Ideology, Shirking, and the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives

This paper examines how the incumbency advantage is related to ideological voting or legislative shirking that causes the incumbents to diverge from the preference of the median voter using aggregate data for the U.S. House of Representatives between 1948 and 2000. I find that a rise in the incumbency advantage manifested in higher reelection rates increases the ideological divergence or polarization the U.S. House of Representatives. I also find that the average number of bills per congressman falls with greater ideological polarization. These findings suggest that ideological and non-ideological shirking rise with the incumbent reelection rate.

In uncertainty we trust: a median voter model with risk aversion

The principal-agent problem and uncertainty are some of the key factors affecting financial and political markets. Fear of the unknown plays an important role in human decision making, including voting. This article describes a theoretical model where voter risk aversion towards uncertainty gives political incumbents a significant advantage over their challengers, exacerbating the principal-agent problem between voters and legislators. The model presented predicts that a rise in voter uncertainty concerning the challenger allows the incumbent to deviate from the median voter’s policy preference without losing the election. This model reconciles the paradoxical coexistence of ideological shirking and high incumbent reelection rates without abandoning the elegant median voter framework.ideology, incumbency advantage, shirking, median voter, risk aversion, principal-agent problem

Beauty and the Beast: An Empirical Tale of City Attributes

In 2007, Travel & Leisure magazine conducted a survey of 60,000 people who were asked to score a number of U.S. cities in several broad categories such as culture, cityscape, people, cuisine, shopping, entertainment, and many others. This paper investigates whether peoples' perceptions of various city traits can be systematically linked to economic, demographic, and geographic factors that can shape city image. We find numerous statistically significant correlations between perceived city attributes in various categories and city facts from the Census Bureau. Some of our findings appear very intuitive, but some are rather surprising. For instance, demographic and racial groups often exhibit statistically significant coefficients that may vary dramatically across groups or regressions.

Mind the Weather: A Panel Data Analysis of Time-Invariant Factors and Traffic Fatalities

Many important determinants of traffic fatalities have been identified using the widely popular fixed-effects (FE) estimator for panel data. However, the FE estimator precludes an analysis of time-invariant or rarely changing variables, thereby obscuring their relative impact on traffic fatalities. This study estimates the effect of time-invariant and rarely changing variables (climate, geography, laws, etc.) on the U.S. state traffic fatality rate using alternative econometric methods in addition to the FE estimator. We find that alcohol consumption, air temperature, and precipitation have the largest effect on traffic fatalities. Our findings suggest that policy makers and the insurance industry practitioners may want to re-evaluate the role of climate in road safety.traffic fatalities, road safety, geography, climate, weather, temperature, precipitation, speed limit, seat belt, alcohol consumption

In uncertainty we trust: a median voter model with risk aversion

The principal-agent problem and uncertainty are some of the key factors affecting financial and political markets. Fear of the unknown plays an important role in human decision making, including voting. This article describes a theoretical model where voter risk aversion towards uncertainty gives political incumbents a significant advantage over their challengers, exacerbating the principal-agent problem between voters and legislators. The model presented predicts that a rise in voter uncertainty concerning the challenger allows the incumbent to deviate from the median voter’s policy preference without losing the election. This model reconciles the paradoxical coexistence of ideological shirking and high incumbent reelection rates without abandoning the elegant median voter framework

Three essays on political regimes, military spending, and economic *growth

This dissertation is a collection of essays on the issues in political and defense economics. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the role that political and institutional arrangements play in affecting government policy and economic well-being. The second chapter examines how different political regimes and military manpower systems affect the value of life in military conflicts. The results in Chapter 2 show that democracies suffer lower battlefield casualties than dictatorships. Also noteworthy is that more volunteer based armies, per capita income, and economic freedom lead to lower battlefield deaths. Thus, political and economic liberties are found to increase the value of life in military conflicts. Chapter 3 investigates how arms trade and military spending affect economic growth. The results indicate that higher military spending and net arms exports lead, separately, to lower economic growth, but higher military spending appears to be less detrimental to growth when a country is a large net arms exporter. The fourth chapter examines the relationship between incumbency advantage and legislative shirking or ideology. The results indicate that the incumbency advantage leads to more legislative shirking as evidenced by the departure of politicians from the median voter\u27s ideological preferences. Chapter 5 summarizes the findings of the dissertation, provides concluding remarks, and discusses opportunities for future research in the political economy of warfare

Population Aging, Elderly Migration and Education Spending: Intergenerational Conflict Revisited

Elderly have been increasingly targeted as a group to enhance economic development and the tax base in communities. A major factor in their rise in importance is the rapid increase in the number of retired elderly through aging of the U.S. population. While recent literature on elderly migration tends to focus on how elderly migration patterns are influenced by state fiscal variables, the reverse effect from elderly population on fiscal variables is very plausible as shown to be the case for estate, inheritance, and gift taxes by Conway and Rork (2006). In this paper, we reexamine the intergenerational conflict in education financing raised by Poterba (1997) using U.S. state and county level data that allows to analyze how preferences for education might vary across different elderly age groups, which has not been explored before. Moreover, this paper uses a variety of advanced econometric techniques to estimate the impact of elderly population and elderly migration on education spending. Our state and county regression results broadly support the presence of intergenerational conflict in education financing. We also find dramatic age heterogeneity in preferences for education spending among elderly migrants.Population aging, elderly migration, education spending, intergenerational conflict

Public trust in leaders is highest in more isolated and autocraticcountries

A World Public Opinion (WPO) poll revealed that no country leader enjoyed worldwide trust in 2008 and that only the leaders of China, Iran, and Russia received consistently higher trust ratings at home than abroad. In a new study, Pavel Yakovlev and David Gilson investigate the associative determinants of these trust ratings and find that economically open and politically free countries tend to have a more critical assessment of their leaders

Alcohol consumption rises in states that become more liberal over time

Across the U.S., levels of alcohol consumption often vary significantly from state to state. In a new study, Pavel Yakovlev and Walter Guessford investigate the relationship between an individual’s political beliefs and consumption of alcohol. Using data on drinking habits in 50 states between 1952 and 2010, they find that people in states that become more liberal over time consume more beer and spirits, but less wine

Population Aging, Elderly Migration and Education Spending: Intergenerational Conflict Revisited

Elderly have been increasingly targeted as a group to enhance economic development and the tax base in communities. While recent literature on elderly migration tends to focus on how elderly migration patterns are influenced by state fiscal variables, the reverse effect from elderly population on fiscal variables is very plausible. This paper reexamines the intergenerational conflict in education financing using U.S. state and county level data. We analyze how preferences for education spending might vary across different elderly age groups, an analysis that has not been explored before. We estimate the impact of elderly population and elderly migration rates on education spending using panel data and spatial econometric techniques. Our results broadly support the presence of intergenerational conflict and age heterogeneity in preferences for education spending among elderly migrants.population aging, elderly migration, education spending, intergenerational conflict