The voter as juror: Attributing responsibility for economic conditions

One assumption of Key's reward-punishment theory that has attracted comparatively little attention is that voters hold the incumbent party responsible for all manner of economic fluctuations. A brief review of the survey literature in economic voting indicates that this assumption is in need of revision. The handful of existing studies in political science on responsibility attribution suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity and a failure to develop a theory of the attribution process. This paper outlines a model of economic voting in which people act as intuitive jurors using various decision rules to evaluate the evidence surrounding the president's responsibility for national economic problems. The generalizability of the framework and directions for future research are discussed     

From IDA to IIROC: Has self-regulation in the Canadian investment industry evolved?

This article analyzes the enforcement practices of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and compares them with its predecessor, the Investment Dealers Association of Canada (IDA). The study collected data from IIROC's tribunal cases decided between June 2008 and December 2019 and compared them with data on the IDA's enforcement of complaints from 1984 to 2008. The findings reveal no statistically significant difference in the fines imposed by the two regulatory bodies. Furthermore, IIROC has refrained from issuing lenient penalties such as retaking examinations/courses or mandating terms and conditions for offenders. The results also indicate no significant impact on the number or distribution of offense types committed in the industry over time. Most notably, the Ontario Securities Commission, the Canadian Securities Regulators, and the new Self-Regulatory Organization of Canada should consider these findings when formulating policies concerning the role of self-regulation in the financial markets.