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Abstract:
The Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London left protection of property against takings for economic development to the states. Since Kelo, thirty-seven states have enacted legislation to update their eminent domain laws. This paper is the first to theoretically and empirically analyze the factors that influence whether, in what manner, and how quickly states change their laws through new legislation. Fourteen of the thirty-seven new laws offer only weak protections against development takings. The legislative response to Kelo was responsive to measures of the backlash but only in the binary decision whether to pass any new law. The decision to enact a meaningful restriction was more a function of relevant political economy measures. States with more economic freedom, greater value of new housing construction, and less racial and income inequality are more likely to have enacted stronger restrictions, and sooner. Of the thirteen states that have not updated, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi are highly likely to do so in the future. Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York are unlikely to update ever if at all.

eminent domain, state legislation, property rights, Kelo v. City of New London, limited dependent variables, duration analysis

Abstract:
We construct a time series of political party ideology, based on Poole and Rosenthal's (1997) NOMINATE scores, for the 1950-98 period. The results show that (1) party ideology has become increasingly more polarized over this period; and (2) that it is very sensitive to business cycle conditions. In particular, a worsening of economic conditions (e.g. higher inflation or unemployment) is associated with a decline of the relative difference in party ideology scores. Republicans tend to become "less conservative" relative to Democrats when either the unemployment or inflation rate increases. We obtain the same results using an equivalent time series based on ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) scores. That there is an important economic component in ADA and NOMINATE scores questions the ability to interpret these scores as proxies of legislator ideology. But the finding that political parties' platforms tend to converge during economic downturns is not inconsistent with the traditional Downsian-type approach of modeling party behavior.

Legislator Ideology, Political Party Ideology, Legislator Voting

Abstract:
From 1995 to 1997 the U.S. Congress made repeated attempts to limit the number of terms Representatives and Senators can serve. This paper is an empirical examination of this legislative history. Using spatial analysis, I generate two hypotheses: 1) term limits will redistribute political capital within the legislature; and 2) legislators do not represent their constituents' interests in voting on term limits. Roll call votes in both chambers are estimated with a logit model to test the two hypotheses. Regression results indicate that legislator characteristics are significant predictors of their voting behavior. Specifically, older, male, Republican legislators with relatively low tenure favor term limits. Contrarily, younger, female, tenured Democrats tend to oppose them. However, in pursuing their own interests, legislators are constrained by the parochial interests of their relevant constituencies. In particular, electoral security is inversely related to legislators' votes on term limits. Using aggregate data and anecdotal evidence, the hypothesis that term limits redistribute power within the legislature is upheld, while the shirking hypothesis is partly rejected. Congressmen pursue their own political capital subject to the interests of their constituents. I discuss the importance of institutional comparisons between the chambers of Congress, as well as implications of the empirical results for different aspects of public choice theory.

Abstract:
A well-intentioned and fully informed regulator may determine that the optimal policy is to deregulate the market, yet the regulator may be constrained from doing so. In this condition, deregulatory policies originate in exogenous shocks to the regulator's choice environment. Entrepreneurship in political and economic markets is a primary source of institutional change that promotes deregulation.

deregulation, natural monopoly, entrerepeurship, institutions, institutional change

Abstract:
Georgia offers salary incentives for K-12 educators to obtain post-baccalaureate degrees, intending to improve student performance. In this paper, we evaluate the empirical relationship between advanced degrees earned by teachers and student pass rates on the state high school graduation test. More advanced degrees do not significantly improve pass rates. We conclude the Devil is in the details. It is well known that educational performance is the product of the interaction of many factors, particularly family and socio-economic variables. Previous literature also draws only a weak relationship between teacher quality and salary incentives. Thus, Georgia's experience suggests it is difficult to design effective policy that conditions on indirect incentives to perform. Certain policies may fail because they are ill-conceived, or because interest group pressures interfere in their planning or execution. But sometimes policies fail because there is simply a limit to government's ability to solve problems.

teacher pay, student performance, cost benefit analysis

Abstract:
This paper estimates the influence of macroeconomic conditions on individual legislator voting over time. Previous work shows legislator voting to be stable over careers. In this paper, voting on an ideological issue space (ADA scores) and a fiscal issue space (NTU scores), from 1976 to 2002, exhibits significant short-term cyclicality with economic conditions. Individual legislators polarize by party in response to rising unemployment, and converge in response to rising inflation. As legislators accumulate tenure, they become more ideologically conservative but more fiscally liberal. Results are also reported on presidential party, divided government, and region. All results are weaker in the Senate than in the House.

legislator voting, political polarization, macroeconomic aspect of political economy

Abstract:
This paper consults multiple literatures to specify and evaluate the economic rationales for term limitation, particularly on Congress. Two main lines of argument are considered, both of which begin with the empirical phenomenon of high and rising congressional tenure. First, supporters of term limits argue that higher tenure biases legislatures toward inefficiently big government (high spending). Second, higher tenure creates inefficient (anti-competitive) conditions in the legislative election market. Term limitation would remedy these inefficiencies by virtue of decreasing average tenure. These claims are then evaluated in light of the evidence amassed in the literature. Based on the literature reviewed, this paper finds that, while term limits will reduce average tenure, there is no evidence to suggest that term limits will affect the underlying causes of these inefficiencies. A more general reform, which would strike deeper at these underlying causes, is implied.

Abstract:
Between 1990 and 1995, twenty-three states unilaterally imposed term limits on their own delegations to Congress. In 1995 the House of Representatives defeated a constitutional amendment that would have limited the terms for all of Congress. Only weeks later, the Supreme Court struck down the individual state laws. In 1997 the House again brought the issue to a vote, which also failed. This paper models congressional voting on term limits with a simple game within an interest-group theory with legislators as imperfect agents of constituents. The game foremost predicts that members from term-limited states would be more likely to support term limits in the first vote but no more likely on the second vote. The empirical section employs probit, multinomial logit, and ordered probit maximum likelihood estimations to confirm the stated hypotheses. Among other results, in particular both the joint and conditional probability of a 'yea' on the first vote and a subsequent 'nay' on the second vote is higher for members from states that had unilaterally self-imposed term limits. The results are robust to model specification, estimator, and alternative sampling. Implications are proposed in the concluding comments.

Term limits, legislator voting, vote switching

Abstract:
The empirical literature on legislator behavior attributes significant explanatory power to interest group vote scores. The literature has also dichotomized the interpretation of these scores as either ideological shirking or market signaling. Most studies simply regress a residualized vote score on a left-hand roll call vote. This paper innovates a new way of discriminating between signaling and ideology on the basis of residualized vote scores. The structural model considers a congressional seat as a unique, non-divisible good, and candidates' campaign expenditures as the unit price bid for the good. Introducing exogenous control variables, and executing 2SLS, the reduced form model yields a convenient test: if a more extreme voting record is negatively related to the bid, this indicates a substitution relationship and supports the market signaling hypothesis. This paper finds support of this kind in the 1994 House elections.