The Political Economy of Administered Decisions: What We Might Hope For and What We Can Expect

International Relations/Trade,

An Extension of the Rational Voter Model

This extension of the rational voter model differs from prior studies in three ways: its adoption of aggregate voting data; its use of data that are non-demographic in nature; and its use of data that are time series rather than cross section. The study finds that the aggregate voter participation rate is higher when the public strongly approves of the President’s job performance. Aggregate voter turnout also is increased by the opportunity to participate in a Presidential election. It also appears that a highly unpopular or controversial war increases voter turnout. By contrast, it also is found that voter turnout decreases in the face of a scandal involving the President. Finally, the greater the per capita real disposable income of the American public, the lower the aggregate voter participation rate, presumably due to opportunity cost considerations

Reviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45508/1/11127_2005_Article_BF01718501.pd

Sabotage in Contests: A Survey

A contest is a situation in which individuals expend irretrievable resources to win valuable prize(s). ‘Sabotage’ is a deliberate and costly act of damaging a rival’s' likelihood of winning the contest. Sabotage can be observed in, e.g., sports, war, promotion tournaments, political or marketing campaigns. In this article, we provide a model and various perspectives on such sabotage activities and review the economics literature analyzing the act of sabotage in contests. We discuss the theories and evidence highlighting the means of sabotage, why sabotage occurs, and the effects of sabotage on individual players and on overall welfare, along with possible mechanisms to reduce sabotage. We note that most sabotage activities are aimed at the ablest player, the possibility of sabotage reduces productive effort exerted by the players, and sabotage may lessen the effectiveness of public policies, such as affirmative action, or information revelation in contests. We discuss various policies that a designer may employ to counteract sabotage activities. We conclude by pointing out some areas of future research

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin