Mired in a Quagmire: Popular Interpretations of the Vietnam War

For the war in Vietnam, real perspective can only come when we extricate ourselves from the historical quagmire and start evaluating the conflict as more than just a mistake that deserves our condemnation.     

Public Administration Research from a Practitioner Perspective

Recent research has questioned both the rigor and theoretical development of public administration research. The proposed solutions have generally endorsed a more academically oriented research agenda. Authors have discussed practitioner needs, but the focus has been on the appropriateness of different research methods rather than the types of knowledge needed. We seek to contribute to this ongoing debate by comparing the knowledge needs identified by members of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) with 15 years of research in Public Administration Review . We found much published research matching the needs of ICMA members, but it focused on a relatively narrow range of topics. We recommend incorporating a concern for relevance into efforts to improve public administration research. This will help to ensure that we build a knowledge base that makes a substantial contribution to practice.     

Vertical equity consequences of very high cigarette tax increases: If the poor are the ones smoking,how could cigarette tax increases be progressive?

Cigarette smoking is concentrated among low‐income groups. Consequently, cigarette taxes are considered regressive. However, if poorer individuals are much more price sensitive than richer individuals, then tax increases would reduce smoking much more among the poor and their cigarette tax expenditures as a share of income would rise by much less than for the rich. Warner (2000) said this phenomenon would make cigarette tax increases progressive. We test this empirically. Among low‐, middle‐, and high‐income groups, we estimate total price elasticities of _0.37, _0.35, and _0.20, respectively. We find that cigarette tax increases are not close to progressive, using both tax expenditure‐based and traditional welfare measures. This finding is robust to cross‐border purchasing, generic cigarettes, and substantial external effects. However, we find that taxes can be progressive under some behavioral economic models (Gruber & Koszegi, 2004) but that these may only apply to a small share of smokers. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Subsidies for New Technologies and Knowledge Spillovers from Learning by Doing

This study empirically examines a prominent justification for public subsidies of emerging technologies: that stimulating demand for them provides opportunities for learning by doing. Even if firms learn from their experience, subsidies are still second best to pricing negative externalities if firms can appropriate the benefits of learning. I construct a panel of electricity output from wind power projects, for a case involving $1 billion in public funds, to assess whether firms’ performance benefited from the experience of other firms. I find evidence of learning by doing and knowledge spillovers. However, knowledge gained from experience shows both diminishing returns and depreciating effectiveness.     

Confirmation Politics and The Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court: Institutional Loyalty, Positivity Bias, and the Alito Nomination

Gibson, Caldeira, and Spence (2003a, 2003b, 2005) expound the theory of positivity bias in their analysis of the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court in the aftermath of Bush v. Gore. This theory asserts that preexisting institutional loyalty shapes perceptions of and judgments about court decisions and events. In this article, we use the theory of positivity bias to investigate the preferences of Americans regarding the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. More specifically, from the theory of positivity bias, we derive the hypothesis that preferences on the Alito confirmation are shaped by anterior commitments to the Supreme Court. Based on an analysis of a national panel survey, we find that those who have a high level of loyalty toward the Supreme Court rely much more heavily on what we term judiciousness—in contrast to ideology, policy, and partisanship—in forming their opinions on whether to confirm Alito. Thus, institutional loyalty provides a decisive frame through which Americans view the activity of their Supreme Court.