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Includes index. ; Bibliography : v. 1, p. 1-3. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In this paper we use data collected from nearly 4,000 single-family residences in Auburn, Alabama to investigate empirically whether specific political expressiveness (displaying a candidate's election sign in one's yard), general socio-political expressiveness (flying an American flag on either Memorial Day or Independence Day), or non-political expressiveness (displaying support for Auburn University's football team outside one's home) is related to the likelihood that at least one resident voted in the national/state/local elections held November 7, 2006. Controlling for the assessed value of the property and length of residential ownership, we find strong evidence that all three measures of expressive behavior are statistically significant predictors of a greater likelihood of voting than occurred at residences showing no evidence of these expressive behaviors. These findings suggest that voting may be more completely understood not as politically-expressive behavior but, rather, as a generally expressive tendency that happens on occasion to be manifested in a political context. That is, an understanding of why some people vote and others do not may require an understanding of why some individuals are more expressive (generally speaking) than others. Adapted from the source document.

SummaryThe scientific community is just that – a community – and the success/influence of any one individual likely reflects, at least in certain measure, the contributions made previously by others. This suggests that rather than merely ranking economists on the basis of raw citation counts, one might gain real insights about the giants laboring in relative obscurity by identifying who the authors of exceptionally influential papers drew their inspiration from. We identify the most‐highly‐cited (409) papers published in economics from 2001–2005, then examine who the authors of these high‐impact papers drew from in terms of developing the ideas/arguments/applications presented in these papers. We find that a very small group of individuals had a comparatively large impact on the economics profession, in terms of influencing the subsequent work of authors of extraordinarily highly‐cited papers. Further, there is relatively little consistency between our list of 'giants' and Nobel Prize winners in Economics.