Economics and Ideology: Causal Evidence of the Impact of Economic Conditions on Support for Redistribution and Other Ballot Proposals

There is a large literature demonstrating that positive economic conditions increase support for incumbent candidates, but little understanding of how economic conditions affect preferences for parties and for particulars of their platforms. We ask how exogenous shifts to the value of residents. human capital affect voting behavior in California neighborhoods. As predicted by economic theory, we find that positive economic shocks decrease support for redistributive policies. More notably, we find that conservative voting on a wide variety of ballot propositions--from crime to gambling to campaign finance--is increasing in economic well being.

Sequential Pre-Marital Investment Games: Implications for Unemployment

Agents on the same side of a two-sided matching market (such as the marriage or labor market) compete with each other by making self-enhancing investments to improve their worth in the eyes of potential partners. Because these expenditures generally occur prior to matching, this activity has come to be known in recent literature (Peters, 2007) as pre-marital investment. This paper builds on that literature by considering the case of sequential pre-marital investment, analyzing a matching game in which one side of the market invests first, followed by the other. Interpreting the first group of agents as workers and the other group as firms, the paper provides a new perspective on the incentive structure that is inherent in labor markets. It also demonstrates that a positive rate of unemployment can exist even in the absence of matching frictions. Policy implications follow, as the prevailing set of equilibria can be altered by restricting entry into the workforce, providing unemployment insurance, or subsidizing pre-marital investment.

Predicting State Allocation of Funds: The Case of John Rowland and his Hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut.

This study attempts to analyze the underlying factors and motives influencing the allocation of discretionary state expenditures. The fact that some cities receive more money than other cities begs the question of what accounts for this variation. After framing the provision of state money within the theoretical framework of political patronage, a case study of Governor Rowland’s tenure in office and the accompanying expenditures to Connecticut’s 17 largest cities from 1995 to 2004 was conducted to evaluate whether a disproportionate amount of money was given to Rowland’s hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut. Besides employing a statistical analysis that determined that cities with similar characteristics received different amounts of money, interviewing was conducted to identify reasons for such variation. The results indicate that Waterbury received a greater amount of money than was predicted based on the city’s economic and demographic characteristics, and that non-objective and biased factors such as favoritism, the need to reward political support, or the desire to increase political loyalty sometimes take precedence over more objective factors.

California's School Finance Reform: An Experiment in Fiscal Federalism

The 1971 ruling of the California Supreme Court in the case of Serrano v. Priest initiated a chain of events that abruptly ended local financing of public schools in California. In seven short years, California transformed its school finance system from a decentralized one in which local communities chose how much to spend on their schools to a centralized one in which the state legislature determines the expenditures of every school district. This paper begins by describing California's school finance system before Serrano and the transformation from local to state finance. It then delineates some consequences of that transformation and draws lessons from California's experience with school finance reform.