Political Entrepreneurs and the Transfer Demanding Process: Homesteading the Unassigned District

This paper introduces the transfer-demanding entrepreneur to help bridge the gap between static equilibria in an interest group theory of government and process theories. The transfer demanding entrepreneur acts in a creative, discontinuous fashion to organize latent demand for a particular transfer into an effective interest group. The disequilibrating, re-equilibrating transfer demanding entrepreneur provides a theoretical framework for understanding the movement between static political equilibria. This paper considers the transfer demanding entrepreneurship necessary to bring together the western railroads, organized labor, and potential Oklahoma colonists in the passage of white settlement and coal-lease ratification legislation in the Indian Territory.     

Quasitransitive social preference: why some very large coalitions have very little power

Summary. If only the strict part of social preference is required to be transitive then Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives implies that there is a coalition containing all but one individual that cannot force x to be socially ranked above y for at least half of the pairs of alternatives (x,y). Received: August 29, 1996; revised version: March 24, 1997     

Hunting the Whale: More Evidence on State Government Leviathans

Caplan holds that governments are Leviathans, seeking to extend their power by increasing government expenditures beyond the level preferred by voters. We extend Caplan's model by examining the real (percentage) growth rates of government. We also examine whether government size increases at an increasing rate as the minority party weakens. We find evidence that supports and fails to support the original Leviathan hypothesis. We also fail to support our extensions of Caplan's hypothesis. Furthermore, our significant and contrary results have intuitively appealing interpretations. From these results, we conclude that the impact of political party power on government spending is ambiguous.     

US domestic airline alliances: does the national welfare impact turn on strategic international gains?

The six largest U.S. airlines announced in the beginning of 1998 the formation of three domestic alliances, but the size and scope of these alliances spurred significant public interest concerns. GAO analysis suggests a rough equivalence between the domestic costs and benefits of alliances, yet the international competitive effects have not been considered. I argue that the national welfare merits of domestic airline alliances turn on positive international competitive effects. Empirical tests - run on comprehensive panel data covering the international airline markets among 21 nations over the 1983–1992 period - support domestic market concentration resulting in strategic international gains; hence, domestic airline alliances likely improve national welfare.     

Sociality and money1

This is a translation of ‘Socialité et argent’, a text by Emmanuel Levinas originally published in 1987. Levinas describes the emergence of money out of interhuman relations of exchange and the social relations – sociality – that result. While elsewhere he has presented sociality as ‘nonindifference to alterity’ it appears here as ‘proximity of the stranger’ and points to the tension between an economic system based on money and the basic human disposition to respond to the face of the other person. Money both encodes and effaces sociality, both designates and disguises social relations. It arises from the way that needs and interests are manifested in exchange relations, in what he calls the ‘interestedness’ of economic life. But interests are always already cut through by the fact that being is always ‘being with others’. Being is always ‘interbeing’. Interestedness is always confronted by disinterestedness, that is, by a sociality marked by the ‘goodness of giving’, attachment to and concern for the poverty of the other person. Levinas concludes with a discussion of sociality and justice, posing questions about the tension between the demand to respond to an Other immediately before me and at the same time to respond to the demands of an other Other (the third person) who also invites a response.     

Muy local: Differentiating Hispanic and Caucasian shoppers of locally produced foods in US grocery

The current study reviews consumer purchasing of locally produced foods in retail grocery stores across Hispanic and Caucasian groups in the United States. Six hypotheses were tested via the creation and evaluation of a measurement model within the structural equation modeling process. Results suggested that group differences exist between Hispanic and Caucasian consumers across the constructs of attitudes, perceived product availability, subjective norms, intention to purchase and extent of purchase. Implications for marketing strategies across groups and product categories are provided, along with future research directions.     

Estimating the Impact of Currency Unions on Trade: Solving the Glick and Rose Puzzle

Does leaving a currency union reduce international trade? This paper uses a historical approach to re‐examine the puzzling large apparent impact of currency unions on trade. I find that the early time series estimates were driven by the gradual decaying of colonial trade ties and other major geopolitical factors, including warfare, communist takeovers and ethnic cleansing episodes. My methodology, which carries lessons for other uses of gravity equations in policy analysis, yields point estimates of currency unions on trade that are not statistically distinct from zero.     

The Impact of Occupational Community on the Quality of Internal Control

Senior executives in major corporations have drawn attention in recent years for a range of unethical activities. Despite a rise in measures to protect against such lapses, executives still make decisions whether or not to comply with reporting standards, best practices, industry norms and legislation. The prior literature in this area addresses individual characteristics of decision makers and social networks between executives and boards of directors, but to this point has largely overlooked group dynamics of the executive team. Our study addresses this gap and examines the relationship between an occupational community of top executives and the quality of internal control. We construct a unique measure for the executive occupational community based on CEO and CFO’s joint tenure. Our findings show that the number of years of CEO/CFO’s joint tenure is significantly and negatively associated with internal control weakness, suggesting that the longer the executive relationship, the lower the likelihood of internal control weakness. Our study indicates that the presence of an occupational community contributes to better internal control.     

Marx‐biased technical change and income distribution: A panel data analysis

This paper provides a further empirical evaluation of the Neoclassical theory of distribution as opposed to Marx‐biased technical change (MBTC) using a series of panel estimators. We argue that a panel data analysis is instrumental in increasing the efficiency and validity of the test. Our results generalize previous findings in providing support for MBTC and against the Neoclassical theory of income distribution.