Does additional campaign spending really hurt incumbents?: The theoretical importance of past investments in political brand name

The existing literature ignores the fact that the marginal return to current campaign expenditures depends on the candidate's stock of brand name. This simple observation is then used to provide a possible explanation for the negative empirical relationship observed between an incumbent's campaign spending and how well he does.     

Needed: A smaller and very different U.S. military

Conclusion How should the Pentagon decide those missions that it will retain in house? Those missions for which it should seek strategic alliances? Those new missions that it will actively seek to develop a competency in? Or those missions that require service competition because they are viewed as critical? Or those missions that have acquired redundancy due to service poaching, and thus can prudently be the target of reductions?The answers to these questions very much depend on the leadership's developing a view of the long-term future that is very different from the past. For example, will the United States be in the business of maintaining stability in troubled Third World regions? If so, what kind of capabilities, what kind of missions, does it see as necessary to conduct effective operations in these conflicts? What can the U.S. military count on from its strategic partnerships with other nations? What competing roles will the U.S. military be asked to play? What resources are available?These are fundamental, first-order questions. But they must all be answered - a credible vision of the business must be established - before restructuring can proceed in a productive manner. This does not imply a definitive prediction of the future; rather, it involves recognizing that the United States is in a period of relatively low danger, high uncertainty and dynamic change. For that reason the defense establishment should restructure to be more flexible, innovative and adaptive. A primary goal should be to exploit rapidly advancing technologies, while meeting (or preferably forestalling) the greatest and most likely challenges to national security. In summary, developing a credible vision of the future security environment, and acting upon it, is essential if the U.S. defense establishment is to avoid the pitfalls of the interwar French military and the IBM of the 1980s, dominant organizations that restructured to be more efficient in a competitive environment that was rapidly passing into history.     

Fiscal Federalism in 1986: The spotlight Continues To Swing Toward the States and Local Governments

The year in Washington saw the president and the Congress atloggerheads on the budget but in agreement on important taxlegislation. A prominent casualty of the battle to slash thefederal deficit was Revenue Sharing. "Sequestration" and therhetoric of austerity that doomed Revenue Sharing notwithstanding,total federal grants (adjusted for inflation and populationgrowth) rose in 1986 for the second year in a row, continuinga recovery from the six-year decline that had begun in 1979.The net effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 will vary substantiallyamong the states, but the federal legislation guarantees thattax reform will be a central issue in many state legislaturesin 1987. Federal mandates continued to be promulgated in 1986with little regard for the costs to states and localities. Anotable exception was the outcome of the struggle over fundingfor grants for the treatment facilities needed to comply withthe standards prescribed by the Clean Water Act of 1972: muchmore generous funding than was sought by the president.     

A guide for the analysis of policy arguments

Based on what appears to be required for fully supporting a proposal for policy action, a series of interrelated propositional types is suggested as a tool for the design and critique of policy arguments. The kinds of criticisms to which different prepositional types are susceptible and the impacts of these on a policy argument are explored as are the uses persons in different roles might make of these criticisms. Finally, as an example, the typology is applied to a portion of the President's 1973 State of the Union Address.A draft of this paper was prepared while the author was Research Fellow in the Educational Policy Research Center at Syracuse. Suggestions on earlier drafts by Paul P. Van Riper, Warren A. Dixon, and Gerald C. Swanson at Texas A&M University are acknowledged with appreciation.     

Economists and public policy: Chicago political economy versus conventional views

Both conventional welfare economics and public choice analysis suggest that economists have an important educational role to play in the public policy process — in improving the decision-making process. In sharp contrast, information and incentive problems related to voting rules, the bureaucracy, and the legislature do not arise in CPE because these processes are all perfect agents of interest groups. Consequently, the political process is efficient and there is no scope for beneficial economic analysis as it relates to the sugar program or other public policies. That is, the polity is efficient or it would be reordered by competing interest groups to make it so. But, as Mitchell (1989: 290) stresses, the important unanswered question in CPE remains: if there is no scope for improvement how and why does change occur?The analysis here suggests that the sugar program (and similar policies) may persist not because they are beneficial to the public at large but rather because information and incentive problems in the collective choice process lead to perverse results. Consequently, economic analysts can make a positive contribution to the public policy process by providing information about the responsiveness of alternative institutional arrangements to the values and choices of individual citizens (Wiseman, 1989). The Friedmans' Tide in the Affairs of Men view holds that economic analyses are important in changing public opinion, which is an important precursor to changes in public policy.     

Statistical tests of discrimination in punishment

A method, adopted from the labor econometrics literature, is proposed for detecting discrimination in punishment. The method requires the separate estimation of time served and punishment probability equations for, say, whites and blacks. The coefficients from the white equation are used to predict the punishment blacks would receive if treated like whites. A test of no discrimination against blacks is a test that the black punishment predicted by the black equation is equal to the punishment predicted by the equation using the white coefficients but the black endowments or characteristics. A further test is proposed that evaluates the economic efficiency of disparities in punishment. The test is restricted to measuring the recidivism effect of equality of treatment in punishment. The discrimination test and the efficiency test are illustrated using the U.S. Board of Parole data for 1972. Statistically significant racial disparities in punishment are uncovered and are found to be economically inefficient.     

Incorporating skill development into the MPA curriculum

This article recommends that MPA Programs not already doing so consider two ideas. First, explicitly include skill development as an important program objective. Second, use the strategy of incorporating skill development and reinforcement into existing courses rather than adding new courses. A process for identifying skills and deciding where to locate them in the curriculum is presented. A list often generic skills is suggested along with a discussion of how they might fit within an MPA core curriculum.