Do Not Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor! Determinants of Legislator Voting on Immigration Issues

This paper examines the determinants of the U.S. House of Representatives 1996 vote on the "The Immigration in the National Interest Act." Public choice theory suggests that the voting behavior of legislators is affected by the interests of their constituencies, special interest politics, and by their ideology. The paper uses probit analysis to test the significance of the above factors. The results suggest that Representatives responded to the socioeconomic interests of their constituents as expected. However, in a surprising finding, pro-business legislators appear to have voted to restrict immigration.Immigration; Politics; Representatives; Votes; Voting

$9.99: Can "Just-Below" Pricing Be Reconciled with Rationality?

A common explanation for the prevalence of "just-below" pricing is that consumers irrationally perceive a price such as $9.99 as significantly lower than$10. This paper offers an alternative explanation that preserves rationality: rational consumers may not include price endings in their considerations because the costs of doing so outweigh the benefits. The model is tested employing a data set consisting of catalog prices, characteristics of goods and advertising traits. We find that the pattern of "just-below" pricing is consistent with both profit-maximizing producers and utility-maximizing consumers.Consumer; Pricing; Rationality