Education and mass belief systems: An extension and some new questions

Using the SRC/CPS's national election surveys from 1956 to 1976, this paper investigates the effect of education on consistency among the public's domestic policy opinions. Evidence from both gamma correlations and factor analysis indicates that education has neither a strong nor a linear effect on issue constraint over the 20 years covered by the data, for the lowest and the highest education strata consistently show the highest levels of constraint. We do not conclude, however, that education is unrelated to recognition of ideological concepts, for almost one-half of the lowest education stratum do not use liberal and conservative terms. We conclude that issue constraint does not directly translate into ideology and suggest some new directions that future research should take if we are to evaluate effectively the effect of education on opinion structuring.A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 1978 Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.     

Efficient allocation and unanimous consent with incomplete demand disclosures?

The following hypothesis about behavior in collective economic decisions is proposed. Individuals disclose latent demands accurately provided that doing so results in no appreciable loss of opportunity for material gain. On the foundation of this behavioral hypothesis, the following procedure is suggested. A collective good intermediary (CGI) solicits reports about latent demand schedules from a sample whose replies will not appreciably affect their own cost-shares. The CGI uses their reports to estimate the statically efficient program size and tax-shares adequate to finance it. The CGI then presents a proposal to the entire pertinent population on a this-or-nothing basis. If approved nearly uanimously, the proposal is adopted. It is concluded that if a program is worth adopting, i.e., generates a positive, aggregate net benefit, complete disclosure by all will not be needed to finance it. Most participants may, therefore, not need to estimate, even for themselves, their maximum personal benefit. The task of setting cost-shares to attain nearly unanimous consent will be easier the greater the aggregate gain from the efficient choice.