The greening of British politics?

The spectacular success of the British Greens in winning 15% of the vote in the 1989 elections for the European parliament contrasts starkly with their previous failures. The turnaround in their fortunes is attributable in part to increasing awareness of environmental issues, both domestic and global, but especially to changes in the state of party competition: the collapse of the Liberal and Social Democratic Alliance, the unpopularity and negative campaign of the Conservative party, and the Labour party's abandonment of unilateral nuclear disarmament, all exacerbated by low turnout in an election for a parliament few Britons knew or cared much about. It is likely, however, that in a general election more usual conditions of political competition will obtain and that, because of the disciplines of the British electroal system, the Greens' success of 1989 will not be repeated in national elections.     

Electoral control over policy-motivated candidates and their policy biases

We present an election model employing candidates with policy preferences, and show how re-election pressure induces candidates to keep their campaign promises in finitely repeated competitions. The game consists of two periods, each of which comprises an election followed by the winner’s policy implementation. Following the first election, the incumbent may signal his dishonesty by implementing a policy different from his campaign promise. If the citizens care about political honesty, this choice reduces the incumbent’s probability of re-election. An equilibrium is derived which demonstrates that even with term limits, an elected candidate’s deviation from his campaign promise is controlled by the citizens’ monitoring of his performance. Strong public response to the dishonesty of politicians thus serves as a commitment device. The author is grateful to anonymous referees and to the editor of the journal for many valuable comments and suggestions. The author also thanks Masaki Aoyagi, Motonari Kurasawa, Yukihiro Nishimura, Shigehiro Serizawa, Takashi Ui, and participants in the seminars held by the Institute of Statistical Research, Meikai University, Osaka University, University of California, Irvine, and Yokohama National University for their insightful comments.     

Measuring efficiency in the presence of head-to-head competition

We develop a new DEA model that measures organizational efficiency in the presence of head-to-head competition. Our model differs from existing DEA models that ignore competition (or any other form of interaction) among the organizations under analysis. The model assumes that organizations deploy inputs for the explicit purpose of increasing its own outputs while reducing the outputs of its competitors. We apply this model to the 2002, 2004, and 2006 political campaigns in New York State for the US. House of Representatives in which candidates spent money to increase the number of votes that they received and decrease the number of votes that their opponents received. We show that campaign inefficiency can alter the outcome of an election. Specifically, a loser would have won in six of the 57 races had he or she been efficient. We also show that incumbents are more likely to spend inefficiently than are challengers. Overall, inefficiency accounts for less than 5% of campaign funding but a loss of about 9% in votes received. We find evidence that campaign efficiency has increased since the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known widely as the McCain-Feingold Act.     

Henry George and Organized Labor:

A bstract . Henry George supported labor unions and was proud of his membership in the Printers' Union. But he did not regard them as the final solution of labor exploitation. He championed labor as one of the producing classes. His foray into politics as the candidate of organized labor's third party was characteristic; he had had much involvement in politics earlier. Although he supported labor's immediate demands, he sought mainly to use his candidacy to build a constituency for the single tax. Samuel Gompers , then head of the American Federation of Labor , at first worked for George's election but came to the belief that the unions alone should direct and control their political efforts. This view prevailed, though he and George remained good friends. But it is now a question whether Gompers' policy, at this time, serves labor's best interests.     

Long-run growth and welfare effects of public policies with distortionary taxation

In a one-sector growth model with infrastructure investment, we study the impact of fiscal policies on growth. The government collects taxes on labor income and profits. The government uses these revenues to purchase infrastructure investment, provide utility enhancing government services, and to provide transfer payments to the households. We show that the balanced growth rate is an increasing function of the percent of government revenues that goes to infrastructure. We find that the growth maximizing mix of taxes depends on the elasticity of substitution between inputs. In particular, with distortionary taxes, the growth maximizing tax rate on capital is higher the lower the elasticity of substitution between private physical capital and public capital. In addition, the growth maximizing size of the government is higher when the elasticity of substitution between public and private inputs is low. We also investigate welfare effects of other public expenditures as well. Depending on the elasticity of substitution in production, the welfare implications of different public policies can be substantial.     

CALIBRATION OF CES FUNCTIONS FOR REAL-WORLD MULTISECTORAL MODELING

We show how to calibrate CES production and utility functions when indirect taxation affecting inputs and consumption is present. These calibrated functions can then be used in computable general equilibrium models. Taxation modifies the standard calibration procedures since any taxed good has two associated prices and a choice of reference value units has to be made. We also provide an example of computer code to solve the calibration of CES utilities under two alternate normalizations.     

CES technology and business cycle fluctuations

We contribute to an emerging literature that brings the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) specification of the production function into the analysis of business cycle fluctuations. Using US data, we estimate by Bayesian-Maximum-Likelihood methods a standard medium-sized DSGE model with a CES rather than Cobb–Douglas (CD) technology. We estimate a elasticity of substitution between capital and labour well below unity at 0.15–0.18. In a marginal likelihood race CES decisively beats the CD production and this is matched by its ability to fit the data better in terms of second moments. We show that this result is mainly driven by the implied fluctuations of factor shares under the CES specification. The CES model performance is further improved when the estimation is carried out under an imperfect information assumption. Hence the main message for DSGE models is that we should dismiss once and for all the use of CD for business cycle analysis.     

Snatching capital campaign success from jaws of failure

This article details the steps of one medical center which turned an "almost" $3.1 million capital campaign into a success. Leadership provided the steps to victory for a development director who stepped into a job with the high prospects of failure. In two years, he made his goal.     

Henry George's Political Critics

A bstract .   Twelve political criticisms of George were paramount after he formed his own political party in 1887: (1) his refusal to join with other reformers to link his proposals with theirs, or to absorb theirs into his own campaign; (2) his singular focus on ground rent to the exclusion of other forms of monopoly income, such as that of the railroads, oil and mining trusts; (3) his almost unconditional support of capital, even against labor; (4) his economic individualism rejecting a strong role for government; (5) his opposition to public ownership or subsidy of basic infrastructure; (6) his refusal to acknowledge interest-bearing debt as the twin form of rentier income alongside ground rent; (7) the scant emphasis he placed on urban land and owner-occupied land; (8) his endorsement of the Democratic Party's free-trade platform; (9) his rejection of an academic platform to elaborate rent theory; (10) the narrowness of his theorizing beyond the land question; (11) the alliance of his followers with the right wing of the political spectrum; and (12) the hope that full taxation of ground rent could be achieved gradually rather than requiring a radical confrontation involving a struggle over control of government.     

Estimation of International Demand Behaviour for Use with Input-Output Based Data

The making of projections often requires an economy-wide perspective, and the estimation of consumer demands at the international level. In this paper, an implicit, directly additive demand system (AIDADS) is estimated using cross- country data on consumer expenditures from two different sources: the International Comparison Programme (ICP), and the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP). The two data sets are found to produce results that are quite consistent despite their differing origins, and the fact that the former is based on consumer goods that embody wholesale/retail margins, while margin demands are treated separately in GTAP. Given the similarity of the results, the estimation based on GTAP data is favoured for economy-wide projection purposes because it can be readily matched to input-output based production and trade data. An additional benefit of the GTAP-based estimates is that they provide direct evidence concerning how aggregate margin expenditures vary with per capita income.     

Playing the synthesizer with Canadian data: Adding polls to a structural forecasting model

Election forecasting has become a fixture of election campaigns in a number of democracies. Structural modeling, the major approach to forecasting election results, relies on ‘fundamental’ economic and political variables to predict the incumbent’s vote share usually a few months in advance. Some political scientists contend that adding vote intention polls to these models—i.e., synthesizing ‘fundamental’ variables and polling information—can lead to important accuracy gains. In this paper, we look at the efficiency of different model specifications in predicting the Canadian federal elections from 1953 to 2015. We find that vote intention polls only allow modest accuracy gains late in the campaign. With this backdrop in mind, we then use different model specifications to make ex ante forecasts of the 2019 federal election. Our findings have a number of important implications for the forecasting discipline in Canada as they address the benefits of combining polls and ‘fundamental’ variables to predict election results; the efficiency of varying lag structures; and the issue of translating votes into seats.     

Daniel Hoan and the Golden Age of Socialist Government in Milwaukee

This article examines Mayor Daniel Webster Hoan's socialist administration of Milwaukee from 1916–1940. The analysis delves into Hoan's challenges and victories—especially in the early years of his administration—and examines whether the citizens of Milwaukee actually embraced socialism. To answer that question, this article draws extensively from primary sources, including newspaper articles and archived documents, as well as several secondary sources. The evidence shows that Hoan's long tenure as mayor came in spite of, not because of, his socialism. Indeed, Hoan's popularity was due in part to his willingness to break from the Socialist Party platform when it was politically necessary. Ultimately, the people of Milwaukee embraced a popular reformer rather than the ideology he represented.     

Exploring the value of party political advertising for youth electoral engagement: an analysis of the 2001 British General Election advertising campaigns

One of the central, non‐party issues in the latter days of the 2001 British General Election campaign was encouraging the electorate to vote. With turnout at British elections in decline, particularly among young people, British democracy appears to be facing a crisis. This disengagement offered both opportunities and challenges for the election advertising campaigns, however, the campaigns employed have been accused of failing to engage a disinterested young electorate. The aim of this paper is to explore youth attitudes to electoral advertising and to explore its value for public servants tasked with increasing voter engagement and turnout among young people for future British general elections. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Election outcomes and economic conditions: An application of a logit model

In this paper the author examines the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the probability of the incumbent party winning a gubernatorial election. Using a sample of 265 gubernatorial elections held during the 1970–1988 period, the findings of this study indicate that the incumbent party’s probability of victory is not significantly affected by either state or national macroeconomic conditions. The author also finds that neither the unemployment rate nor per capita income growth affect the incumbent party’s probability of winning an election.     

The revealed preferences of a local government: Black/white disparities in scholastic achievement

Many studies of the educational sector implicitly assume schools attempt only to maximize student cognitive achievement subject to a budget constraint. The validity of this assumption is tested in this paper. In specific, the preferences of a representative bureaucrat in an urban school system are estimated. The results indicate he does not simply maximize achievement. The representative bureaucrat also has preferences with respect to the distribution of inputs and outputs between black and white children.     

Legacy fundraising: a practical guide to the basics

• Remember a Charity, the public awareness campaign run by over 130 charities in the UK, has stated that donations in wills are the largest single source of voluntary income for charities—currently worth £1.3 billion per year (April 2005).
• So can legacies to charity still be described as just windfall money? Should charities spend precious funds on promoting legacy giving when it is difficult to monitor results? It so, what is the message? Who are the target audiences? What form should legacy promotional literature take? What part could or should solicitors and funeral directors play in legacy campaigns? Patrick Wise looks back on his twenty plus years of experience in the world of charitable legacies, and gives his views on the answers to these questions, and why he thinks all charities should take legacy promotion very seriously.

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regional dimensions of factor and fuel substitution in U.S. manufacturing

This paper analyzes the regional responses to price increases in U.S. manufacturing in the form of fuel and factor substitution. A translog specification of a production process with eight inputs organized into a two stage optimization process — optimizing the mix of four fuels that constitute the energy input and then optimizing the input mix of physical capital, working capital, labor and aggregate energy — is used. Sectoral and regional variations in factor and fuel substitutions as evident from econometric estimation of the model at the level of 50 states and four census regions are discussed and interpreted.     

Political parties' use of web based marketing: some preliminary findings relating to first‐time voters in the 2005 general election

• This paper examines the marketing of political parties, via websites, in the 2005 UK general election with specific reference to first‐time voters (age 18–24). Common perception views young voters as predominantly politically apathetic and less likely to vote than older generations. However, research literature suggests given the right message and medium, the group will engage in the political process. Could the Internet provide a path to engaging younger voters and will websites become a key marketing vehicle for political parties?
• Young voters were asked to review political party websites using an extended web assessment method (EWAM), which is an evaluation tool created to determine both the importance and presence of website evaluation criteria. Preliminary research suggests that respondents felt the Internet had a significant role to play in the election process and marketing of campaign messages. However, while political parties scored well in relation to the technical/software aspects of website design, participants felt website material had little appeal and were ineffective in influencing voter intent.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Aggregating qualitative district-level campaign assessments to forecast election results: Evidence from Japan

The poll aggregation is conducted in the USA and European democracies for electoral forecasting. However, this has not been the case in Japan because the news media report on electoral campaigns with qualitative assessments rather than poll numbers, although these assessments are based on extensive polling. Our study developed an approach to aggregate qualitative district-level election campaign coverage in Japan, applied the method to forecast the outcomes of the 2017 general election for Japan’s Lower House of the National Diet, and assessed the accuracy of the forecast against the actual results. We integrated the qualitative assessments by using the item response theory, which effectively predicted the electoral results. The method proposed in this paper can be applied to aggregate qualitative assessments by experts in other countries, such as the Cook Political Report in the USA. This would improve the accuracy of election forecasting when combined with existing approaches.     

What is the role of perceived leadership capacity in presidential politics?

The relevance of leadership models in presidential leadership, and principally the role of perceived leadership in presidential election years, is an area of study with limited development but increasing importance. This study explores the relationship between young voters' leadership assessment of presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, and their reports of voting behavior during the 2008 presidential election. Leadership perceptions were collected from 812 respondents prior to the election. Results indicate that candidate leadership assessments have a significant effect on candidate preference after controlling for the impact of party identification and self‐perceived political efficacy. Further, political efficacy significantly impacted respondents' intent to vote in the election after controlling for these same variables. Party affiliation produced significant differences across the political ideology, leadership ratings, political efficacy, and likelihood of voting variables. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications as they pertain to political leadership.