Now or Later?: The Inter-temporal Decision-Making of Electoral Participation

The version of record of this article, first published in Political Behavior, is available online at Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-022-09790-6.This study examines the dynamic nature of voting in modern elections with wide voting windows. Our stylized two-period model predicts that, if voters are not myopic, turnout in the current period tends to increase as the costs in the other period increase. The model also predicts that overall turnout does not always decrease even when the costs increase. We test these predictions using novel data from Japan’s General Election in 2017 with a weather disruption caused by a powerful typhoon. Our analyses show that the tremendous costs on Election Day shifted the timing of voting and did not decrease overall turnout in 2017, as compared to 2014. Our model and findings build a new benchmark to understand how voters decide their timing of voting. This study also has implications for the unprecedented popularity of early voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election

Sexual dimorphism of the human fetal pelvis exists at the onset of primary ossification

ヒト胎児の骨盤の性差は一次骨化が開始する受精後9週には既に存在する. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2024-05-20.Human adolescent and adult skeletons exhibit sexual dimorphism in the pelvis. However, the degree of sexual dimorphism of the human pelvis during prenatal development remains unclear. Here, we performed high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging-assisted pelvimetry on 72 human fetuses (males [M]: females [F], 34:38; 21 sites) with crown-rump lengths (CRL) of 50–225 mm (the onset of primary ossification). We used multiple regression analysis to examine sexual dimorphism with CRL as a covariate. Females exhibit significantly smaller pelvic inlet anteroposterior diameters (least squares mean, [F] 8.4 mm vs. [M] 8.8 mm, P = 0.036), larger subpubic angle ([F] 68.1° vs. [M] 64.0°, P = 0.034), and larger distance between the ischial spines relative to the transverse diameters of the greater pelvis than males. Furthermore, the sacral measurements indicate significant sex-CRL interactions. Our study suggests that sexual dimorphism of the human fetal pelvis is already apparent at the onset of primary ossification

Racial environment and political participation

This research addresses the determinants of mass participation by developing a model of how the racial environment influences mass participation in the United States. Prior literature on this research question presents two competing expectations. The power-threat hypothesis predicts that a larger size of different racial groups in local areas increases citizen participation because of more intensive interracial con- flicts, while the relational goods hypothesis predicts that a larger size of different racial groups decreases participation because of less frequent interaction with other in-group members. Both hypotheses, however, are derived from rather weak theoretical expectations, and neither is consistently supported in empirical analyses. This research offers a solution to this puzzle by arguing that economic and political characteristics of local areas determine how the racial composition influences mass participation. Local economic and political competition is expected to structure the nature of interracial and intraracial relations and therefore influence the utility calculation associated with political participation. I hypothesize that the power-threat effect on citizen participation is observed only when the degree of economic or political competition is high, while the relational goods effect is observed only when the degree of economic or political competition is low. Empirical analysis using Verba, Schlozman, and Brady’s Citizen Participation Study offers supportive evidence for my hypotheses. This research offers the first theoretically-motivated, rigorous analysis and evidence of the impact of immediate racial environment on individuals’ participation

Intergovernmental transfers as magnets for low-income people

We demonstrate that intergovernmental transfers affect migration decisions. If local governments with large distributive allocations offer greater government employment, public works projects, and assistance to (small) businesses, they attract low-skilled or unemployed residents to move or stay in. We find that more allocations increase not only the share of low-income residents but also the economic disparity in the city. We exploit the major electoral reform in Japan as an instrumental variable.This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Applied Economics Letters on 01 Nov 2022, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2022.2139801