BUSINESS CYCLES AND ADMISSIONS TO SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT

We study the effect of business cycles on admissions to specialty substance abuse treatment using administrative data between 1992 and 2015. We proxy business cycles with the state unemployment rate and apply a panel fixed‐effects model. While previous economic research has shown that substance abuse is counter‐cyclical, we observe no change in the total number of admissions across the business cycle. However, focusing on average effects misses important heterogeneity. In substance‐specific regressions we find statistically significant evidence that heroin‐related admissions are counter‐cyclical while stimulant‐related admissions are procyclical. Our findings add to the literature on business cycles and health. (JEL I1, J2)     

Student vs. faculty perspectives on quality instruction: Gender bias, “hotness,” and “easiness” in evaluating teaching

This article systematically examines differences between student and faculty perspectives on quality instruction, using local data for a regional university's college of business matched to RateMyProfessors.com evaluations. Particular attention is focused on gender bias, “hotness,” and “easiness.” In addition to documenting a student bias or preference in favor of male faculty, this article also shows how students and faculty have different views of “easiness” and “hotness.” For this college, students value “easiness” while faculty penalize it; however “hotness” has no measurable effect on faculty in this study.     

Joint Production of Food and Wildlife: Uniform Measures or Nature Oases?

Intensive agriculture is often bad for wildlife. Does this imply that a goal to boost wildlife on agricultural land is best met through a general reduction in intensity? We argue that such an approach may not be optimal, since cost functions for provision of wildlife on agricultural land may be non-convex, due to fixed costs associated with such provision. This implies that, even when farms are identical, it may be preferable to split them into groups of high providers and low providers. We test our hypothesis in a study of the optimal management of mown grasslands in southern Sweden, where the two products are silage and successful reproduction of ground-nesting birds, and the variable controlled by the farmer is the date of the first mowing. We show that the optimal solution is likely to involve some farmers maintaining profit-maximizing practices while other—identical—farmers delay their first mowing significantly. The superiority of such split solutions may have major implications for agricultural policy.     

Does Party Matter? An Historical Test Using Senate Tariff Votes in Three Institutional Settings

This article investigates the historical impact of party andconstituency preferences on tariff votes from the U.S. Senateover the period 1883–1930. We find that the estimatedeffect of party grows during periods in which legislative institutionsfavored strong parties. We conclude that party has a causaleffect on policy. If party serves solely as a proxy for unmeasuredcomponents of personal ideology or constituency preferences,then the estimated effect of party on policy outcomes shouldnot vary contemporaneously with changes in legislative institutions.But if party has an independent causal impact on policy outcomes,then changes in institutions favoring strong parties shouldlead to a greater effect of party on voting behavior, holdingconstituency preferences constant. Although our findings arelimited to votes over tariffs in the 19th and early 20th centuries,they suggest that further research into the mechanism by whichparty affects political decision making is important.     

Firm governance and duopoly: in weakness may lie strength

The paper proposes a model of firm governance when two firms compete in a duopoly. The paper assumes that a motivational asymmetry exists between owners and managers: owners wish to obtain maximum profits, managers wish to maximize sales. Managers perceive that salary, social status or future job prospects are more closely associated with firm size (i.e. sales) than with firm profits. The paper takes an agency view of the firm where owners only indirectly influence the behaviour of firms through the level of control they exert over managers. The paper demonstrates that a weakly governed firm, acting as a sales maximizer, can gain a competitive advantage over a strongly governed firm, acting as a profit maximizer. The paper examines the extent of this advantage under cost leadership and differentiation strategies. The paper also demonstrates that the objectives of profit maximization and maximization of competitive advantage are not necessarily congruent. The paper graphically represents the profit functions of the two firms illustrating the Nash equilibrium under Cournot and Stackelberg conditions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Valuing Tullock's Rejects: The Reception of His Work in Rent Seeking

Gordon Tullock's work in economics spans nearly 50 years and is known for the breadth, originality, and quantity of his contributions in public choice, constitutional political economy, law and economics, bioeconomics, and monetary history. Despite his lack of formal training in economics, Tullock published in major economic journals early in his career. A number of his papers, which proved to be seminal to the theory of rent seeking, were rejected by top economic journals. This paper explores possible reasons for the editor's reception to Tullock's work and uses citation counts to value Tullock's rejected papers. My paper shows that Tullock's work continues to be cited, often far more frequently than the papers which journals chose to publish when they rejected Tullock's submissions.