Values and Politics in the US: An Equilibrium Analysis of the 2004 Election

The CNN exit polls after the 2004 election rated ‘moral values’ the most important issue; next came ‘jobs and the economy.’ Eighty percent of the voters who rated moral values the most important issue voted for Bush while eighty percent of the voters who rated jobs and the economy the most important voted for Kerry. We study the extent to which the distribution of voter opinion on moral values influences the positions that parties take on the economic issue, which we take to be the size of the public sector, through political competition. There are at least two distinct ways this influence might occur. First, because the Republican Party is identified with a traditionalist stance on moral values, some voters who desire a large public sector may nevertheless vote Republican because traditionalist morality is important for them. This we call the policy bundle effect. Second, it may be the case that those who subscribe to a traditionalist morality take economic conservatism to be part of that view, in the sense that they view the state as, for instance, usurping the role of the individual and/or family. We call this effect the moral Puritanism effect. Thus economic conservatism in the US may be politically strengthened by moral traditionalism because the Republican Party links the two issues (policy bundle) or because moral traditionalists in the US are anti-statist (in the Puritan sense). Our analysis will enable us to predict how equilibrium policies proposed by Democratic and Republican Parties would change if all voters had the same view on the moral-values issue, and we will decompose these changes into the aforementioned two effects. JEL Categories: D3, D7, H2moral values, redistribution, moral Puritanism effect, policy bundle effect, party unanimity Nash equilibrium

Racism and Redistribution in the United States: A Solution to the Problem of American Exceptionalism

The two main political parties in the United States put forth policies on redistribution and on issues pertaining directly to race. We argue that redistributive politics in America can be fully understood only by taking account of the interconnection between these issues, and the effects of political competition upon the multi-dimensional party platforms. We identify two mechanisms through which racism among American voters decreases the degree of redistribution that would otherwise obtain. Many authors have suggested that voter racism decreases the degree of redistribution due to an anti-solidarity effect: that (some) voters oppose government transfer payments to minorities whom they view as undeserving. We point to a second effect as well: that some voters who desire redistribution nevertheless vote for the anti-redistributive party (the Republicans) because that party's position on the race issue is more consonant with their own, and this, too, decreases the degree of redistribution. We call this the policy bundle effect. The effect of voter racism on redistribution is the sum of these two effects. We propose a formal model of multi-dimensional political competition that enables us to estimate the magnitude of these two effects, and estimate the model for the period 1976-1992. We numerically compute that during this period voter racism reduced the income tax rate by 11-18 percentage points; the total effect decomposes about equally into the two sub-effects. We also find that the Democratic vote share is 5-38 percentage points lower than it would have been, absent racism.racism, distribution,endogenous parties, party unanimity Nash equilibrium, anti-solidarity effect

Meeting planners\u27 intention of using the Internet and desired lodging Web site content attributes

The findings of a recent meetings industry study indicated that Web usage to gather information has become progressively more important among meeting planners. However, a review of related literature revealed no studies focusing on the current information content of lodging web sites and meeting planners\u27 expectations in terms of information sought Ajzen\u27s (1991) the Theory of Planned Behavior and Hoffman and Novak\u27s model (1994), this study aimed to determine what variables are related to a meeting planner\u27s intent to use and current use of the Internet to plan group meetings. Additionally, this study proposes an exploratory qualitative approach to studying lodging web sites from the perspective of meeting planners\u27 needs. Total samples of 235 planners were gathered via an on-line survey. Results may assist hotels in identifying areas for improvement in web sites related services for meeting planning. Practical implications on web-based information content analysis and meeting planners\u27 expectations on lodging web sites are presented for both practitioners and researchers

Identification of a target using its natural poles using both frequency and time domain response

A new methodology for detection and identification of unknown objects in free space or on ground, or under the ground is presented in this dissertation. The Singularity Expansion Method (SEM) is introduced because it is possible to find the natural resonant frequencies of a scatterer from the scattered fields and use the resonant frequencies for identification. Many techniques to extract singularities of the EM response of an object are studied and then the Cauchy and the Matrix Pencil (MP) methods are chosen to carry out the processing. In the first part of the dissertation, a methodology for the computation of the natural poles of an object in the frequency domain is presented. The main advantage of this methodology is that there is no need to differentiate between the early time and the late time response of the object as required in the SEM and the Cauchy method can be applied directly to the frequency domain data to extract the SEM poles. Thus, one can generate a library of poles of various objects using the Cauchy method. In the second part of the dissertation, the methodology for detecting and identifying an unknown object in the time domain is also presented. For the simulation model, one transmitter and two receivers (dipole antennas) are utilized to obtain the object response. The received currents of the unknown object are computed by using the deconvolving procedure. The MP method is applied for extracting natural poles of the late time response of the unknown object and the Time-Difference-of-Arrival (TDOA) technique is utilized to obtain the location of the objects. Therefore, by generating the pole library using the frequency domain data and simultaneous use of the actual poles computed using the time domain data, the correlation between the two pole sets obtained using totally different methodologies can provide a robust identification procedure

Bandwagon, underdog, and political competition: The uni-dimensional case

The present paper studies the Hotelling-Downs and Wittman-Roemer models of two-party competition when voter conformism is present and the policy space is uni-dimensional. We consider two types of voter conformism, bandwagon and underdog, and study their effects on the political equilibrium of the two models. Even if voter conformism is present, the Hotelling- Downs parties propose an identical policy at the equilibrium, which is equal to a strict Condorcet winner. Thus voter conformism, both bandwagon and underdog, has no effect on the Hotelling- Downs political equilibrium. In the Wittman-Roemer model, parties propose differentiated equilibrium policies, and the extent of such policy differentiation depends on the degree of voter conformism. In general, the stronger the bandwagon effect is, the more differentiated the equilibrium policies are. The opposite holds when the underdog effect is present; an increasing underdog effect mitigates the policy differentiation of the two parties, although the effect is not large. We also find multiple Wittman-Roemer equilibria when the bandwagon effect is sufficiently strong. JEL Categories: D3, D7, H2bandwagon effect, underdog effect, Hotelling-Downs model, Wittman- Roemer model

Current-induced domain wall motion in a nanowire with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

We study theoretically the current-induced magnetic domain wall motion in a metallic nanowire with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The anisotropy can reduce the critical current density of the domain wall motion. We explain the reduction mechanism and identify the maximal reduction conditions. This result facilitates both fundamental studies and device applications of the current- induced domain wall motion

The Effect of Travel Magazine Features and Photos on Tourist Decision Making

It has been claimed that travel experience is generally pleasure-based and consumed through images such as photographs and stories. It is often assumed that travel oriented publications such as travel magazines have substantial effects on people’s travel decisions, however the influence of these informal information sources has not been investigated to any great extent. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of feature stories and photos in an ongoing source of information, a travel magazine, on travel decisions. For the current study, a path analysis was conducted to validate the hypothesized relationships (Figure 1), which assumes that the feature stories and photos have an influence on enhancing the interest in traveling in Arizona and on the perceived helpfulness of the magazine during ongoing information search, which can lead to influence on travel decisions and evaluation of the magazine as a source of travel information