Social choice and economic growth

Optimal economic growth deals with the problem of how societies make tradeoffs between current and future consumption, or equivalently, how societies make decisions about investment rates. Until now, theorists have simply assumed that there is some societal utility function which planners can maximize. Social choice theorists have thrown doubt upon the concept of a societal utility function. We treat optimal economic growth as a problem in social choice theory. Assume that citizens have preferences over the various growth plans. Under what conditions will a majority rule equilibrium exist? We show that such an equilibrium can exist for a Ramsey type problem. We then briefly consider social choice in the so-called “labor surplus” economy.     

Consistency in policy thinking

This study examines consistency in opinion on a variety of important state and national policy questions. The data come from a two-wave panel study of adult Floridians conducted in 1981 and 1982. Wide variations in consistency of opinion over the 1-year period are found. Salience has an important impact on consistency, with respondents who find an issue salient almost always exhibiting more consistent opinions, but salience cannot explain the variations in consistency across issues. The level of government on which the issue is focused (national or state) has no bearing on consistency. Most important, the particular nature of the issue itself, especially how central it is to the individual and how long it has occupied the political agenda (maturity), affects consistency of opinion. Centrality and maturity both contribute to issue attitude consistency and even can compensate for one another. Both highly central new issues and remote old issues can produce consistent attitudes, but deficiences in centrality seem to override issue maturity. These findings illustrate the value of looking beyond opinion distributions to the meaning of the survey response. With information on consistency and its sources, the public opinion analyst can interpret polling results intelligently, and the study of public opinion can become more objective and scientific.