From Personalism to Contractualism: A Review of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project's Latest Documentary History of Emancipation

Since 1982, the collaborative editorial project of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project has published four volume of documentary material placing African Americans as slaves, soldiers, and newly free people, at the center of the process of slave emancipation in the US South. This review of the Project's fifth volume of records, Land and Labor, 1865, critically examines its contribution to our understanding of the emergence of free labor relations in the economy of the postbellum rural South. There, three forces collided in the efforts to remake labor relations after the Civil War ended slavery in the US: the efforts of slaveholders to control property and labor; the aspirations to ‘access to land and control of their own labor’ of former slaves; and the desire of Northerners to impose their own notions of ‘free labor’ as a set of contractual relations on both. Land and Labor, 1865, demonstrates how former slaves and their actions can be placed at the center of the evolution of Reconstruction policy.     

Applying Rasch modeling to the validity of a control balance scale

Classical test theory approaches to measurement are based upon a number of fairly restrictive assumptions. The nature of these assumptions is such that scales designed to operationalize latent constructs are treated with little regard for the interaction between the human subject and the items that compose the measurement scale. A competing measurement approach, the Rasch model, has been advanced to improve upon the limitations of classical test theory. In this article, the Rasch model was applied to a scale designed to measure Tittle's control balance ratio. Analysis suggests that the original scale and response category options do not meet fundamental measurement. In particular, several items exhibited misfit (and were thus removed from the scale), response category options were reduced from eleven to four, and the scales that form the control balance ratio exhibited very little gender bias. An alternative control balance scale that retains the original items is presented, but this scale no longer summarizes the control balance ratio as one overall score. The implications of these results are addressed.     

Resource spending over time in competitions for electoral support

So far we have little by way of a theoretical understanding of the dynamics of electoral competition. This paper attempts to fill some of this gap by studying resource expenditure over the electoral cycle. Among the main results is that, when contributions from donors are independent of support, parties accelerate expenditure during the entire period between elections, even when voters do not forget. If contributions depend on support, and are significant, parties front load expenditure and decelerate.     

Some political aspects of taxation and distribution in federal governments: An application of the theory of the core

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to study questions about taxation and revenue sharing n federal systems. It is particularly concerned with the effect of the heterogeneity of regions on the pattern of taxation and distribution and on the capacity of the central government to retain revenue for its own purposes. It is argued that one useful way to study such questions is to treat federations as coalitions that try to maximise their returns from taxations schemes. This approach is developed using the theory of the core from cooperative game theory. Emphasis is placed on the political constraints on the capacity of the central government.     

The Impact of Information Disclosure on Consumer Behavior: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment of Calorie Labels on Restaurant Menus

In 2018, the U.S. adopted a nationwide law requiring that chain restaurants post calorie counts on their menus and menu boards. This has led to considerable interest in the extent to which providing calorie information leads consumers to choose healthier diets. To estimate the impact of calorie labeling, we conducted a randomized controlled field experiment in two full-service restaurants, in which the control group received menus without calorie counts and the treatment group received the same menus but with calorie counts. We estimate that the calorie labels resulted in a 3.0 percent reduction in calories ordered, with the reduction occurring in appetizers and entrées but not drinks or desserts. Exposure to the information also increased consumers’ support for requiring calorie labels by 9.6 percent. These results are informative about the impact of the new nationwide menu label requirement, and more generally contribute to the literature on the impact of information disclosure on consumer behavior.