Empirically, labor contracts that financially penalize failure induce higher effort provision than economically identical contracts presented as paying a bonus for success, an effect attributed to loss aversion. This is puzzling, as penalties are infrequently used in practice. The most obvious...

One of the most striking changes in labor market policy of the past fifty years has comein the form of legislation to limit discrimination in the workplace based on race, gender,disability and age. If such measures are to be effective in ending discrimination, theyneed to be enforced. The latter...

We study the effects of individual and collective ministerial performance on the length oftime a minister serves in British government from 1945-97, using the number ofresignation calls for a minister as an individual performance indicator and the cumulativenumber of such calls as an indicator...

I analyze a dataset of news from the New York Times, from 1946 to 1997. Controllingfor the incumbent President's activity across issues, I find that during the presidentialcampaign the New York Times gives more emphasis to topics that are owned by theDemocratic party (civil rights, health care,...

Party activists face a coordination problem: a critical mass (a barrier tocoordination) must advocate a single policy alternative if the party is tosucceed. The need for direction is the degree to which the merits of thealternatives respond to the underlying mood of the party. An...

This paper uses household, school, and test score data from Bangladeshto compare and contrast the effectiveness of NGO-run and state-run schoolsin the provision of primary education. I study how the entry of NGOs inprimary education has affected educational outcomes of girls and examine...

Party activists wish to (i) advocate the best policy and yet (ii) unify behind a commonparty line. An activist's understanding of his environment is based on the speeches ofparty leaders. A leader's influence, measured by the weight placed on her speech,increases with her judgement on policy...

(Massarella paper): The William Adams story has been told many times, but not completely. This paper corrects matters of fact and revises matters of interpretation. It adds new information about Adams the man and examines the fabrication of the myth of William Adams or Miura Anjin that has...