The impact of surplus sharing on the portfolio mix of public sector defined benefit pension plans: a public choice approach

The riskiness of state employee pension plan portfolios varies across states. We investigate whether this variation is related to how public employees and taxpayers share actuarial surpluses of pension accounts. We focus on two determinants of a plan’s asset mix: the relative influence of public employees to taxpayers; and whether a surplus-sharing contract is specified. Our theoretical model demonstrates that the effect of public employee influence on the asset mix is ambiguous. Our empirical results corroborate this complex theoretical result. In our theoretical and empirical analyses, if a surplus sharing rule is specified, plans adopt a more aggressive investment allocation.     

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Individual campaign contributions and candidate ideology

Individual citizens are the largest source of contributions for congressional candidates in the United States. This paper investigates if and how fundraising from this source is related to the ideological positions of candidates. Specifically, we ask whether the amount of contributions depends on: (1) the extremity of candidate ideology; and (2) the level of candidate divergence in the same race. These results have important implications for candidate positioning strategies, as well as for evaluating the effects of recent campaign finance reforms.     

Does economic freedom cause prosperity? An IV approach

A positive, statistical and economic significant relation between growth, income level and the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index has been amply documented. Most analyses, however, use OLS methods which, in the presence of endogenous variables do not establish causality and produce biased and inconsistent estimates. This paper uncovers the exogenous component of EFW using IV methods and finds a robust channel from economic freedom to prosperity. The findings, including instrument validity tests, support the importance of policies and institutions for development and warrants policy advice aimed at increasing economic freedom to foster prosperity.     

Examining the Logic Behind the Self‐Help,Self‐Taxing Movement: Business Improvement District Formation

An institution that has shown great promise in addressing the revitalization of declining central cities is Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). These private governments provide supplemental municipal services such as sanitation, security, and marketing to independent businesses in underserved commercial areas. By 1999, 44 U.S. states had legislation that enables and dictates the formation process and structure of BIDs. The surprising element of this legislation is the wide variation in approval needed to form a BID over a proposed geographical area. Some states require as little as 20 percent approval of proposed members and others as much as 75 percent approval to allow formation of a BID. This variation in state statutes likely influences the use of BIDs. Results highlight that relatively easier state enabled collective action positively impacts the creation of BIDs, the limited effects of tax expenditure limitations on the formation of BIDs and the positive impacts that new development has on the number of BIDs per state.     

Bad for Men,Better for Women: The Impact of Stereotypes During Negative Campaigns

In this paper, we examine whether the impact of negative advertising on citizens’ evaluations of candidates depends on the gender of the candidates. Given common gender stereotypes, we expect negative campaigning aimed at women candidates will affect citizens differently than negative campaigning against male candidates. The results of our study, derived from a survey experiment conducted on a nationwide sample of more than 700 citizens, demonstrate that negative commercials are less effective at depressing evaluations of woman candidates, compared to male candidates. The findings are consistent and strong, across a range of forces that people use to assess competing candidates (i.e., affect and trait evaluations, people’s beliefs about issues, anticipated vote choice). The tight control of the experimental design, including randomization of respondents into different conditions that vary in only one way, demonstrates that the gender of the candidate influences people’s reactions to different types of negative commercials.

Terrorist Threat,Leadership, and the Vote: Evidence from Three Experiments

From 9/11 in the U.S. to train, subway, and airport bombings elsewhere, individuals frequently must make political decisions in the shadow of terrorist attacks. To date, few studies have examined how times of terror threat influence voters’ decision-making processes. Using data generated from three experiments we show that, in times of terrorist threat (compared to good times), individuals weight leadership more heavily in the voting booth. Our results also shed light on how much weight is given to other determinants of the vote (issues and partisanship) across these two conditions.