Using county-level voting data from the 2008 presidential election in New York State, we find evidence that durable cultural factors influence voting behavior. After controlling for contemporaneous socio-economic factors, our econometric models imply that antebellum votes—the 1860 vote for Lincoln and an 1846 referendum on black suffrage—have statistically significant predictive power for the 2008 vote for Barack Obama. Antebellum support for emancipation and the rights of blacks in New York emerged primarily in ‘Yankee’ counties founded by migrants from New England, the descendants of English Puritans. In contrast, so-called ‘Yorker’ counties founded by the Dutch or other groups were less amenable to reforms promoting racial equality. Our estimates indicate that differences in antebellum cultural factors predict an additional Obama vote of 2 − 4

We conduct a unique test of the efficiency of property rights in major league baseball. The rights to the services of players are resources that can be possessed by the clubs or by the players themselves. This right was effectively reassigned from the club to the individual player when free agency was introduced in 1976. Players, however, only qualify for free agency after 6 years of service, and until that time a temporary property right is possessed by the club. In the absence of efficient bargaining, clubs that possess only a temporary right do not bear the full risk of injury or disability associated with using pitchers. Clubs in this situation can therefore have an incentive to overuse star pitchers. This theoretical prediction is supported by the statistical inferences of our econometric models.

Since the Keynesian Revolution of the 1930s, many prominent economists have argued that a useful policy response to economic depression is to boost government spending. But pressure to spend quickly increases the potential for waste and inefficiency: this is ignored or dismissed in the Keynesian literature. For example, a widely cited cost–benefit analysis of stimulus spending does not even acknowledge the possibility of waste, and some Keynesians go so far as to argue that wasteful spending during a crisis can nonetheless be desirable. Here we extend the typical analysis by accounting explicitly for the leading sources of cost including waste, resource costs, and the excess burden of taxation. Our results suggest that stimulus spending that is largely wasteful is unlikely to generate net wealth. A proper response to economic depression must consider the possibility that government waste can render stimulus spending counterproductive.

For more than 70 years, a strand of Keynesian thought has maintained that the cure for economic depressions is merely a matter of simple arithmetic. According to these Keynesians, the government need only increase spending by an amount equal to the ratio of the output gap to the fiscal multiplier. Moreover, these Keynesians assert that even wasteful government spending can be desirable because any spending is better than nothing. This simple Keynesian approach fails to account, however, for several significant sources of cost. In addition to the cost of waste inherent in government spending, financing that spending requires taxation, which entails an excess burden. Furthermore, the employment of even previously idle resources involves opportunity costs. In this paper, we subject Keynesian stimulus spending to a benefit-cost test that accounts for waste, labor disutility, capital consumption, and the excess burden of taxation. We calibrate our model by surveying the published estimates of key parameters, including the Keynesian fiscal multiplier. Our results indicate that stimulus spending can successfully generate net wealth, but generally only if the burden of waste is limited to no more than 20 to 30 percent of the overall size of the spending package.

We estimate a time series model of voter turnout for 34 US presidential elections, 1880-2012. Employing a variety of econometric techniques, our major results are as follows. (1) A negative and significant structural shift in voter turnout occurs in 1972 and is too large to be explained by the lowering of the voting age. (2) The 1972 shift is the only statistically significant structural shift to occur since the first decade of the twentieth century. (3) Short-term macroeconomic conditions significantly impact turnout, with unemployment having a positive effect. (4) Turnout in recent presidential elections has not deviated significantly from the post-1972 norm. (5) Turnout is positively related to the expected closeness of the election outcome, but contrary to some theoretical predictions, closeness exhibits no trend over time.

Settlement and trial expenditures are crucially interrelated. The literature on settlement, however, takes no account of models of trial. In this paper, we develop a unified model of settlement and trial expenditures. We do this by discarding the usual assumption of settlement models that trial costs are constant across cases. Instead, we follow the literature on trial by permitting trial costs to vary with the legal merit of the plaintiff's case. Our approach can be used to extend standard models of settlement such as the well-known Priest–Klein model as well as models based on asymmetric information. As a demonstration, we extend the Priest–Klein model and generally overturn that model's canonical results. In particular, we show that even in a fully symmetric model, predicted win rates at trial can deviate substantially from 50 percent. Furthermore, win rates will vary in response to legal reforms that shift the decision standard.

Whether people perceive and respond to low-probability natural hazards is a research question of considerable policy relevance. We obtain evidence by considering the response of housing choice to tornado risk for manufactured homes. The vulnerability of manufactured housing, combined with its growing share of the U.S. housing market, has led to proposed mandates for community shelters in mobile home parks. Expected utility theory, however, predicts that households should account for tornado risk in their housing choice. We test for an effect of tornado risk on manufactured housing demand using cross-sectional state data, as well as counties in three tornado prone states. We find that people do respond to tornado risk; our estimates indicate that each expected annual state tornado death per million residents reduces demand for manufactured homes by about 3%. The estimated quantity effect is consistent with the market studies of the price elasticity of manufactured homes.

Many scholars argue that advertiser influence prevents commercial news media from reporting truthfully on harmful business practices. Yet overt evidence of advertiser influence on the news can be elusive, partly because fear of offending advertisers may lead news organizations to censor themselves. An apparent departure from self-censorship, however, is the anti-business reporting that characterized the muckraking era of the early 20th century. We therefore examine muckraking's demise as a case study of potential advertiser influence. As alternative hypotheses of muckraking's decline, our tests seek to distinguish between an advertising boycott and a fall in reader demand for muckraking content. The tests involve comparing market performances of muckraking and non-muckraking magazines, and estimating the determinants of advertising in muckraking magazines. We generally find no evidence to support the hypothesis of an advertising boycott.

Research reveals economical option for turbines' support structures Wind may be free, but harnessing it is not. With the research done by civil engineering major Andrew McMor- row, it may be more affordable than previously thought. Often, medium-sized turbines are mounted on ex- pensive, solid-steel "monopole" towers, McMorrow said. He wanted to determine whether a lattice tower design, which uses a lot less steel than a monopole tower, could

We analyze how citizens can screen candidates for high political office in a political hierarchy. In our model politicians differ in willingness to misuse discretionary powers of office. Those politicians willing to abuse the powers of office (knaves) can be induced in a hierarchy to reveal their type while in low office, thus disqualifying themselves for advancement. Hierarchy's capacity for screening knaves out of high office depends on the conditions for reappointment to low office. A seemingly perverse rule that reappoints shirking politicians can perform well. To demonstrate an empirical application, we analyze shirking in the House Bank check bouncing scandal.

In recent decades local governments have allocated billions of dollars to subsidizing construction of facilities for major league baseball. We use panel data that cover all major league baseball teams from 1989–2001 to estimate the impact of ballpark construction on team revenue. Our estimates imply that a typical new ballpark generates additional revenue sufficient to cover most or all of its capital cost. It follows that any external benefits of ballpark construction are likely to be inframarginal and that continuance of large public subsidies cannot be justified on economic grounds.

Federal bureaus make regularly scheduled public announcements of macroeconomic variables such as employment, the price level, and the money stock. Recently, several studies claim to establish an empirical relationship between the impact of these announcements on financial markets and the state of the business cycle. The present article estimates the impact of several announcement variables on daily closing values of the Standard and Poor's (S&P) 500. Contrary to previous studies, this study finds no significant evidence that the marginal effects of announcements vary with the state of the economy.

Over 60 million registered motor vehicles in 20 states are subject to mandatory periodic safety inspection. The effect of safety inspection on roadway casualties has been estimated by several studies, with mixed results. We present a unique test of inspection effectiveness by analyzing the policy's impact on old cars in use and on repair industry revenue. Our results indicate that inspection has no significant impact on old cars or repair industry revenue, which implies that inspection does not improve the mechanical condition of vehicles. Unlike studies that examine casualties, our tests allow us to distinguish between policy ineffectiveness and Peltzman-type offsetting behavior as sources of inspection failure.

Studies of traffic safety typically assumethat policies are adopted to further thepublic interest, thereby ignoring thepolitical motives for policy. Sincepolitical motives can influence the designor enforcement of policies, accounting forpolitical motives has relevance forevaluating policy effectiveness. Weexamine the political motives concerning afrequently-studied traffic safety policy: state-mandated vehicle safety inspection. We distinguish between public interest andspecial interest explanations for safetyinspection. Our econometric models examinethe incidence of inspection across states,and determinants of regulated inspectionfees. The evidence strongly rejects apublic interest explanation, but specialinterest hypotheses also do not proveentirely satisfactory. Since recentstudies find that inspections fail toimprove highway safety, we attribute thecontinued existence of inspection programsto political transaction costs rather thanto the demands of interest groups.

Within all endocrine cells, the inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP(3)) receptor plays an important role in regulation of the intracellular Ca2+ concentration. In the present study we showed that a single short-term treatment with either N-ethylmaleimide (known to decrease InsP(3) receptor activity) or thimerosal (known to increase InsP(3) receptor activity) caused time-dependent biphasic effects on the InsP(3) binding activity of bovine adrenal cortex microsomes. The early potentiating effect of thiol-reactive agents translated into a 2-fold increase in binding affinity and Ca2+ release efficiency. The late dampening effect of thiol-reactive agents translated into a continuous reduction of the maximal binding capacity of the microsomes with a concomitant decrease in Ca2+ release efficiency. Under these conditions, Western blot analyses demonstrated that the level of InsP(3) receptor protein was not modified. Sequential treatments with thimerosal and the reducing agent dithiothreitol showed that the InsP(3) receptor can readily oscillate between high and low affinity states that are related to its alkylation state. Our results suggest a common mode of action of thiol-reactive agents on the InsP(3) receptor. These results also support the contention that cellular mechanisms of thiol group modification could play important roles in regulation of the intracellular Ca2+ concentration.

The inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP3) receptor forms a tetrameric channel responsible for the release of Ca2+ from intracellular stores. In the present study we showed that the experimental approach used to separate bound and free ligands may discriminate between two populations of InsP3 binding sites in bovine adrenal cortex microsomes. A large population of low affinity sites and a small population of high affinity sites were detected with centrifugation and filtration approaches, respectively. Both populations were found in the supernatant and the cytoskeleton fractions of Triton X-100 solubilized microsomes. After treatment of microsomes with thimerosal, an alkylating reagent known to increase InsP3 receptor affinity, the filtration and the centrifugation approaches yielded identical results. With selective anti-InsP3 receptor antibodies, we showed that types 1, 2 and 3 InsP3 receptors are present in intact microsomes and in the cytoskeleton fraction. Binding studies on immunoprecipitated receptors revealed that anti-type 1 antibody recognizes a large population of low affinity sites whereas anti-type 2 antibody recognizes a small population of high affinity sites. Our results indicate that the three types of InsP3 receptors are expressed at different levels in the bovine adrenal cortex. The presence of different types of InsP3 receptors with different ligand binding affinities and their association with the cytoskeleton offer a convenient way for the cell to simultaneously regulate its intracellular Ca2+ concentration and reorganize the spatial distribution of its Ca2+ stores.

We analyze the welfare gains from the reform of existinggovernment-induced distortions. Our results provide support forpolicies aimed at eliminating monopoly and other types of economicdistortion. Welfare gains over the status quo exist wheneverderegulation occurs. The threat of deregulation can induce amonopoly or cartel to modify its behavior, so a reform policy canprove beneficial even if reform does not actually occur. Optimalpolicy with commitment in fact allows a monopoly to deterderegulation. The possibility of reregulation does not reverse ourresults; the per period welfare gain from reform remainsundiminished.

Most recent empirical analyses of production in the sports economic literature have focused on Major League Baseball. This paper extends that literature by analysing football production in the National Football League (NFL). Using the Poisson regression model, we measure the performance of NFL teams and head coaches. The measure is based on a production process where player skills are converted into games won. The evidence reveals that quality coaching is an important component in the production process. It appears that efficient coaching can account for an additional three to four victories in a given season. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article uses long-term cross-country data to examine the Fisher hypothesis that nominal interest rates respond point-for-point to changes in the expected inflation rate. The analysis employs bounded-influence estimation to limit the effects of hyperinflation countries such as Brazil and Peru. Contrary to the results in Duck (1993), the present evidence does not support a full Fisher effect. By extending the empirical model to account for cross-country differences in sovereign risk, we find evidence consistent with the idea that interest rates fail to fully adjust to inflation due to variation in the implicit liquidity premium on financial assets.

Research on the presence of consumer racial discrimination in the baseball labor and memorabilia markets has produced contradictory empirical results. While studies of baseball salaries find no evidence of discrimination, Nardinelli and Simon (1990) and Andersen and La Croix (1991) use data from the baseball card market to show that the price that consumers pay for a card depends on the player’s race. In this paper, we reconsider the evidence of consumer discrimination in the baseball card market. Our study improves on previous research by applying more appropriate econometric methods and using a data set in which card supply is constant and incentives for speculative demand are weaker. In contradiction to the aforementioned studies, we find little evidence of racial discrimination. This result proves robust across variable specifications and econometric models.