Do Several Winning Coalitions Exist in a State for Senators of the Same Party? Evidence from an Event Study

We argue that U.S. senators from the same state and in the same party form different winning coalitions. We also develop a theory that stipulates that parties encourage these senators to form very distinct constituency coalitions. Parties use committee assignments as a carrot to give these senators an incentive to represent different groups. In our empirical analysis, we find that there are fewer overlapping committee assignments among senators in the same state when they are from the same party. We also consider the case of John Heinz and Arlen Specter, both Pennsylvania Republicans. When John Heinz died in a plane crash, Political Action Committees (PACs) that bought influence from Specter but not Heinz now had the possibility that the new senator replacing Heinz would include them in his resource constituency. The resulting competition by the new Pennsylvania senator and Specter for campaign resources would lower the price these firms had to pay for representation, thus improving their expected future earnings.     

Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviors, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers

This paper examines parental reputation formation in intra-familial interactions. In a repeated two-stage game, children decide whether to drop out of high school or daughters decide whether to have births as teens and parents then decide whether to provide support to their children beyond age 18. Drawing on Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982), we show that, under certain conditions, parents have the incentive to penalize older children for their adolescent risk-taking behaviours in order to dissuade their younger children from such behaviours when reaching adolescence. We find evidence in favour of this parental reputation model.     

The Economics and Ethics of Mixed Communities: Exploring the Philosophy of Integration Through the Lens of the Subprime Financial Crisis in the US

This article specifically aims to address both the economic and ethical implications of mixed communities in the US through the lens of market failure, and more specifically, the recent subprime financial crisis. Relative to the research of mixed communities and social integration efforts, I first intend to explore income mix as an explanatory variable of census tract level foreclosure rates in the state of Ohio, USA. I aim to show that counter-homogenous income communities display a greater capacity to absorb the adverse affects of the recent subprime financial crisis than concentrated communities of poverty. Second, I intend to provide an ethical appraisal of foreclosure effect on vulnerable communities using John Rawls’ “Veil of Ignorance” as an ethical framework by which to evaluate the “fairness” of social segregation. Ethically speaking, a Rawlsian critique exposes the sub-optimality of concentrated pockets of neighborhood deprivation, where the uneven affects of subprime foreclosures are not only disproportionately shouldered by lower-income communities, but also found to be unjust. This study is not intended to suggest the unqualified support of existing US dispersal efforts, but it does contribute to exposing the sub-optimality and injustices of inert, segregated communities.     

Does Television Viewership Play a Role in the Perception of Quality of Life?

Abstract

The authors hypothesized that television viewership influences materialism and dissatisfaction with standard of living, which in turn contributes to feelings of dissatisfaction with life. They collected data from five countries to examine the issue in a variety of cultural and media environments. The countries and types of samples were: United States (consumer panel and college students), Canada (urban households), Australia (urban households), Turkey (urban households), and China (urban households). The results were generally consistent with the hypotheses. However, most of the support came from the U.S. samples. Two possible explanations may account for the findings. One is that the effect of television viewership on life satisfaction is a unique phenomenon that is applicable only to the United States. Given the disparity of viewership levels between the U.S. and other countries, that explanation has some face validity. The other is that the effects were less evident in non-U.S. samples because of methodological limitations of the cross-cultural research. Overall, the results show that television viewership, at least in the U.S., may play a significant role in making people unhappy with their lives. Much of television advertising reinforces material consumption and possession with images of the “good life.” Thus, television advertising contributes to terminal materialism—materialism for the sake of materialism. Socially responsible advertising professionals should make a concerted effort to create messages that reflect instrumental materialism—materialism for the sake of meeting essential and basic needs.     

Book review

Bayard, Thomas O., and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Reciprocity and Retaliation in U.S. Trade Policy, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1994, 503 pages.

Rugman, Alan M. (Ed.), Foreign Investment and NAFTA, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994, xii + 340 pages.

Zahra, Shaker A., and Abbas J. Ali (Eds.), The Impact of Innovation and Technology in the Global Marketplace, Binghamton Haworth Press, 1994, 222 pages.

Connolly, Michael, and Jaime de Melo (Eds.), The Effects of Protectionism on a Small Country: The Case of Uruguay, Washington, DC, The World Bank, 1994, 172 pages.

Andersson, Thomas, Managing Trade Relations in the New World Economy, New York: Routledge, 1993, 183 pages.

Rondinelli, Dennis A. (Ed.), Expanding Sino-American Business and Trade: China's Economic Transition, Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994, ix + 270 pages.

Chukwumeiue, Okezie, Choice of Law and International Commercial Arbitration, Westport, CT: Quorum, 1994, xii + 218 pages.

Welford, Richard, and Kate Prescott (Eds.), European Business: An Issue Based Approach, 2nd Edition, Philadelphia, PA: Trans Atlantic Publishers, Inc., 1994, 384 pages.

Copeland, Laurence, Exchange Rates and International Finance, Second Edition, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994, xiv + 455 pages.

Surajaras, Patchara, and Richard Sweeney, Profit-Making Speculation in Foreign Exchange Markets, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992, 280 pages.

Esty, Daniel C., Greening the GATT: Trade, Environment, and the Future, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1994, 319 pages.

Scherer, F. M., Competition Policies for an Integrated World Economy, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1994, xxii + 133 pages.

Safarian, A. E., Multinational Enterprise and Public Policy: A Study of the Industrial Countries, Hants, England: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1993, 581 pages.