Coase and Bertrand on lighthouses

Coase (Journal of Low and Economics 17(2):185–213, 1974) failed to appreciate that the construction and maintenance of nineteenth-century lighthouses were in part financed by British taxpayers. Bertrand (Cambridge Journal of Economics 30:389–402, 2006) rightly calls him to account. While agreeing with Bertrand’s conclusion, we dispute her reasoning and argue that lighthouses nevertheless could have been supplied by the private sector.     

Candidate Entry and Political Polarization: An Antimedian Voter Theorem

We study a citizen‐candidate‐entry model with private information about ideal points. We fully characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium of the entry game and show that only relatively “extreme” citizen types enter the electoral competition as candidates, whereas more “moderate” types never enter. It generally leads to substantial political polarization, even when the electorate is not polarized and citizens understand that they vote for more extreme candidates. We show that polarization increases in the costs of entry and decreases in the benefits from holding office. Moreover, when the number of citizens goes to infinity, only the very most extreme citizens, with ideal points at the boundary of the policy space, become candidates. Finally, our polarization result is robust to changes in the implementation of a default policy if no citizen runs for office and to introducing directional information about candidates’ types that is revealed via parties.     

Seeking rents in the shadow of Coase

In this paper, we study a two-stage rent-seeking game. In the first stage, contestants compete à-la-Tullock; in the second stage, the winner can resell the rent à-la-Coase. We consider a complete information Tullock game in which the contestants have different valuations for the rent. The analysis focuses on the ex ante effects of a secondary market on efforts, payoffs, rent-dissipation and rent-misallocation. We show that the secondary market, while correcting possible misallocations, may exacerbate rent dissipation. In some situations, the increase in rent dissipation more than offsets the allocative advantage, so that a secondary market might reduce welfare. We further show how the effect of ex post tradeability on welfare depends on the parties’ bargaining power and valuations of the rent, also considering the case of endogenous bargaining power.     

Pigou, Coase, common law, and environmental policy: Implications of the calculation debate

The implications of the calculation debate are explored for Pigouvian, Coasean, and common-law liability approaches to externality problems. There is no escaping Hayekian-Misean information problems, but the institutional setting within which environmental policies are resolved affects the domain of third-party calculation. The calculation required is likely to be significantly less under common-law arrangements than under administrative processes. The primary implication for environmental policy is that increased reliance on competitive market processes and the common law in copying with externality problems may be more effective than attempts to improve current administrative approaches.     

"科斯定理"不成立

仍以科斯的养牛者与农夫的例子为例,同样运用新古典的方法,从养牛与谷物生产的边际收益均等于边际成本;养牛的边际收益大于边际成本,谷物生产的边际收益等于边际成本;谷物生产的边际收益大于边际成本,养牛的边际收益等于边际成本三种假定,分析了十种情况,证明即使交易费用为零,不同的产权界定也会影响资源配置的效果,亦即"科斯定理"是不成立的.同时,要指出的是,"科斯定理"的证明中存在着推论的"陷阱".     

政治文明与政治现代化

我们目前讲政治文明研究具有特殊的语境,那就是我国正在进行社会主义现代化建设。政治文明与政治现代化是并行不悖的,但二者并不能等同:政治现代化是政治文明演进的特殊阶段,政治文明是对政治现代化的正向运动的描述,现代化的政治文明是高度分化整合的政治、理性化的政治和民主化的政治。政治文明的特殊语境及其内在规定性决定了我国政治文明建设要以法治为核心,挖掘制度内的政治资源,依法治国,加强和完善人民代表大会制度。     

政治文化与政治文明

政治文明是人类运用国家权力配置自身利益的进步状态,主要包括思想认识、心理意识、价值取向、行为方式等的提升和制度、机制、程序、规则等的完善两大部分。其中,政治文化是政治文明的灵魂,也是判定政治文明由低级向高级演进的重要尺度。忽视甚至离开了政治文化的政治文明,必将在实践中萎缩、退化,直至被人类社会政治发展进程所淘汰。     

Political Star Power and Political Parties

Abstract

Political parties, and more specifically public interest groups, budget extensive amounts of time and money to use celebrity endorsers for their candidate. Do celebrities bring forth enough value to warrant the time, effort, and money expended to make their endorsements public? Using a sample of first-time voters from the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, the authors examine the extent to which celebrities influence voting while specifically assessing whether celebrity influence is greater for Republicans or Democrats. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Why Political Science Needs Political Theory

Normative political theory and empirical social science have a reciprocal relationship. This thesis is illustrated by taking up two topics: one is social exclusion; the other is ethnicity and discrimination.     

Political Information, Political Involvement, and Reliance on Ideology in Political Evaluation

Many studies have focused on the relationship between political information and the use of ideology. Here, we argue that two “evaluative motivations”—general investment of the self in politics and extremity of partisanship—serve as moderators of this relationship. Specifically, we use data from two recent national surveys to test whether the possession of information is more strongly associated with a tendency to approach politics in an ideological fashion among individuals high in both types of evaluative motivation. Results supported this hypothesis, revealing that information was more strongly associated with ideological constraint and with a tendency to give polarized evaluations of conservatives and liberals among those who highly invest the self in politics and those with more extreme partisanship. As such, this study suggests that information and involvement interact to shape the use of ideology.     

Political Involvement and the Development of Political Attitudes

Political socialization research so far has focused primarily on the direction of attitudes among children and youngsters. The preconditions for the development of political attitudes among these age groups have been neglected. In theoretical discussions cognitive development has been offered as a major prerequisite. In the article it is posited that political involvement is a second major prerequisite.
The effects of political involvement are examined with respect to four aspects of political attitudes among Danish school children: the ability to express attitudes, the correlation between indicators of a particular attitude, the stability of attitudes, and the correlation between different attitudes. Except for the stability of attitudes, results are clear. Political involvement is related to the formation of attitudes. The effect of political involvement is stronger than the effect of any of the traditional socio-economic variables ordinarily considered in socialization research.     

Political Science Research Internships and Political Science Education

This article reports on the evaluation of political science research internships and considers their costs and benefits for a political science education. Students indicated high levels of appreciation of the inaugural Political Science Research Internship Unit at the University of Western Australia in terms of its contribution to their personal development and work experience. A substantial number of interns gained insights into the policy process through this form of experiential learning. Many came to appreciate the contingency and the normative dimensions of knowledge in the policy process. Whereas about half of the students found the transition from the seminar room to the policy world difficult, the other half were more successful in applying their theoretical knowledge to practical experiences. The article also indicates how this evaluation informs future course design.