This paper uses the European Working Conditions Surveys to examine the intensity of work for male and female employees. The first section gives an overview of the usefulness of the survey for examining European Union (EU) working conditions and shows how women's intensity of work has been increasing faster than that of men, so that by the year 2000 there was little gender difference in the speed of work. Section two demonstrates that the intensity of work has a negative effect on health and work-life balance, and this effect is stronger for women than for men.Public choice

Kenneth Koford

English

Research Papers in Economics

619
Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4, Fall 2003
Kenneth Koford:  Lerner Business School, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. E-mail:
KofordK@lerner.udel.edu
EDITOR’S CORNER
Iraq and Public Choice
Kenneth Koford
Lerner Business School, University of Delaware
While watching the U.S. government approach war with Iraq, I wondered as a
public choice economist what lessons public choice would provide for the govern-
ment, and whether the government’s behavior might teach public choice economists
something. Now that the main campaign is over, I believe that the Bush administra-
tion could have learned from studying public choice, but public choice economists
(or, at least this one) missed some lessons about political behavior.
Let me start with the lessons that we economists might be neglecting, which
came out in the move to war.
1. A Week Is a Long Time in Politics. During the disputes with France and
Germany at the U.N. Security Council, I kept thinking about the long and complex
negotiations that the U.S. constantly carries out with the EU—over the Doha round
trade talks, over current WTO disputes such as our steel protection and GM foods,
over international antitrust matters—and thought, “How can the U.S. gain from
getting into unneeded fights with these people? They will punish us later in return,
when we will need their cooperation!” This idea may or may not turn out to be true,
but U.S. politicians often do not think long-term. Or, more precisely, they will take
some available gain now, even if there could be large costs later.
When we work through game-theoretic models of international politics, or even
models of Congress and the President passing laws, we usually think that the dis-
count rate to use is the same one as that in the regular economy. But if it isn’t—if the
correct discount rate is far higher—then small benefits to a politician now should be
greater than huge costs in the future. If the public really receives those benefits and
costs in the end, there are elements in political systems that need to be re-examined.
Are politicians just different? Or, is politics so varied and uncertain that long-term
benefits are hard to capture?
2. You Can Gain by Making and Fighting the Right Enemies. You don’t
have to win! In economics, mutual gains are a fundamental principle, and conflict
that does not lead to some material gain would be considered illogical. Similarly, a
traditional principle of machine politics was to avoid making enemies—while you
might beat someone, it’s not wise to make big fights or attack people who might fight
back. Getting benefits for oneself and one’s constituents was the point of politics.620 EASTERN ECONOMIC JOURNAL
(See William Riordan’s Plunkett of Tammany Hall [New York: E.P. Dutton, 1963]
one of the classic works on machine politics.) Most of public choice, certainly includ-
ing my own work, presumes that getting what one’s constituents want is the goal of
politicians, and I’ve always presumed that constituents don’t benefit from getting
into costly fights. Virtually every paper looking at constituency preferences and leg-
islator voting presumes and finds that material interests are the main ingredient.
Some work on “ideology” does imply that a number of constituents, and maybe
politicians, have a worldview that favors conflict. But most economists have trouble
seeing why people would like to fight for no material gain. So, why do environmen-
talists fight over a few caribou in Alaska? Or how porpoises die in the South Pacific?
I think that most economists have basically dismissed such behavior as very minor.
But maybe Robert Fogel was correct in his recent book, The Fourth Great Awak-
ening [University of Chicago Press, 2000], that with our material desires satisfied,
people in wealthy countries will turn to personal or ideological self-expression. Maybe
also, part of that self-expression will involve conflicts with others. Come to think of
it, just that kind of conflict was a theme of Orwell’s 1984.
Chancellor Schroeder gained re-election campaigning against the United States’
aggressive stance toward Iraq, even though he could not do anything practical about
it; Presidents Chirac and Bush have both gained at home from getting into conflict
with each other—even though both have hurt their own countries materially. Rally-
ing one’s people to fight enemies —even imaginary enemies, and even while causing
real material losses to one’s own people, might be a politically successful strategy.
But political leaders might have missed some public choice lessons too; actually,
these are nearly mirror-images of the points above.
1. Politics is Like a Market. Theories of vote-trading, logrolling, and political
exchange are basic to public choice. Helping other legislators, or other politicians’
constituents, is a core activity of public choice models. The idea of political exchange
is that others can help you, so you should help them when you can. Going back to the
idea that “a week is a long time in politics” a politician can never know what other
politician might be able to provide benefits. Yet from the beginning of the Iraq mat-
ter, the Bush administration claimed that other countries and even the U.S. Con-
gress were unimportant.
If the Iraq war turns out badly in the end, with large reconstruction costs in
dealing with the world economy, this administration will want to have chits to use in
getting joint projects done. Beating up foreign leaders, making demands of foreign
countries (rather than making joint deals), and saying that foreign countries are
insignificant and must obey the United States just throws away chances to build
political exchange.
A “neorealist” model of politics, contrary to most public choice work, is like the
zero-sum game, where one uses strategy to annihilate one’s enemy. In this model, it
doesn’t matter how one offends or harms others, since in the end one wins. Perhaps
that model has been in the mind of some members of the Bush administration. If
those others who have been offended have to be relied on later, the value of an
exchange view of politics will be clear.621 EDITOR’S CORNER
2. The Political Business Cycle Still Lives. Since Nordhaus’ work, and with
Ray Fair’s quadrennial predictions, it has been clear that Presidents should have a
very good year in the 12-18 months before a re-election campaign. The economy is
the most important element that voters look to. Anything that hurts the economy
will hurt re-election.
President George H.W. Bush faced that reality when the conflict with Iraq held
back the economy for six months to a year, through the fall of 1990 and the begin-
ning of 1991. Even a victorious war did not save him in 1992. The economy had been
growing for well over a year before that election, but the public realized it only after
Clinton had been elected. While the current President Bush has high approval rat-
ings, most probably the growth of the economy from this past spring up to October
2004 will be decisive in his re-election. The war in Iraq seems to have held the economy
back over the past year, and so is likely to damage his re-election prospects, even if it
is eventually seen as a glorious victory.
3. Checks and Balances Aren’t Merely Parchment Barriers, but Politi-
cal Incentives. The U.S. Constitution sets a variety of hurdles for the passage of
legislation, hurdles intended to require a variety of political interests to agree on a
policy. The Constitution requires that Congress declare war, clearly with the pur-
pose of assuring that such large issues as wars are seriously supported by the U.S.
public. President Bush chose to evade the declaration of war—contrary to his fa-
ther—by using last year’s Congressional resolution. It allowed the U.S. President to
pursue military action against Iraq if the U.N. Security Council voted for military
action, or if Iraq was preparing an immediate attack on the United States using
weapons of mass destruction, or was planning to pass such weapons on to Al Qaeda.
But it seems rather unlikely that one of these two latter conditions was really
true.
If the Iraq war and occupation turns out well, the lack of a vote by Congress will
not be a problem; President Bush will get the credit. But suppose that it turns out
poorly? If the decision was made by the Congress, acting at the request of the Presi-
dent, then any blame must be shared widely. More important, if the “going gets
tough” but the Congress, and by implication the U.S. public, have committed to some
action, it is hard for them to change their minds.
At this point in early July, it isn’t clear what the political fallout to the Iraq war
will be, but if the occupation turns out badly, President Bush may come to regret
neglecting the incentive effects of a declaration of war.

Iraq and Public Choice

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Iraq and Public Choice

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