestic program over a 24 year period the largest and most comprehensive panels of federal spending patterns ever assembled using district and county fixed effects estimation strategies we find no evidence of committee influence and mixed evidence that majority party members receive larger shares of federal outlays we find that districts and counties receive systematically more federal outlays when legislators in the president s party represent them

competitive lobbying and supermajorities in a majority rule institution this paper presents a complete information model of competitive lobbying in a majority rule institution where lobbying consists of providing politically valuable resources to legislators legislators have three roles first they act as allies or opponents in deciding whether to consider a lobbyist s offer second they act as agenda setters in deciding whether to bring a policy alternative to a vote third they vote on the agenda the stationary equilibria include minimal majorities and supermajorities and involve unilateral counteractive and preemptive lobbying supermajorities are recruited either to influence agenda formation or to preempt the opposing lobbyist

general blotto games of allocative strategic mismatch the colonel blotto game captures strategic situations in which players attempt to mismatch an opponent s action we extend colonel blotto to a class of general blotto games that allow for more general payoffs and externalities between fronts these extensions make blotto applicable to a variety of real world problems we find that like colonel blotto most general blotto games do not have pure strategy equilibria using a replicator dynamics learning model we show that general blotto may have more predictable dynamics than the original blotto game thus adding realistic structure to colonel blotto may paradoxically make it less complex

an analysis of irrigated agricultural outcomes under the prior appropriation doctrine hypotheses and applications this article measures irrigated agricultural outcomes under the prior appropriation doctrine by developing a model of farmers land allocations in response to water supply change the modelling approach considers the institutional factors of water rights and permits the inclusive determination of water and land allocations we utilize farm level data of irrigated agriculture in water district 1 in idaho to examine the predictions from our theoretical model the water rights priority date is consolidated at the farm level and used to differentiate farmers responses we test a set of hypotheses that relate to water supply and crop revenue our results suggest that the water rights priority has a profound impact on agricultural outcomes indicating strong institutional effects and weak influence of market based approaches farmers respond to both long term and seasonal water supply change and variation and they respond to seasonal water supply forecasts in varied ways depending on their water rights portf

estimation of multicrop production functions this paper considers whether separability or nonjointness is the better approach for attaining tractability for multicrop production function estimation characteristics of agricultural production associated with allocated inputs physical constraints and output determination imply sufficient nonjointness for estimation whereas separability is less plausible the paper also addresses estimation of production functions with allocated inputs where allocations are not observed and demonstrates a proposed approach by way of example

vote buying general elections we examine the consequences of vote buying assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma two parties compete in a binary election and may purchase votes in a sequential bidding game via up front binding payments and or campaign promises platforms that are contingent on the outcome of the election we analyze the role of the parties and voters preferences in determining the winner and the payments to voters

joint estimation of technology adoption and land allocation with implications for the design of conservation policy one challenge to estimating the parameters of a technology adoption model is that technology is selected jointly with land allocation the article estimates a nested logit model of technology and crop choices that accounts for unobserved correlation among decisions estimation is conducted with a data set of adoptions in contrast to the more common approach of using cross section observations of existing technologies estimation results support the choice of a nesting structure as opposed to a more standard multinomial logit model adoption of precision irrigation technology is shown to be more sensitive to financial incentives affecting input price and technology cost than suggested by previous studies

interest group size and legislative lobbying abstract we develop a model of legislative decision making in which lobbying and public policy are jointly determined we examine how policy outcomes depend on the sizes of the interest groups while a larger size typically involves favorable effects on policy we also identify threshold levels of interest group size where a lobby will be harmed if it becomes larger this may provide another rationale as to why some interests do not or not fully organize spending limits can remove adverse policy effects of interest group size however this is not necessarily welfare improving moreover we find that endogenous proposal making may turn a second mover advantage in standard legislative lobbying models into a second mover disadvantage

net campaign contributions agricultural interests and votes on liberalizing trade with china we consider the potential influence of contributions from interest groups to political rivals in the voting behavior of us legislators on international trade policy issues our application addresses the determinants of the permanent normal trade relations with china decision and focuses particular attention on the agriculture agribusiness lobby a simultaneous voting net contributions model suggests that these contributions were very effective relative to organized labor and other corporate groups despite their relatively small dollar value possible explanations arising from differences in targeting strategies are explored

bargaining with the president a simple game and new evidence i employ a simple game to suggest the effects of information and expectations on bargaining strategies and responses i make use of members predispositions in order to identify actors likely to be bargaining using administration headcounts i show that while very few members misrepresent their preferences during the coalition building process those who do represent a large proportion of the administration s core supporters make their misrepresentations unsystematic to avoid a costly reputation and convert more readily than those who are not strategic considerations drive conversion among bluffing members while identification with the administration determines conversion among other members compromise generates few conversions a conservative estimate of bluffing suggests that the conversion of bluffers decided more than half the administration s critical votes i speculate about a model to account for the observed bluffing

sequential legislative lobbying under political certainty in this paper we analyse the equilibrium of a sequential game theoretical model of lobbying based on groseclose and snyder 1996 describing a legislature that votes on two alternatives and two opposing lobbies lobby 0 and lobby 1 that compete by bidding for legislators votes in this model there is a strong second mover advantage

varieties of clientelism machine politics during elections although many studies of clientelism focus exclusively on vote buying political machines often employ diverse portfolios of strategies we provide a theoretical framework and formal model to explain how and why machines mix four clientelist strategies during elections vote buying turnout buying abstention buying and double persuasion machines tailor their portfolios to the political preferences and voting costs of the electorate they also adapt their mix to at least five contextual factors compulsory voting ballot secrecy political salience machine support and political polarization our analysis yields numerous insights such as why the introduction of compulsory voting may increase vote buying and why enhanced ballot secrecy may increase turnout buying and abstention buying evidence from various countries is consistent with our predictions and suggests the need for empirical studies to pay closer attention to the ways in which machines combine clientelist strategies

policy options when giving negative externalities market value clean energy policymaking and restructuring the western australian energy sector uncertainty surrounds the choice of instruments that internalise fossil fuel pollution at the local regional and global level this work outlines the considerable growth in the western australian wa energy sector and explores the available options and potential hazards of using specific instruments to internalise externalities these core options are discussed with respect to liberalising energy markets providing private investment certainty and imparting commentary on the developments and consequences of reform in the wa context as a large energy exporter providing certainty for the wa energy sector investment and the community is necessary to maintain the current prosperity remarkably in the decades of market reform progress the absence of one essential element is evident economic externalities policymakers are under increasing pressure to understand economic reform new energy markets and the multifaceted repercussions they entail with modern energy reform sitting squarely within the milieu of more efficient governments and climate policy there are clear economic advantages to internalising negative and positive externalities and other market distortions during energy market developments ignoring market failures when commercialising government owned energy utilities in de regulated and competitive markets invites continued ad hoc government interference that generates investment uncertainty in addition to a perplexed electorate

competitive policy development we present a model of policy development in which competing factions have different ideologies yet agree on certain common objectives policy developers can appeal to a decision maker by making productive investments to improve the quality of their proposals these investments are specific to a given proposal which means that policy developers can potentially obtain informal agenda power competition undermines this agenda power forcing policy developers to craft policies that are better for the decision maker this beneficial effect is strongest if policy developers have divergent ideological preferences because their intense desire to affect policy motivates them to develop higher quality proposals jel d72 d73 d78 e61 during the early years of the new deal president franklin delano roosevelt faced an enormous challenge he believed that dramatic policy innovation was urgently needed on a wide range of issues including agriculture trade banking employment and social insurance however although roosevelt was well versed in policy crafting workable proposals for such a far reaching agenda was well beyond his capacity or that of his immediate advisors instead the president had to rely on a broader array of politicians and bureaucrats to develop new policies although these individuals shared some common goals e g ending the great depression they also had deep seated ideological disagreements among themselves and with the president about what policies the federal government should pursue classic and contemporary theories of bureaucratic politics would suggest that this situation was ripe for exploitation and inefficiency weber 1991 famously argued that the typical ruler of a modern state is reduced to being a mere dilettante when dealing with institutionalized bureaucratic actors more recently scholars

strategic behavior by federal agencies in the allocation of public resources how do government agencies allocate program resources some authors presume that agencies seek to maximize program objectives others suggest agencies favor the districts important to the president s election in addition agencies may distribute larger program resources to those districts whose congressional representatives are best positioned to help the agency we examined how federal government agencies responded both to the 2006 election when control of congress shifted from the republican to the democratic party and to the 2010 election when the house switched from democratic to republican control we used a difference in difference analysis to evaluate the impact of each election on the agencies allocations of contracts agencies generally responded to the elections by allocating more contract resources to districts represented by the winning party however federal agencies reacted differently to changing political environments depending on the characteristics of the agency for example after the 2006 election those agencies with programs favored by republican members of congress allocated more resources to democratic districts these republican agencies presumably are the most vulnerable to the risk of losing future appropriations democratic agencies and neutral agencies facing no significant threats to their appropriations did not respond to the election as strongly finally more vulnerable districts received the most support especially by the republican agencies we reaffirmed these results by using the 2010 congressional elections in which the political orientations of the districts favored with more contract distributions was reversed

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

legislative bargaining and coalition formation abstract the finite horizon version of d p baron and j ferejohn s 1989 amer polit sci rev 83 1181 1206 legislative bargaining model is investigated with three or more periods a continuum of divisions is supportable as subgame perfect equilib ria there exist equilibria where coalitions larger than a minimal winning coalition receive strictly positive shares with sufficiently patient players and a sufficiently long horizon any interior distribution is supportable as an equilibrium in contrast a generic uniqueness result applies when introducing heterogenous time preferences the unique backwards induction equilibrium in the perturbed game is nonstationary and neither the original symmetric nor the perturbed game provides guidance for equilibrium selection in the infinite game journal of economic literature classification numbers c73 c78 d72 d78 h49

strategic delegation and voting rules abstract the selection of political representatives depends on the political system principals such as voters or districts may benefit by strategically electing representatives different from themselves while a status quo biased delegate may be a better negotiator an enthusiastic representative has a better chance of being included in the majority coalition a larger majority requirement leads to conservative delegation and hence a status quo bias a poor minority protection does the opposite through strategic delegation the political system also determines whether centralization or decentralization is beneficial

pivotal power brokers theory and evidence on political fundraising this study examines the campaign fundraising success of senate incumbents that have a unique pivotal status legislatively in the senate with regards to parliamentary procedures e g the filibuster regression estimates place the fundraising advantage in favor of certain pivotal moderates over all other senators at about 2 12 million in real terms in total contribution per 2 yr election cycle pivotal status is even more significant in explaining variations in pac contribution in the u s senate given that individuals who make contributions are not likely to be as interested as pacs in buying policy the results also suggest that krehbiel s pivotal politics krehbiel k 1988 pivotal politics a theory of u s lawmaking chicago il university of chicago press construct warrants modification given that it offers prediction about policy outcomes and gridlock intervals without fully incorporating interest group politics of the vote buying or policy buying variety

supermajority rule and bicameral bargaining this paper revisits the claim that supermajority rules and bicameral legislative structures restrain excessive government spending and taxation our analysis suggests that the extension effect of a supermajority rule that requires logrolling across additional members increases with the ratio of seats in the house relative to seats in the senate using a panel of us states 1970 2008 we find that the ratio of house to senate seats has a robust positive impact on the tendency of a supermajority rule to inflate the budget our finding implies that a supermajority rule can have a perverse effect on budget outcomes in bicameral legislatures owing to two factors the geographic overlap between chambers and the low price elasticity of demand for public goods

legislators and interest groups how unorganized interests get represented this paper derives a supply price for public policy using a constrained maximization model in the model three sets of agents each have preferences over outcomes organized interest groups offer campaign contributions to improve their own wealth voters offer votes to obtain outcomes closer to their most preferred outcomes and legislators seek both campaign contributions and votes to obtain reelection a given legislator s supply price for policy is shown to depend on the productivity of his effort as determined by committee assignments priority and ability and by the preferences of his unorganized constituency in the home district two extreme assumptions about the effectiveness of campaign spending in eliciting votes are used to illustrate the comparative statics properties of the model the prediction of the model is that interest groups will in general seek out legislators whose voters are indifferent to the policy the interest group seeks thus voters who do have preferences over policy are in effect represented even though they are not organized

centralized vote trading this paper presents a model of centralized vote trading in a legislature in this model legislators trade only with party leaders who set prices at which they will buy needed vote changes and sell promises to pass or defeat particular bills each legislator trades away votes on bills of little concern to him and of high concern to leaders and purchases promises from the leaders to pass or defeat particular bills of high concern to the legislator relative to the price the leguslator must pay

unequal participation democracy s unresolved dilemma presidential address american political science association 1996 low voter turnout is a serious democratic problem for five reasons 1 it means unequal turnout that is systematically biased against less well to do citizens 2 unequal turnout spells unequal political influence 3 u s voter turnout is especially low but measured as percent of voting age population it is also relatively low in most other countries 4 turnout in midterm regional local and supranational elections less salient but by no means unimportant elections tends to be especially poor 5 turnout appears to be declining everywhere the problem of inequality can be solved by institutional mechanisms that maximize turnout one option is the combination of voter friendly registration rules proportional representation infrequent elections weekend voting and holding less salient elections concurrently with the most important national elections the other option which can maximize turnout by itself is compulsory voting its advantages far outweigh the normative and practical objections to it

reducing conflict in global warming policy the potential of equity as a unifying principle abstract international agreement on global warming mitigation is likely to prove difficult efficiency based policies will result in disparate costs and benefits among nations and thus hinder cooperation this paper suggests that consideration be given to an equitable sharing of the economic impacts of global warming policy acknowledging that there is no universally held concept of equity the policy implications of several alternatives are explored because there is considerable variation in these implications it will be important for decision makers to clarify their preferred concepts of equity during the course of their negotiations on policies to address global warming

distributive politics and the costs of centralization this paper studies the choice between centralization and decentralization of fiscal policy in a political economy setting with centralization regional delegates vote over agendas comprising sets of region specific projects the outcome is inefficient because the choice of projects is insufficiently sensitive to within region benefits the number of projects funded may be non monotonic in the strength of project externalities the efficiency gains from decentralization and the performance of constitutional rules such as majority voting which may be used to choose between decentralization and centralization are then discussed in this framework weaker externalities and more heterogeneity between regions need not increase the efficiency gain from decentralization

evaluation of mexico s 1975 2000 energy plan the certainty and trustworthiness of a planning model can best be assessed when projections can be compared with actual developments the ability to design scenarios and to evaluate demographic economic and technological change is also increased with periodic comparisons between plans and actual facts in 1976 the mexican government published a 25 year power supply plan for the country in which a development of non fossil fuel plants was recommended largely due to environmental considerations it was proposed that the new demand should be met mainly with renewable energy sources and nuclear power the study stated that hydrocarbons would reach a peak between 2003 and 2005 and that after this point the descent of fuel consumption would proceed at an increased velocity under this program the dependence of mexico on fuel for electricity would be gradually reduced as the 21st century progressed the suggestion was not assumed by successive governments and fossil fuel plants took the place of the proposed nuclear plants however the original 25 years power plan has proved to be quite accurate in its social and economic previsions and allows the validation of a new more powerful and reliable planning model this paper presents the results of the validation of the model as well as major considerations to be heeded in the future to increase certainty in further planning efforts the projection of a better more sustainable and reliable energy future is also proposed

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

recognition for sale abstract i examine the consequences of letting players compete for bargaining power in a multilateral bargaining game in each period the right to propose an offer is sold to the highest bidder and all players pay their bids if players vote according to any rule in which no player has veto power then the first proposer captures the entire surplus if a full consensus is needed for an offer to be accepted then the first proposer shares the surplus with at most one other player and as the period length between offers vanishes one player may capture virtually the entire surplus in settings with a stochastic or an endogenous surplus players are unwilling to efficiently delay agreement or invest in the surplus

clientelism and vote buying lessons from field experiments in african elections electoral clientelism and vote buying are widely perceived as major obstacles to economic development this is because they may limit the provision of public goods in this paper we review the literature on clientelism and vote buying and propose the use of field experiments to evaluate empirically the consequences of these phenomena we provide an overview discuss implementation and interpret the main results of recent field experiments conducted by the authors in west african countries clientelism and vote buying seem to be effective and to enjoy widespread electoral support the results suggest that increased access to information and political participation by women may limit clientelism in addition voter education campaigns may undermine the effects of vote buying on voting behaviour we argue that our findings may inform the design of development aid interventions as a way effectively to increase public good political accountability we also discuss directions for fruitful future research copyright 2009 oxford university press

appropriative water rights and the efficient allocation of resources this paper investigates the allocative efficiency of the appropriative system of water rights within the context of a simplified model of a water using industry at a long run competitive equilibrium for the industry and with a prohibition on the transfer of water rights among firms it is shown that 1 senior appropriators claim and use more water than junior appropriators 2 senior appropriators bear less risk than junior appropriators 3 the allocation of water and diversion capacitie 6among firms is inefficient being dominated by an equal sharing among firms the equal sharing allocation which is pareto optimal when diversion capacities are supplied by a competitive leasing industry can be achieved under the appropriative system if there are competitive markets in water rights and in leases for the use of diversion capacities an application of the coase theorem