Elemental Tests of the Traditional Rational Voting Model

A simple, robust, quasi-linear, structural general equilibrium rational voting model indicates turnout by voters motivated by the possibility of deciding the outcome is bellcurved in the ex-post winning margin and inversely proportional to electorate size. Applying this model to a large set of union certification elections, which often end in ties, yields exacting, lucid tests of the theory. Voter turnout is strongly related to election closeness, but not in the way predicted by the theory. Thus, this relation is generated by some other mechanism, which is indeterminate, as no existing theory explains the nonlinear patterns of turnout in the data.

Substrate Specificity of Peptide Adsorption: A Model Study

Applying the contact density chain-growth algorithm to lattice heteropolymers, we identify the conformational transitions of a nongrafted hydrophobic-polar heteropolymer with 103 residues in the vicinity of a polar, a hydrophobic, and a uniformly attractive substrate. Introducing only two system parameters, the numbers of surface contacts and intrinsic hydrophobic contacts, respectively, we obtain surprisingly complex temperature and solvent dependent, substrate-specific pseudo-phase diagrams.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

The War On Drugs And Crime Rates

This paper analyzes the effects of the “War on Drugs” on crime rates.  Many in the field of law enforcement believe that incarcerating drug offenders reduces crime.  However, time-series analysis of four types of crime rates in the United States does not support this view.  Using seven explanatory variables, including federal spending on the Drug Enforcement Agency, incarceration rates for drug offenders, and abortion rates, the results suggest the incarceration of drug offenders causes a crowding-out effect in prisons, releasing non-drug offenders and thereby potentially increasing, rather than reducing crime

The Housing Price Bubble In A Suburban Georgia Setting: Using The Hedonic Pricing Model In The New South

This study applies a hedonic pricing model to the rapidly developing suburban housing market adjacent to the Savannah Historic Landmark District in the downtown area of Savannah, Georgia. Using OLS estimation, the hedonic pricing model yields results clearly tracing out the magnitude of the time-related housing price premium in the suburban market analyzed for the years from 2005 to 2010. The results also control for internal and external housing characteristics that are capitalized into the real sales prices of the housing transactions analyzed

The Minor League Experience: What Drives Attendance at South Atlantic League Baseball Games?

An examination of the determinants of minor league baseball attendance in the South Atlantic League is performed through regression analysis. Potential determinants included in the regression model include demographic variables, team performance variables, and dummies for various categories of promotions. Overall, South Atlantic League baseball appears to be an inferior good, fans do not significantly respond to winning teams, fans do respond favorably to high-scoring games, and promotional events play a major role in attendance. The events that are shown to have the biggest impact at the gate are fireworks and concerts. It appears that the overall entertainment experience, not the success of the home team, is what attracts fans to South Atlantic League baseball games

Magnetic nulls and super-radial expansion in the solar corona

Magnetic fields in the sun's outer atmosphere -- the corona -- control both solar-wind acceleration and the dynamics of solar eruptions. We present the first clear observational evidence of coronal magnetic nulls in off-limb linearly polarized observations of pseudostreamers, taken by the Coronal Multichannel Polarimeter (CoMP) telescope. These nulls represent regions where magnetic reconnection is likely to act as a catalyst for solar activity. CoMP linear-polarization observations also provide an independent, coronal proxy for magnetic expansion into the solar wind, a quantity often used to parameterize and predict the solar wind speed at Earth. We introduce a new method for explicitly calculating expansion factors from CoMP coronal linear-polarization observations, which does not require photospheric extrapolations. We conclude that linearly-polarized light is a powerful new diagnostic of critical coronal magnetic topologies and the expanding magnetic flux tubes that channel the solar wind

Do Budget Deficits Reduce Household Taxpayer Compliance? Preliminary Evidence Using the Feige Data

This study investigates the hypothesis that higher federal budget deficits act to increase the degree of federal personal income tax evasion in the U.S. Using annual data on aggregate personal income tax evasion for the period 1961-1997, 1997 being the most recent year for which all of the needed data are currently available, and allowing for such factors as income tax rates, IRS tax return audit rates, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal, it is found that income tax evasion is an increasing function of the budget deficit. Important policy implications of this finding are provided in the Conclusio

Do Budget Deficits Reduce Household Taxpayer Compliance? Preliminary Evidence Using the Feige Data

This study investigates the hypothesis that higher federal budget deficits act to increase the degree of federal personal income tax evasion in the U.S. Using annual data on aggregate personal income tax evasion for the period 1961-1997, 1997 being the most recent year for which all of the needed data are currently available, and allowing for such factors as income tax rates, IRS tax return audit rates, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal, it is found that income tax evasion is an increasing function of the budget deficit. Important policy implications of this finding are provided in the Conclusio

An Empirical Analysis of Determinants of Interstate Living-Cost Differentials, 2005

This empirical study investigates determinants of interstate living-cost differentials for the year 2005. It seeks to supplement existing related studies, most of which have investigated such differentials at the metropolitan area or county levels and for earlier time periods. OLS and two-stage least squares (2SLS) results imply that the overall cost of living in a state is positively a function of per capita income and the relative amount of shoreline on major bodies of water, and negatively a function of the presence of right-to-work laws, heating degree days, and toxic chemical releases. Interestingly, the 2SLS estimate adopts two additional amenity/dis-amenity variables (population density and crime rate) as instrumental variables

The Effect of Classroom Games on Student Learning and Instructor Evaluations

Assuming that instructors of economics are utility maximizers, they may find it useful to engage in classroom behavior that is likely to generate favorable outcomes with respect to student course evaluations. This is especially true if student course evaluations are used in assessing teaching effectiveness for tenure, promotion, and salary decisions. In this paper, we present evidence that the use of a classroom gaming exercise can raise instructor evaluations and enhance student learning outcomes. The tests are conducted in a framework that indirectly controls for grade inflation and considers student attendance and grade expectations as other sources of influence on instructor evaluation ratings