Campaign Expenditures, Contributions and Direct Endorsements: The Strategic Use of Information and Money to Influence Voter Behavior

A costly signaling model is presented in which we show how campaign expenditures can buy votes. The model shows that the amount of campaign expenditures may convey the electorate information about the candidate’s intended policy. When this model is extended to allow for a contributing interest group, it appears that for campaigning to be informative it is sometimes crucial that campaign funds are supplied by informed third parties. The extension also provides an explanation why interest groups contribute to the candidate’s campaign, rather than using direct endorsements; they may need the candidate as an intermediary to filter their opposing interests.campaign expenditures;endorsements;interest groups

Monitoring your Friends, not your Foes: Strategic Ignorance and the Delegation of Real Authority

In this laboratory experiment we study the use of strategic ignorance to delegate real authority within a firm. A worker can gather information on investment projects, while a manager makes the implementation decision. The manager can monitor the worker. This allows her to better exploit the information gathered by the worker, but also reduces the worker's incentives to gather information in the first place. Both effects of monitoring are influenced by the interest alignment between manager and worker. Our data confirms the theoretical predictions that optimal monitoring depends non-monotonically on the level of interest alignment. We also find evidence for hidden costs of control and preferences for control, but these have no substantial effects on organizational outcomes.delegation, real authority, strategic ignorance

RNA editing in trypanosome mitochondria: guidelines for models

AbstractMitochondrial RNAs in trypanosomes are post-transcriptionally altered by uridine insertion and deletion. The information for these RNA editing processes, which are essential for the production of functional messengers, is provided by small guide RNAs. This article discusses how features of partially edited RNAs, gRNAs and chimeric RNAs, in which a gRNA is covalently linked to an editing site of pre-mRNA, have been used for the construction of models

Performance measurement, expectancy and agency theory: an experimental study

Theoretical analyses of (optimal) performance measures are typically performed within the realm of the linear agency model. This model implies that, for a given compensation scheme, the agent’s optimal effort is unrelated to the amount of noise in the performance measure. In contrast, expectancy theory as developed by psychologists predicts lower effort levels for noisier performance measures. We conduct a real effort laboratory experiment and find that effort levels are invariant to changes in the distribution of the noise term. This suggests that enriching the economic model commonly applied within this area by including an expectancy parameter is not needed

Yield Strength Increase of Cold Formed Sections Due to Cold Work of Forming

The design approach for predicting the increase in yield strength due to cold work of forming in the AISI 1996 Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural members is different from the approach used by the CSA Standard, CSA S136-94, Cold Formed Steel Structural Members. The AISI approach is based on the experimental work conducted by Karren and Winter, while the S136 approach is based on theoretical work by Lind and Schroff. Lind and Schroff used Karren and Winter\u27s data to substantiate their theory. Karren and Winter conducted tests on five full sections and also collected strength data on the flat and corner elements of the same sections, allowing for comparison oftested to calculated values. Twelve different sections were tested as part of the University of Waterloo test program. Strength data was collected on virgin material, full sections and on the flat elements of formed sections, thus permitting comparisons to be made using only experimental data. The main purpose of this investigation was to help answer two questions, Le., 1) should the average yield strength in the flats after forming be allowed in either design approach? and 2) is there a simplified expression that would produce similar results with fewer inputs? Based on the research of this paper, design recommendations were formulated