Suchergebnisse

Explores the question of utility of force in circumstances where there is no immediate danger of war, based on Soviet military power in Europe in the 1970s; implications for armed forces of the Atlantic alliance. Edited text of the sixth John Vincent Memorial Lecture, delivered at the University of Keele, Great Britain, May 8, 1998.

Rulemaking is central to policymaking in the United States. Additionally, regulatory authority is devolved to the states in many instances. However, our knowledge of state-level rulemaking is not as advanced as that related to federal rulemaking. To advance the scholarship on state rulemaking, this study compares environmental rulemaking across three environmental issues (renewable portfolio standards, concentrated animal feeding operation regulations, and hydraulic fracturing disclosure rules) in five states (California, Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania) to understand procedural and stakeholder participation commonalities among the cases. Using data from public rulemaking documents, stakeholder comment during rulemaking, and in-depth interviews with agency staff and stakeholders, the findings suggest that there are common patterns of pre-process informal stakeholder consultation, public comment and outreach mechanisms, and corollary issues related to stakeholder access across these cases. These findings advance our knowledge of state-level rulemaking as it relates to public input and procedural equity for stakeholders.

Laws on the books must be enforced to have an effect. This means that the political actors charged with this enforcement must have the proper incentives to do so. I assess the political incentives to enforce prudential statutes in the U.S. banking sector. The system is two-tiered, with a common set of federal regulators and 50 individual state regulators simultaneously enforcing the same set of statutes on federally chartered banks and state-chartered banks, respectively. The stronger a regulator's political incentives to enforce said statutes, the less a bank's ``outside'' investors (creditors and minority shareholders) will fear expropriation at the hands of its ``insiders'' (managers and major shareholders). Part of a bank's cost of capital, then, can be predicted by the incentives of its regulators to properly monitor and enforce banks' compliance with prudential and disclosure requirements. A credible regulator can reduce the information asymmetry, and its concomitant agency costs, between a bank's insiders and outsiders. Without a credible regulatory signal, outside investors aren't able to determine a bank's risk ex ante, and will charge a higher price for their funds to compensate for anticipated levels of undisclosed risk. I construct a series of hierarchical models containing comprehensive bank-level balance-sheet controls and which exploit the variation between the institutional structure of state regulatory agencies. I then present strong evidence that state-chartered banks in states wherein the bank supervisory agency is chaired by a political appointee pay a premium, both for debt and equity financing, compared to federally chartered banks in that same state and compared to state-chartered banks in states where the bank supervisor enjoys independence from elected state officials. This discrepancy in funding costs magnifies in the run-up to a gubernatorial election, and state-chartered banks in states regulated by a political appointee are disproportionately likely to fail just after an election, suggesting a ``political business cycle'' effect. Not only this, but the size of the premium these state-chartered banks pay interacts with many bank-level variables that have political implications, such as the share of a bank's assets comprising relationship-intensive loans to local constituents and the size of its state and municipal bond holdings.

I investigate the argument that, in a two–party system with different regulatory objectives, political uncertainty generates regulatory risk. I show that this risk has a fluctuation effect that hurts both parties and an output–expansion effect that benefits one party. Consequently, at least one party dislikes regulatory risk. Moreover, both political parties gain from eliminating regulatory risk when political divergence is small or the winning probability of the regulatory–risk–averse party is not too large. Because of a commitment problem, direct political bargaining is insufficient to eliminate regulatory risk. Politically independent regulatory agencies solve this commitment problem.

Public programs for agriculture challenge social scientists. How do public aids to agriculture affect the economic freedom of farmers? Can losses of economic freedom be balanced by gains in political self-determination through farmers sharing in the adoption and management of public programs for agriculture? Is governmental power conveyed to farm organizations whose leaders (however "broad-gauged" and public-spirited") lack institutional responsibility to the public? Notwithstanding mutual interdependence of various aspects of the "farm problem," is there a tendency toward splintering public policy among separate agencies in different commodity fields and among conservation, educational, regulatory, research, and credit agencies? Can the content of public policy be divorced for research from the process of policy formation and execution? Can federalism survive the vigorous development of regulatory programs administered from Washington? Contrarily, does federalism introduce factors which tend to defeat administrative responsibility in federal agencies? Is it possible for publicly-supported research freely to probe controversial issues raised by public policy?Such questions are increased in pertinence by current circumstances. Major re-directions of farm programs seem in prospect. The Committee on Agriculture in the House of Representatives is holding the first comprehensive hearings on agricultural policy since 1937. Meanwhile, Congress has authorized an expanded research program for agriculture which in itself may embody a marked shift in policy.Consider the implications for social science of the Hope-Flannagan Act (P.L. 733, 79th Congress). While including important traditional elements, the measure reflects the judgment that the country was thrown into ill-conceived regulatory programs in the 1930's and the assumption that redoubled research into the entire production and distribution process will discover ways to construct public policy which would be at once less arbitrary and more effective than New Deal measures. The challenge to the natural and social sciences concerned with argriculture is clear and profound.

The paper investigates political uncertainty as a source of regulatory risk. It shows that political parties have incentives to reduce regulatory risk actively: Mutually beneficial pre-electoral agreements that reduce regulatory risk always exist and fully eliminate it when political divergence is small or electoral uncertainty is appropriately skewed. These results follow from a fluctuation effect of regulatory risk that hurts both parties and an output-expansion effect that benefits at most one party. Due to commitment problems, politically independent regulatory agencies are needed to implement pre-electoral agreements. Optimal delegation may require only partial rather than full political independence.

Conventional wisdom suggests that lobbying is the preferred mean for exerting political influence in rich countries and corruption the preferred one in poor countries. Analyses of their joint effects are understandably rare. This paper provides a theoretical framework that focus on the relationship between lobbying and corruption (that is, it investigates under what conditions they are complements or substitutes). The paper also offers novel econometric evidence on lobbying, corruption and influence using data for about 4000 firms in 25 transition countries. Our results show that (a) lobbying and corruption are substitutes, if anything; (b) firm size, age, ownership, per capita GDP and political stability are important determinants of lobby membership; and (c) lobbying seems to be a much more effective instrument for political influence than corruption, even in poorer, less developed countries

Conventional wisdom suggests that lobbying is the preferred means for exerting political influence in rich countries and corruption the preferred one in poor countries. Analyses of their joint effects are understandably rare. This paper provides a theoretical framework that focus on the relationship between lobbying and corruption (that is, it investigates under what conditions they are complements or substitutes). The paper also offers novel econometric evidence on lobbying, corruption and influence using data for about 4000 firms in 25 transition countries. Our results show that (a) lobbying and corruption are substitutes, if anything; (b) firm size, age, ownership, per capita GDP and political stability are important determinants of lobby membership; and (c) lobbying seems to be a much more effective instrument for political influence than corruption, even in poorer, less developed countries. Adapted from the source document.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Contributors -- Preface -- Introduction and Overview -- Part I. ATTRIBUTIONS OF POWER -- 1. Power and Probability -- 2. Attributions of Interpersonal Power -- Part II. THE SOURCE OF POWER AND INFLUENCE -- 3. The Nature of Trust -- 4. The Powerholder -- Part III. THE TARGET OF INFLUENCE -- 5. Further Thoughts on the Processes of Compliance, Identification, and Internalization -- 6. The Comparative Analysis of Power and Power Preference -- Part IV. ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL-SYSTEM RELATIONSHIPS -- 7. Power and Utilities in a Simulated Interreligious Council: A Situational Approach to Interparty Decision-Making -- Part V. POLITICAL POWER -- 8. Power in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Tribal Politics -- 9. Legitimacy as a Base of Social Influence -- 10. Campus Crisis: The Search for Power -- Part VI. THE MEANS OF INFLUENCE -- 11. Economic Power -- Index

The establishment of autonomous public bodies during the past two decades has created a highly fragmented public sector. Using a dataset with more than 200 Dutch public sector organisations, this article examines three related sets of questions: to what extent a relationship exists between formal and de facto autonomy; the level of influence that interested parties exert upon those organizations; whether a relationship exists between levels of formal and de facto autonomy and the level of influence exercised by these parties. We find that formal autonomy does not reinforce de facto autonomy; organizations with less autonomy report higher levels of political influence when policy autonomy is concerned; and that organizations with more autonomy report higher societal influence on their financial autonomy.

I investigate the argument that, in a twoparty system with different regulatory objectives, political uncertainty generates regulatory risk. I show that this risk has a fluctuation effect that hurts both parties and an outputexpansion effect that benefits one party. Consequently, at least one party dislikes regulatory risk. Moreover, both political parties gain from eliminating regulatory risk when political divergence is small or the winning probability of the regulatoryriskaverse party is not too large. Because of a commitment problem, direct political bargaining is insufficient to eliminate regulatory risk. Politically independent regulatory agencies solve this commitment problem.

AbstractSeveral models are developed to examine the portfolio effect of short selling. Three things are demonstrated in this study. First, that for many assets, short selling is a useful strategy for reducing risk when constructing mean‐variance efficient portfolios. Second, Regulation T can be used in combination with short selling to further improve expected portfolio performance. Third, the performance of the suggested models is superior to previously suggested allocation models. Ex ante and ex post tests are conducted to arrive at the above conclusions.

This paper investigates political uncertainty as a source of regulatory risk. It shows that political parties have incentives to reduce regulatory risk actively: Mutually beneficial pre-electoral agreements that reduce regulatory risk always exist. Agreements that fully eliminate it exist when political divergence is small or electoral uncertainty is appropriately skewed. These results follow from a fluctuation effect of regulatory risk that hurts parties and an output-expansion effect that benefits at most one party. Due to commitment problems, regulatory agencies with some degree of political independence are needed to implement pre-electoral agreements.

When policymakers and private agents use models, the economists who design the model have an incentive to alter it in order to influence outcomes in a fashion consistent with their own preferences. I discuss some consequences of the existence of such ideological bias. In particular, I analyze the role of measurement infrastructures such as national statistical institutes, the extent to which intellectual competition between different schools of thought may lead to polarization of views over some parameters and at the same time to consensus over other parameters, and finally how the attempt to preserve influence can lead to degenerative research programs.