The committee outlier debate: A review and a reexamination of some of the evidence

An ongoing and controversial topic of congressional scholars is the question “Are committees ‘preference outliers’ vis-a-vis their parent chamber?” Despite numerous research efforts showing isolated cases of outlying committees, little evidence shows a systematic tendency for committees to be unrepresentative of their legislature. A paper which comes close to being an exception is Weingast and Marshall's (1988) analysis of “the industrial organization of Congress,” which reports evidence of many and very strongly outlying committees. However, the apparently strong evidence is due more to the authors' incorrectly executed methods than to a general tendency for committees to be outliers. In this note I review the state of the committee-outlier debate and also show that Weingast and Marshall's empirical results cannot be replicated. I accordingly provide the correct results once their statistical tests are properly executed.     

Patterns of childhood poverty: New challenges for policy

Poverty takes many forms. Using data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this article (1) distinguishes different kinds of childhood poverty, defined in terms of the spacing, severity, and duration of spells; and (2) establishes the extent and distribution of childhood poverty, employing new measures that take into account both duration and severity. Some strategies for targeting assistance on particular forms of poverty are briefly considered.     

The debate on World Dynamics: A response to Nordhaus

In a recent paper published in the Economic Journal, Professor William D. Nordhaus of Yale University reviewed World Dynamics by Jay W. Forrester. In his criticism, Nordhaus signals three serious problems and several additional questionable assumptions of sufficient importance to undermine the usefulness of Forrester's book. However, a careful examination of his analysis shows that each point made by Nordhaus rests on a misunderstanding of World Dynamics, a misuse of empirical data, or an inability to analyze properly the dynamic behavior of the model by static equilibrium methods.The three serious problems raised by Nordhaus concern the assumptions that connect industrialization to net birth rates in World Dynamics, the representation of technology and production within the world model, and the impact of prices on global resource use. The analysis presented here refutes the Nordhaus arguments and shows that World Dynamics is consistent with his references to real-world data on population, production, and capital accumulation.This paper is a response to William D. Nordhaus, World Dynamics: Measurement Without Data, published in the Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, December 1973. An earlier, unpublished, version of the Nordhaus paper, bearing the same title, was widely circulated hand-tohand within the United States, Canada, and Europe. A response to the original Nordhaus paper (System Dynamics Group Memorandum D-1736-4) was written in February 1973 and is available from Jay W. Forrester, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 02139. The present paper, a revised version of the earlier response, deals with several new or modified arguments contained in the Economic Journal article by Nordhaus.     

Good governance and multidimensional poverty: A comparative analysis of 71 countries

In 2015, the international community committed to “reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions.” According to international development agencies, good governance is crucial to achieving this. We examine the relationship between good governance and multidimensional poverty using hierarchical models and survey data for 71 countries. Our results suggest there is a direct effect of good governance on multidimensional poverty and that good governance is associated with reduced horizontal inequalities. However, we find evidence of a beneficial effect of good governance for middle‐income countries but not for low‐income countries. Thus, while our results suggest that good governance can play a role in reducing multidimensional poverty, they also suggest that governance reforms alone might not yield the desired effect for all countries.     

Regulation and poverty: an empirical examination of the relationship between the incidence of federal regulation and the occurrence of poverty across the US states

Public Choice - We estimate the impact of federal regulations on poverty rates in the 50 US states using the recently created Federal Regulation and State Enterprise (FRASE) index, which is an...     

Why does the Senate “win” in conference committee?: A stability explanation

This paper develops a bicameral stability model wherein the conference committee serves as a vehicle for mutually advantageous bicameral exchange. The goal is to maintain a single party's bicameral majority. Majority party leaders use the conference committee to attenuate the outlying positions of House standing committees that threaten the bicameral majority. Conference outcomes favor the Senate because it is more vulnerable to party turnover. Statistical results on data from the U.S. Congress, 1949 through 1991, demonstrate that when one party holds a bicameral majority, a relative increase in conference bills preserves at the margin, Senate majority-party seats at the expense of House majority-party seats.     

Trade union power in Britain: The recent debate

It is frequently claimed in the media that the trade union movement is the dominant political force in Britain. Such conclusions are based upon impressionistic and subjective judgements rather than thorough academic analysis. Fortunately, there has been a resurgence of more serious study of the trade union relationship with, and influence over, government. The aim of this article is to review this literature and it is divided into four major parts: the strategies unions use in influencing government; the growing literature on the economic role of the unions; the effect of unions on government policy making; the power of the trade unions in relation to that of capital.     

乡村经济贫困与村民自治:问题与对策

民主发展的深层原因不可能超出社会的经济结构的发展。较大面积且地域集中的乡村贫困的存在,必将对我们正在积极推行的村民自治产生制约与消极影响。主要体现在:乡村经济贫困导致村民流动的加剧及其政治权利的边缘化,将严重削弱村民自治的社会和群众基础;长期无法改观的贫困将使村民失去参与的利益动机,导致政治参与的冷漠;乡村贫困对乡镇政府经济依赖的增强,容易导致村民自治附属行政化的倾向,背离自治的宗旨。消解这些矛盾,必须实施有效的制度供给和政策救济;必须建立健全乡村贫困群体的政治利益表达和整合机制;必须坚持以人为本,与时俱进,革新民主法治观念,提高基层干部和村民的素质。     

The dynamics of poverty in the United States: A review of data,methods, and findings

This paper reviews the literature on poverty dynamics in the U.S. It surveys the most prevalent data, theories, and methods used to answer three key questions: How likely are people to enter, exit, and reenter poverty? How long do people remain in poverty? And what events are associated with entering and exiting poverty? The paper then analyzes the combined findings of the literature, discussing overarching patterns of poverty dynamics, differences among demographic groups, and how poverty probabilities, duration, and events have changed over time. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings and avenues for future research. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.