Dynamic estimation of ideal points for the US Congress

Theories of candidate positioning suggest that candidates will respond dynamically to their electoral environment. Because of the difficulty of obtaining “bridge votes”, most existing approaches for estimating the ideal points of members of Congress generate static ideal points or ideal points that move linearly over time. We propose an approach for dynamic ideal point estimation using Project Vote Smart’s National Political Awareness Test to construct bridge votes. We use our dynamic estimates to measure aggregate change, to measure individual-level change, and to study the institutional and structural factors that explain the changing positions of House candidates and members of Congress. We demonstrate that while the Republican Party has been selecting increasingly extreme candidates, Democratic incumbents have become more extreme while in office. We also find that the congruence between elected members of Congress and their constituents is mostly explained by the selection as opposed to the responsiveness of the candidate. Nonetheless, we find evidence of dynamic responsiveness of incumbents in specific circumstances. We find that competitiveness, midterm elections, and sharing the president’s party affiliation are associated with greater responsiveness. Conversely, retirement is not associated with a change in responsiveness. We find no evidence of responsiveness of challengers. Finally, we find that close elections draw challengers who are more in line with the district’s ideology.     

Public debt stabilization: the relevance of policymakers’ time horizons

Policymakers are stuck in time. Political short-termism, policy myopia, policy short-sightedness, and similar words have been coined to emphasize the present-centric policy thinking. Politics tends to produce short time horizons, and as a result, policymakers often fail to use present opportunities to mitigate future harms. Focusing on fiscal and monetary strategic interactions, given different separate decision makers, our paper aims to explore the effects of policymakers’ time horizons on debt stabilization. To formalize our ideas, we use the novel concept of Nonlinear-model-predictive-control Feedback Nash Equilibrium (NFNE) and find that present-centric policy thinking and decision horizons matters under several dimensions.     

Introduction to welfare economics

We show that a transfer received by a minority of the population may be sustained by majority voting, however small the minority targeted may be, when the attribution of the transfer is seen as stochastic by voters. We build a simple model wherein voters differ in income and vote over a proportional tax whose proceeds are distributed lump-sum, and each voter has a probability of receiving the transfer that depends on his income. In progressive steps, we present intuitively appealing sufficient conditions on this probability function for the social program to be supported by majority voting. We also develop intuitive conditions for the emergence of the “paradox of redistribution”, whereby more focused targeting reduces the size of the transfer program chosen by the majority. We finally apply our framework to the French social housing program and obtain that our model is consistent with a majority of French voters supporting a positive size for that program.     

Adolescent Daughters’ Romantic Competence: The Role of Divorce,Quality of Parenting,and Maternal Romantic History

This study examined the links between parental divorce, quality of maternal parenting, spousal relationships and middle adolescent romantic competence in 80 mother-adolescent daughter pairs (40 divorced). Mothers were asked to describe their attitudes and behaviors with regard to their daughters’ romantic behavior. In addition, mothers were interviewed about their own romantic experiences when they were at the age of their daughters. Adolescent girls (mean age = 16.98 years; range 16–18) were administered a comprehensive interview about romantic competence. Findings indicated that adolescent girls from divorced families showed lower levels of romantic competence, which were expressed in their behavior, attitudes toward relationships and skill in handling those relationships. Divorce was found to have had an adverse effect on girls’ romantic competence, whereas continued adaptive parenting and spousal relationships alleviated the effect of divorce. Mothers’ coherent representation of their own adolescent romantic experiences also alleviated the effect of divorce on daughters’ romantic behavior. Results show the important role of family relationships in fostering romantic competence among adolescent girls.     

Family Cohesion and Romantic and Sexual Initiation: A Three Wave Longitudinal Study

Although the relation between family relationships and the timing of sexual debut has been the focus of many studies, research on mediating factors is scarce. This study examines whether low levels of family cohesion result in an earlier onset of romantic and sexual experiences, and whether the link between family cohesion and an early sexual debut is mediated by early romantic initiation. A longitudinal sample of 314 adolescent girls and 222 boys, aged 12–17 at Wave 1, completed questionnaires at three measurement points with three year intervals. The results showed that sexual debut followed romantic initiation for 77% of the participants. For early adolescent females (aged 12–14), high levels of family cohesion resulted in a later sexual debut and this association was fully mediated by a delay of romantic initiation. Among boys and older girls, timing of romantic initiation did not mediate the link between family cohesion and timing of sexual initiation. Early adolescent girls who have negative relationships with their parents turn to romantic relationships for intimacy and support, which subsequently provide the opportunity for an early sexual debut. Low levels of family cohesion thus primarily precipitate romantic initiation and sexual initiation appears to be secondary to this process among girls in this age group.