In their survey of the legislator shirking literature, Bender and Lott (1996) point to 4 areas of relative consensus regarding legislator voting: 1. legislators almost always represent their constituents' interests, 2. when legislators do diverge from constituent interests, the adverse economic...

States’ choices on term limits are quantified as a multiple-categorical variable capturing variation in the type of limits passed. Measures of relative political influence in Congress explain much of this variation. Using 1992 data on the American states, the model controls for unobserved...

A large literature has studied the trend of greaterpolarization between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.This paper empirically examines the extent to which inflationand unemployment explain cyclical movements ofpolarization over time. An informal application of thestandard Downsian spatial...

In 1978 Congress weakened several key provisions of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which had been enacted only five years earlier. The objective is to compare alternative explanations for this policy reversal. Copyright (c) 2004 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.

We incorporate policymaker costs of supplying rents and variable intensities of competition among rent seekers into the standard rent-seeking game. By incorporating these aspects, the game has greater verisimilitude to the lobbying process. The first aspect captures the fact that in rent-seeking...

Do zoning rules need to come from government? This article highlights the economic features of one of the largest privately-planned towns: Celebration, Florida. The 10,000-resident town includes numerous privately-provided public goods as well as rules that reduce negative externalities within...

Public trust in government to promote the general interest has declined sharply since the early 1960s. Almost all those commenting on the trend see it as detrimental to government's ability to perform. We recognize that up to some level, trust does improve government performance, but beyond that...