Voting on devolution in a federal country with a bicameral national system

We analyse voting on the devolution of the responsibilities for the provision of public goods to local governments in a federal country, with a bicameral national legislature. In our set-up, devolution means a constitutional fiscal reform which reduces federal public expenditure on a local public good, and simultaneously increases the transfers received by regions, via a tax-sharing mechanism. This allows the regions to provide a greater amount of a local public good which can compensate for the reduction of that provided upon a federal basis. We show under which conditions such a devolution reform is adopted or rejected.     

Opting-Out: the Constitutional Economics of Exit

The central aspect, which makes markets operate differently than governments, is the ability of market actors to "exit" from future interactions. This point is applied to constitutional analysis, with an emphasis on the constitutional possibility of individuals or groups in a society "exiting," wholly or partly, from the political community or from specific institutions within such. Hobbesian and Lockean states-of-nature are sketched using a common framework of some simple games, and the Lockean solution to the danger of tyranny is formalized. This solution is compared to the typical interaction in a market economy, where the possibility of "exit" from future interactions with disagreeable parties introduces severe restrictions on the possible exploitation. This analysis is extended to the political sphere, and it is argued in general terms that a constitutional set-up utilizing a semi-Lockean right to "exit" (e.g., federal structures with rights of secession, voucher systems, etc.) could be an efficient guarantee against sub-optimal solutions and function so as to reduce redistributive conflicts and make welfare-increasing transactions possible.     

Drug testing and the law

This article examines judicial and administrative rulings and legislation involving or related to the issue of drug testing in the workplace. It discusses the rights of employees in the public and private sector: constitutional rights; federal, state, and local statutory rights; rights of unionized employees; and common law rights. It analyzes both the current state of the law and future directions the law may take, as courts and administrative agencies decide more cases and governmental bodies continue to pass drug testing legislation.     

LESSONS FOR TEMPERATURE LIMITS FROM THE US DEBT CEILING DEBATES

There are similarities between the approaches being discussed to deal with climate change at the international level and the US constitutional debt limits. The problems that have been found in administering the latter bode ill for the former.     

A PATCHWORK SAFETY NET: A SURVEY OF CLIOMETRIC STUDIES OF INCOME MAINTENANCE PROGRAMS IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract Social welfare programs in the USA are designed to serve as safety nets for people in hard times, in contrast with the universal approach found in many other developed western nations. In a survey of cliometric studies of social welfare programs in the USA, we examine the variation in the safety net in the USA across states in the 20th century, the determinants of the variation and its impact on socioeconomic outcomes. The USA has always displayed substantial variation in the extent of the safety net because the features of most public social welfare programs have been and currently are determined by local and state governments, even after the federal government became involved in the 1930s. Differences across states persist strongly for typically a decade, although the persistence weakens with time, and there are some periods when federal intervention led to a re‐ordering. The rankings of state benefits differ from program to program, and economic and political factors have different weights in determining benefit levels in panel data estimation of their effects. Variation in benefits across programs during the early 1900s had significant impact on labour markets, economic activity, family formation, death rates and crime.     

For the times they are a-changin'

Today, as we deal with managed care, vertical integration, mergers, new technologies, diagnosis related groups, stockless or just-in-time distribution, capitated contracts, consignment, health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations, total quality management/continuous quality improvement, reengineering, federal regulations, care mapping, patient focused care, and so forth, it is obvious that the only thing that is constant is change. "For the times they are a changin."     

Sentencing Illicit Drug Traffickers: How do the Courts Handle Random Sampling Issues?

While many European justice systems distinguish between possession of and trafficking in illicit drugs, sentencing in drug cases in those countries tends not to depend (at least formally) upon the quantity of drugs seized from a defendant, but rather on the circumstances in which the defendant was found with drugs. Courts in the United States, on the other hand, penalize those convicted of drug crimes through an elaborate system of sentencing rules and guidelines. These sentences depend only upon the amount of drugs (possibly adjusted for circumstances) and the defendant's criminal history. Because of the enormous amount of work needed to determine drug type and quantity in each case, sampling the evidence and estimates of drug quantity have been accepted in most courts in the United States. During the last two years, several major developments in U.S. federal sentencing have taken place. It all started in June 2000 with the Supreme Court case Apprendi v. New Jersey , in which Justice O'Connor, in dissent, termed a "watershed in constitutional law". Prior to Apprendi , a judge would sentence a convicted drug trafficker to imprisonment using the preponderance standard of proof on the quantities of drugs seized. The affect of Apprendi is to make more juries decide the quantity of drugs by the reasonable doubt standard. Although Apprendi had nothing to do with illicit drugs, the implication now is that all federal sentencing protocols are under revision. Since Apprendi was decided, huge numbers of cases involving convicted drug traffickers have relied upon its reasoning on appeal, with the result that a ruling from the Supreme Court on further clarification of this issue is expected. This article discusses the impact so far of Apprendi on statistical issues involved in estimating total drug quantity and considers possible future directions under the changing protocols.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF OVERLAPPING JURISDICTIONS AND THE FRENCH/DUTCH REJECTION OF THE EU CONSTITUTION

In seeking to protect their failed social model by rejecting the EU constitution, French and Dutch voters ironically contributed to promoting the very 'liberal' order they misunderstand and despise. When, as in federalist politics, functions overlap, two levels of government compete for the same votes in the same territory in the supply of similar services. Not unlike the tragedy of the commons in oil extraction, it is in the interest of both political authorities to seek to gain votes in implementing the programme first. The overall equilibrium supply of public services is excessive and both levels of government have a tendency to invade every field. Short of effective constitutional limits on the powers of the central government, a more decentralised EU offers an opportunity to overcome the common-pool problem of multi-level government.     

The effects of government initiatives on the professionalization of occupations

Over the past 15 years a series of federal initiatives and laws have changed the nature of the way that the federal government conducts business. One impact of these changes has been a concentration on the professionalization of certain occupations within the federal government, monitored by the federal government, or supported by the federal government. A review of these laws and the literature on professionalization of occupations is provided. Then examples of federal influence on the professionalization of three fields are provided: library paraprofessionals, victim services providers, and contract specialists. Finally, the implications of the federal government influence on professionalization for human resource management are discussed.     

Political Leadership,Conflict and the Prospects for Constitutional Peace

The emphasis in constitutional political economy has been that new rules and institutions can be devised that improve the welfare of a society. Given the number of societies that are infected with political conflict and as a result lower levels of welfare, this paper attempts to analyse why we do not see more constitutional conventions aimed at eliminating conflict. The key idea is that expressively motivated group members may create incentives for instrumentally motivated group leaders such that it leads them to choose conflict rather than compromise. Nonetheless, it is not argued that such a peace is impossible to obtain. This leads to a further question, that if such a constitutional agreement could be found, would the expressive perspective alter the conventional instrumental perspective on the sort of constitutional reform that should be undertaken?     

REGIONAL INTEGRATION AND POVERTY: A REVIEW OF THE TRANSMISSION CHANNELS AND THE EVIDENCE

While there is an extensive literature on the impact of regional trading agreements on trade and capital flows, as well as on the relationship between international trade, growth, and poverty there is comparatively little treatment of the possible linkages between regional integration and poverty. We analyze the channels through which regional integration could impact on poverty, and then review the existing evidence on the impact of regional integration on poverty. We focus on two key characteristics that make any regional integration process different from unilateral and multilateral liberalization: first, the asymmetric nature of the liberalization process; second, the scope or ambition of the regional liberalization being undertaken and the nature of the institutional arrangements that are put into place to manage the process of regional integration. We also distinguish between short, medium, and long run effects on poverty of regional integration processes. There is some direct evidence explicitly linking regional integration and poverty, but in good part the shedding of the light depends on an indirect literature on trade, FDI, migration, and inequality.     

SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE RELATED TO THE CASE OF THE SUPERORDINATE INTEGRATOR

This empirical study seeks to characterize processes of integration in complex organizations. The need for integration is examined initially in terms of the ideas of Weber, Pugh et al., Child, Lawrence and Lorch, and Pettigrew. Subsequently integration is related to a system's view of the problem of organizational control that underlines how the environment tends to both ‘fractionalize’ and ‘factionalize’ an organizational decision-making system. The integrative task is then represented in terms of processes that seek to effect stable combinations of interrelationships between differntiated sub-units. The evidence is presented in the form of a series of cases and incidents obtained during a one-year participant observation study in a large multi-national company. The research aims to identify ‘contingency’ guidelines in the design of integrative mechanisms by exploring differences in: the characteristics of integrative sub-systems, the organizational environments in which they operated and the kinds of (intergroup) decision conflicts in which they were engaged. This exploratory study suggests that important conditions include: the identification of the integrative unit members, how ‘ill-structured’ the decision problems encountered are and the degree of support for integrators that is perceived to be provided by senior management.     

POLICIES IN THE UNITED STATES TO PROVIDE HOUSING ASSISTANCE TO LOW‐INCOME HOUSEHOLDS1

From the 1930s onwards America's housing assistance policies have largely been shaped by the federal government's response to catastrophe, whether of an external nature (the Great Depression, the urban riots of the 1960s) or an internal nature (mismanagement, excessive costs). Consequently, today's collection of federal housing policies resemble more the results of an archaeological dig through 70 years of activity than a coherent approach to a longstanding problem. Nonetheless, one key theme that emerges is the shift from wholly government solutions to a hybrid public–private partnership approach in the early 1970s.     

Judicial checks on corruption in the United States

Judicial oversight provides an important check on executive and legislative power. Two components of judicial oversight have been identified in the literature: judicial independence and constitutional review. Recent research using country-level data indicates that the effectiveness of constitutional review is largely determined by the rigidity of the constitution. In this paper, I use state-level data to test whether judicial independence and constitutional rigidity are related to a specific type of abuse of power by government officials: corruption in office. Specifically, I fit negative binomial regressions in which the dependent variable is the number of officials convicted for corrupt acts and the independent variables are (i) measures of judicial independence, such as judges’ remuneration, method of appointment, and term length, along with various controls or (ii) measures of constitutional rigidity, such as legislative majorities required to propose constitutional amendments and provisions for constitutional conventions or constitutional initiatives, along with various controls. I find that, in general, states with higher levels of judicial independence and more rigid constitutions have lower levels of corruption per capita than states with the opposite characteristics.     

The Effects of local Fair Housing Ordinances on Housing Segregation: Their Impact Is Small, But It's an Important Positive Change Toward Integration

Abstract . State and local fair housing ordinances, patterned after federal legislation, are promoted by federal policy. This study investigates whether these local laws have had any effect on levels of residential segregation between Whites and Blacks, 1970-1980, by comparing changes in segregation for 111 cities characterized by different types of fair housing coverage. Results show average declines of 9 points in the index of dissimilarity, with cities covered by both state and local laws declining slightly more than cities with no fair housing coverage. Declines are not greater in cities with laws that are “substantially equivalent” to Title VIII vs. cities with non-equivalent laws. When changes in segregation were examined by a variety of population, economic and housing variables that may affect segregation change, it was found that local ordinances continue to have a small, but statistically significant effect. This effect varies according to the pattern of segregation change under study; deconcentration of ghetto areas and integration of White areas are not affected by type of local fair housing coverage.     

Money and its Economic and Social Functions: Simmel and European Monetary Integration

A bstract This essay tries to put Georg Simmels The Philosophy of Money into the context of current monetary discussions in economics. Part I looks at the contribution of Georg Simmel in context and offers remarks about the changing structure of economics as a discipline composed of many different subdisciplines. It is argued that Simmel is able to transcend subdisciplinary borders, to great benefit for today's scholar. Part III explains Heinsohn and Steiger's recent contribution to monetary economics in terms of transactions and property rights; although the contribution has been made more in the context of post-Keynesian economics, this is the only way to comprehend and integrate it into the mainstream of scholarly discourse. This examination shows that Simmels approach, transgressing interdisciplinary borders, has merits even today. Part IV looks at the perplexing phenomenon of European monetary integration with a similar interdisciplinary perspective in mind. In this case, it is not monetary economics but constitutional political economy which is the unifying concept to explain the peculiar features of European monetary integration.     

Forecasting the daily federal funds rate

This paper compares two alternative one-day-ahead forecasts of tomorrow's federal funds rate. The first forecast is a simple random walk forecast in which the forecast of tomorrow's federal funds rate is taken to be today's federal funds rate. The second forecast is an ARIMA model forecast that was allowed to vary with changes in the Federal Reserve System's operating procedures. These two forecasts are compared in terms of their general forecast accuracy and the decision support they provide to a financial institution hypothesized to be borrowing $7 million a week in the federal funds market. Even in cases felt to be most favorable to the ARIMA forecasts, the degree of forecast accuracy and decision support superiority of the ARIMA forecasts is found to be quite small.     

POLITICAL PROCESS AND THE FORMATION OF ECONOMIC POLICY

Institutional economics has some useful things to say about government policy-forming processes. It focuses attention on the structural components of government institutions which shape the direction of policy formation and its delivery. In this article, the author discusses how institutional models of government decision-making may be adapted to parliamentary systems of government. This approach has some merit because it rescues analysis of government processes from models based on the US constitutional system.     

Constitutional Confusion: Slavery,Abortion, and Substantive Constitutional Analysis

A comparison of two U.S. Supreme Court cases about fundamental rights, one on slavery, the other on abortion, sheds light on constitutional law and the principles undergirding liberal constitutional democracy. The Dred Scott case in 1857 denied constitutional rights to enslaved Africans and their descendants living in the United States. The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 created a constitutional right to abortion that denied constitutional personhood to human beings prior to birth. Both cases involved applications of what legal scholars call “substantive due process”—that is, a substantive interpretation of the constitutional requirement that governments provide persons with “due process of law” that moves beyond procedural formalism. Although many constitutional scholars deny the legitimacy of substantive due process as a legal doctrine, this article proposes that the judicial system cannot ultimately avoid substantive moral questions in constitutional interpretation. In both cases examined here, the crucial question was about who counts as part of the people whom the Constitution protects, and that question could not be answered in purely formal terms. Both Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade erred not by engaging substantive moral questions but rather by denying, in different ways, the natural rights of human persons.     

MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENTS IN GOVERNMENT RESOURCE ALLOCATION: THE EXAMPLE OF THE RISE AND FALL OF P.P.B.S. (PLANNING-PROGRAMMING-BUDGETING SYSTEM)

Explanation of the rapid rise to prominence in many government activities of the U.S.A. federal government inspired P.P.B.S. are considered. In too many situations P.P.B.S. was viewed as a revolutionary management technique and not an evolutionary development in resource allocation. The form of many of the publications by proponents of P.P.B.S. – often written from a military standpoint – were insufficiently related to the environment in which most public decision-making occurs. As a result, by promising much and achieving little, the search for better solutions to many of the management problems that P.P.B.S. highlighted has received little help from the enormous activity generated.