The Simple Economics of Thresholds: Evidence from the Western States 100

Many public and private entities utilize incentive systems in which improvements in measured performance are rewarded only if the agent crosses some pre-specified threshold. But neither the theory of their incentive effects nor the methods of estimating them has been fully developed. This paper comprehensively analyzes thresholds’ positive and normative properties, lays out a simple and natural empirical strategy for estimating their incentive effects, and presents multiple applications of both. The strongest effects are exhibited by ultramarathoners trying to complete a one hundred mile race in under twenty-four hours.

What Makes a Good Economy? An Analysis of Survey Data

This study analyzes nearly twenty-five years of U.S. survey data to determine the macroeconomic conditions associated with economies the public considers “good.” These surveys are correlated with, but distinct from, other frequently-studied, expectations-oriented indices of consumer sentiment. The primary findings are as follows: 1) inflation and unemployment, the variables in the Phillips curve, explain much of the variation in the survey data; 2) consumers’ implied loss function is nearly linear in these two variables; 3) the public is willing to trade off four percentage points of (increased) inflation for one percentage point of (decreased) unemployment.

The Dynamics of Drinking and Driving in the U.S.: The Role of Social Forces and the Role of Law

Among U.S. drivers involved in fatal accidents, blood alcohol concentration conditional on drinking is static. Thus the dynamics of drunk driving can be described using the fraction of accident-involved drivers who have been drinking (HBD). Changes in this variable imply significant reductions in vehicle fatalities between 1975 and 2004, and correlate mildly with the underlying “general risk factor” that accounts for the remaining reduction in fatalities. But seven important drunk driving laws influence HBD only weakly, and together explain only one-sixth of its reduction over this period. The estimated effect of social forces over twice as large.

Dead on Arrival: Zero Tolerance Laws Don’t Work

By 1998 all states had passed laws lowering the legal blood alcohol content for drivers under 21 to effectively zero. Theory shows these laws have ambiguous effects on overall fatalities and economic efficiency, and the data show they have little effect on driver behavior. A panel analysis of the 1988-2000 FARS indicates that zero tolerance laws have no material influence on the level of fatalities, while quantile regression reveals virtually no change in the distribution of BAC among drivers involved in fatal accidents.

Optimal Drunk Driving Penalty Structure

The expected penalty for drunk driving can and does vary by blood alcohol content. This paper outlines the "penalty structure" that does this optimally, using two different metrics, shows how the optimality conditions can be implemented with available data to analyze policy ex ante or ex post, and then uses these findings to investigate four fundamental features of current U.S. drunk driving policy. The paper provides theoretical and empirical support for large penalties at very high alcohol concentrations, but not for reductions in per se blood alcohol thresholds, the most significant recent change in drunk driving policy.

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.

Multiproduct Pricing in Major League Baseball: A Principal Components Analysis

The empirical analysis of multiproduct pricing suffers from a lack of clear theoretical guidance and appropriate data, limitations which often render traditional regression-based analyses impractical. This paper analyzes ticket, parking, and concession pricing in Major League Baseball for the period 1991-2003 using a new methodology based on principal components, which allows inferences to be formed about the factors underlying price variation without strong theoretical guidance or abundant information about costs and demand. While general demand shifts are the most important factor, they explain only half of overall price variation. Also important are price interactions that derive from demand interrelationships between goods and the desire to maximize the capture of consumer surplus in the presence of heterogeneous demand.

Design and implementation of a X-band transmitter and frequency distribution unit for a synthetic aperture radar

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can provide high-resolution images of extensive areas of the earth's surface from a platform operating at long ranges, despite adverse weather conditions or darkness. A local consortium was established to demonstrate a consolidated South African SAR ability to demonstrate to the local and international communities, by generating high quality images with a South African X-band demonstrator. This dissertation forms part of the project. It aims to describe the design and implementation of the transmitter and associated frequency distribution unit (FDU) for the SASAR II, X-band SAR. Although the transmitter and FDU are two separate units, they are ultimately linked. The transmitter has the task of taking a low-power, baseband, chirp waveform and. through a series of mixers, filters and amplifiers, converting it to a high-power, microwave signal. The FDU is essentially the heart of the transceiver and provides drive to all the mixer local oscillator (LO) inputs. It also clocks the DAC and ADC which allow the essentially analogue transceiver to communicate with the digital circuitry. It is found that the chirp signal produced is of satisfactory fidelity. LO feed through, however, is superimposed at the chirps' centre frequency. As a result of previous stages, spurious signals exist at 16 MHz offset from the chirps' centre frequency and at 9142 MHz. The system transfer function reveals that 2 dB roll-off is present at the outer frequencies of the chirp signal. Group delay in the transmitter filters and amplifiers is held responsible for this