“Not Imminent in My Domain!” County Leaders’ Attitudes toward Eminent Domain Decisions

Eminent domain is an urgent problem facing local government administrators and scholars throughout the United States. However, the literature is sparse regarding how local leaders make decisions on this hot‐button issue. A 2006 Government Accountability Office report noted a lack of data about local governments’ use of their eminent domain authority. A survey of county managers in North Carolina was conducted to redress this apparent knowledge gap. Although the findings are primarily generalizable only to other Dillon’s rule states, such data demonstrate that eminent domain applies more often for “narrow” (public use) purposes, such as water and sewer systems, than for “broad” (public good) purposes, such as economic development. Current and future property considerations also influence eminent domain decisions. [A] law that takes property from A, and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it. —Associate Justice Samuel Chase, majority opinion, Calder v. Bull (1798)     

Free riders, holdouts, and public use: a tale of two externalities

Free riders and holdouts are distinct market failures that potentially impede the completion of otherwise beneficial transactions. The key difference is that the free rider problem is a demand side externality that requires taxation to compel payment for a public good, while the holdout problem is a supply side externality that requires eminent domain to force the sale of land for large scale projects. This paper highlights the distinction between these two problems and uses the resulting insights to clarify the meaning of the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment takings clause.     

The Online Citizen: Is Social Media Changing Citizens’ Beliefs About Democratic Values?

Social media websites are rapidly changing the way that Americans live and communicate with one another. Social media sites encourage individuals to constantly share information about one’s self (and constantly seek information about others) that would have been private in the past. This experience can alter how an individual views the world in ways that political scientists have not been able to fully capture. In a cross-sectional survey of the American public I find a strong correlation between the use of Facebook and personal blogs and support for civil liberties. Individuals who spend more time self-publicizing on the Internet seem to value freedom of expression more, but also value the right to privacy less than individuals who use social media less often. This pattern suggests that technology may be altering American attitudes on basic democratic values and highlights the need for dynamic research designs that account for the causal effect Internet use may have on individual political development.     

The political economy of taking and just compensation

By creating an implicit right to judicial review and lowering the transaction costs a property owner must incur to challenge a taking, the just compensation restriction on eminent domain limits the tendency of political decision-makers to avoid the subjective costs their actions inflict on property owners and moves the level of taking closer to the social optimum. Its impact, however, is partially to completely erased by the risk aversion of the property owner and the fiscal illusion of the political decision-maker, unless there are additional constraints in the fiscal constitution.     

Looking for a smoking gun: Committee jurisdictions and congressional voting decisions

The nature of jurisdictional boundaries of committees in the House of Representatives has received little scholarly attention. Recently, however, LaRue and Rothenberg (1992) focused specifically on this topic and concluded that for some legislators — namely, those involved in a jurisdictional dispute — jurisdictional issues were an important influence, above and beyond policy preferences, in determining votes. I expand on their analysis in an attempt to discover whether members who are not involved in such a dispute also seek to protect jurisdictional property rights. I find that these non-involved members werenot affected by the jurisdictional considerations.     

The limits of tax and expenditure limits: TEL implementation as a principal-agent problem

Previous scholarship has shown that Tax and Expenditure Limits (TELs) often fail to constrain government growth. This paper views the implementation of TELs as a principal-agent problem. Agency theory predicts that delegation is affected by the preferences of agents and the costs of monitoring those agents. Using panel data for the US states from 1970 through 2008, I conduct an empirical test of the validity of the principal-agent model for TELs. I find that state spending limitations are only effective at cutting the growth of state and local spending under the direction of agents who have a preference for limited government. Additionally, state property tax limitations are only effective when monitoring does not require costly coordinated action. These findings contradict an alternative theory of TEL implementation that looks towards the policy’s origin. My research suggests that the arrangements of delegation determine when and under what conditions TELs effectively reduce government growth.     

Perceived Relative Deprivation and Risk: An Aspiration-Based Model of Human Trafficking Vulnerability

While human trafficking often conjures up images of victims being taken by force, in reality, a minority of today’s slave population are physically abducted. Rather, a significant share of human trafficking victims are “pushed” (e.g., trying to escape crisis conditions) or “pulled” (e.g., pursuing the prospect of economic opportunities) into situations of high risk. This study focuses on those who are “pulled” into risky scenarios, assessing when individuals make decisions that may put themselves at risk. I assume that individuals are boundedly rational, and propose an aspiration-based model of decision-making, which predicts that increased salience in relative deprivation can lead individuals to be more risk-seeking, putting themselves and their children at greater risk for exploitation. Using both an original survey experiment and nationally-representative data in Nepal, I find that consistent with the theoretical model, perceptions of relative deprivation induce more risk-seeking behavior. This result speaks to the interaction between inequality and risk tolerance, and how economic and social forces that alter perceived relative deprivation can increase vulnerability to exploitation.     

Who Benefits from Targeted Property Tax Relief? Evidence from Virginia Elections

This study examines the market impact of targeted property tax relief, which is critical for understanding who exactly benefits from a widely used local policy. Specifically, we investigate this in the context of two statewide ballot measures in Virginia that provided property tax relief or heightened expectations for future relief intended to aid disabled veterans and seniors, respectively. Using residential multiple listing service microdata from Virginia, results from a regression discontinuity analysis show that once the 2010 tax relief measures passed on Election Day, property values rose sharply in response to the sudden increase in demand for homeownership among the targeted groups. We find that senior preferred housing and properties within areas with higher proportions of seniors and veterans experienced the highest price appreciation, while areas with fewer veterans or seniors saw little impact. The findings suggest that this type of policy provides an immediate benefit to current homeowners, thereby offsetting benefits for subsequent homeowners within the targeted groups. This effect represents an unintended consequence of targeted property tax relief as a policy tool more generally, as immediate capitalization into home prices subsequently increases the cost of housing for many individuals the relief was intended to help.     

Beyond roll-off: individual-level abstention on ballot measure voting

Why do individuals who have turned out to vote abstain from voting on certain ballot measures? Previous work examines abstention at the aggregate level by observing ballot roll-off, and focuses on the readability of the ballot summary for a measure as the primary determinant of whether individuals will abstain. In contrast, I hypothesize that three individual-level factors interact with the accessibility (i.e. ease or difficulty) of a ballot measure’s issue content to influence one’s propensity to abstain. Individuals with low issue information, who are risk averse, and who attach low importance to the issue should be more likely to abstain from voting than those with high knowledge, who are risk-acceptant, and who attach high importance to the issue. Furthermore, the impact of each of these individual-level traits strengthens as the issue raised in the measure becomes increasingly complex. I find strong empirical evidence for these hypotheses using an experimental design.     

Is the government exhausting its powers? An empirical examination of eminent domain exercises in New York City pre- and post-Kelo

A controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) which did not limit the use of state's eminent domain powers, led to an unprecedented legislative reaction by almost all 50 states. Of all, New York State stands out as one of the single states not to respond with a legislative amendment. In this study, I ask whether the state's predation was greater in the years following these legal and political developments, in light of the freedom which was granted to local politicians by both the Supreme Court and the state's legislators. The article hypothesizes that contrary to common perceptions, judicial decisions impact local government actions even when no limits on the use of powers are being posed. I use rigorous statistics and scrupulously defined data to expand scholarly understanding of the aftermath of the judicial decision in Kelo. The main finding is that the decision has in fact affected political behavior, but in the opposite direction than commonly expected: politicians in New York City acted consistently with public opinion, which was hostile too Kelo, not by changing the law, but by changing their practice. Studying all known taking exercises in New York City between 1991 and 2019, the paper finds no increase in the number of development projects involving condemnations after 2005. In fact, the probability of a taking for economic development or urban renewal dropped by 90%. The use of eminent domain for such projects declined even when both state and federal courts refrain from interposing any actual limit on its use. The paper lends qualified support to an alternative assertion that takings decisions by government officials are largely shaped by planning and political needs and that officials are sensitive to revealed public preferences even when there is no constitutional or legal impediment on their exercise of power.     

Public Sector Land Banking: A Decision Model for Local Governments

Local governments frequently face land banking decisions concerning real properties that they may acquire now in open market transactions or later via their power of eminent domain. After construction of a practical local government land banking example, a theoretically correct cash flow and cost-benefit analysis is presented. Then a buy-now or buy-later decision model is developed explaining when to exercise the free American Call Option provided to governments through their power of eminent domain.     

A contest success function with a tractable noise parameter

I propose a simple contest success function which is a variant of the Tullock probability function under certain conditions. It relaxes two features of the Tullock probability function. I show that this contest success function could be used to obtain interesting results and is more tractable than Tullock's function in certain cases. In particular, researchers who are interested in examining the degree to which luck as opposed to effort affects behavior in different contest settings might find it easier to use this contest success function than the Tullock success function. Unlike the Tullock function, there always exists a pure-strategy equilibrium for all values of the parameter which captures the degree of noise. The proposed function has been used in Kolmar and Wagener (2004) with interesting results.     

The political legislation cycle

The economic theory of legislation holds that laws, even when they do not involve financial resources, redistribute property rights. Politicians supply legislation to groups with the highest political return. By the same logic, politicians should supply legislation when doing so has the highest political return. The dynamics of the supply of legislation should follow the pattern suggested by the political business cycle theory. We develop a model of government’s and voters’ behavior where a legislation cycle is the strategy to hold the government (coalition) together. Under certain assumptions, the model predicts that the approbation of laws should be concentrated at the end of the legislature and be positively related to the fragmentation of the government coalition. We test these restrictions on data about the supply of legislation by the Italian Parliament during legislatures from I to XIII (1948 to 2001). The empirical analysis provides strong support to the theory: a legislation cycle occurs when the conditioning phenomena that the model indicates are satisfied.     

The political economy of fertility

This paper studies the political economy of fertility. Specifically, I argue that fertility may be a strategic choice for ethnic groups engaged in redistributive conflict. I first present a simple conflict model where high fertility is optimal for each ethnic group if and only if the economy’s ethnic diversity is high, institutions are weak, or both. I then test the model in a cross-national dataset. Consistent with the theory, I find that economies where the product of ethnic diversity and a measure of institutional weakness is high have increased fertility rates. I conclude that fertility may depend on political factors.     

An analysis of the neighborhood impacts of a mortgage assistance program: A spatial hedonic model

Down payment or closing cost assistance is an effective program in addressing the wealth constraints of low‐and moderate‐income homebuyers. However, the spillover effect of such programs on the neighborhood is unknown. This paper estimates the impact of the City of Dallas Mortgage Assistance Program (MAP) on nearby home values using a hedonic model of home sales from 1990 to 2006. We define neighborhoods of 1,000 feet around each sale and estimate the average differences in sales prices between neighborhoods with various numbers of MAP properties before and after their appearance. We find that MAP properties tend to locate in neighborhoods with lower property values; however, unless a concentration of MAP properties forms, the infusion of MAP properties has little detrimental impact on neighboring property values. Moreover, low concentration of MAP properties has a modest positive impact on surrounding property values. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Gender-Related Political Knowledge and the Descriptive Representation of Women

Past scholarship has documented that women tend to know less about politics than men. This study finds that political knowledge of one kind—knowledge about the actual level of women's representation—is related to support for having more women in office. Individuals who underestimate the percentage of women in office are more likely than individuals who know the correct percentage to support increasing women's representation. Meanwhile, individuals who overestimate the percentage of women in office are less likely to support increasing women's representation. Ironically, women are more likely than men to overestimate the presence of women in office. I also find that gender predicts support for having more women in office, with women more supportive than men. Women would be even more supportive of electing more women to office if they were as knowledgeable as men about the extent of women's underrepresentation.     

‘What do we have to lose?’: Local economic decline,prospect theory,and support for Brexit

The Brexit referendum confronted British voters with a choice that could have profound consequences for the British economy in a context of high uncertainty. Drawing on important lessons from prospect theory, I argue that citizens who were in the domain of economic losses were more likely to take a risk and vote in favor of Brexit. On the contrary, I hold that citizens who were in the domain of economic gains tended to be more risk averse and were more likely to support ‘Remain’ in the referendum. Using data from several waves of the British Election Study 2014–2019 Internet Panel, I find strong support for these theoretical expectations. British voters who lived in declining areas were significantly more likely to think that leaving the EU would lead to improvements in the national economy. These prospective economic evaluations (captured about a month prior to the referendum) in turn are related to the ‘Leave’ vote in the Brexit referendum.     

Dilatory or anticipatory? Voting on the Journal in the House of Representatives

In this paper, I examine a simple procedure in the United States House of Representatives, approving the Journal, and its implications for legislative business. In this paper, I examine the hypothesis that such votes are more than simply pro forma motions or dilatory tactics by the minority party. Considering the 102nd–107th Congresses, I show that votes on the Journal’s approval are just as frequently requested by the majority party as by members of the minority party. Furthermore, I find that votes recorded on days on which a vote was also recorded on the House Journal were more likely to be close and more likely to be party-line votes than those recorded on other days.     

The link between separation and political party preference: selectivity or causal influence?

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the impact of separation from marital and cohabiting relationships on political party preferences. Relying on longitudinal data (1999–2017) from the Swiss Household Panel, it examines to what extent differences in party preferences between partnered and separated individuals are the result of a selection effect (with individuals who separate having different party preferences prior to their separation compared with partnered individuals) or of a causal effect (with individuals changing their party preferences following separation). The analyses show that partnered individuals are significantly more likely to support a party with Christian values (the CVP) compared with separated individuals, and indicate that this is due to a selection effect. For populist right (SVP) voting, we find a causal effect of separation. Interestingly, the event of separation increases the likelihood of supporting the populist right SVP. While separated individuals are more likely to support the social democratic party (PSS) than married individuals, we do not find a significant selection or causal effect of separation on support for the PSS. Overall, our results confirm the relevance of taking a dynamic approach distinguishing selection and causal effects and reveal that the effect of separation on voters’ party choice is modest but significant.