James E Alt
Biographic Data
| ID | 300447 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James E Alt |
| GIVEN NAMES | James E |
| FAMILY NAME | Alt |
| SIGNATURE | ALT J E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1,468 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 36 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Diffusing Political Concerns
National audience
Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters
When does new economic information cause voters to reevaluate the government's competence and ultimately vote economically? Since politically relevant information is often conveyed by actors with incentives to influence voter perceptions, the credibility of information sources can vary significantly. This article randomly varies whether voters receive an aggregate unemployment forecast from the central bank, government or main opposition party us…
Perspectives on Positive Political Economy
Transparency and Accountability
Recent formal models of accountability allow us to make different conditional predictions about how transparency affects voters’ willingness to re-elect incumbents and acceptance of higher taxes. We review two models and investigate empirical implications derived from or related to them, using panel data from 1972—2000 for U.S. state budget process transparency, gubernatorial elections, and tax increases in a small structural model. We do not fin…
The Causes of Fiscal Transparency
Fiscal transparency, political parties, and debt in OECD countries
Transparency, Political Polarization, and Political Budget Cycles in OECD Countries
We investigate the effects of fiscal transparency and political polarization on the prevalence of electoral cycles in fiscal balance. While some recent political economy literature on electoral cycles identifies such cycles mainly in weak and recent democracies, in contrast we show, conditioning on a new index of institutional fiscal transparency, that electoral cycles in fiscal balance are a feature of many advanced industrialized economies. Usi…
Party Differences in State Budget Outcomes Are There After All
Alt and Lowry (2000) show that Democrats generally target more of state income for public budgets than do Republicans, though exact party positions vary from state to state, and unified governments adjust faster than divided. McAtee, Yackee, and Lowery (2003) question these results. However, their estimated revenue changes ignore income shares, usually set independent variables equal to sample rather than subsample means, and omit some fixed effe…
The Political Economy of Institutions and Corruption in American States
Theoretically, this article draws on political agency theory to formulate hypotheses. Empirically, it shows that political institutions have a role in explaining the prevalence of political corruption in American states. In the states, a set of democracies where the rule of law is relatively well established and the confounding effects of differing electoral systems and regimes are absent, institutional variables relating to the openness of the p…
Fiscal Transparency, Gubernatorial Approval, and the Scale of Government
We explore the effect of the transparency of fiscal institutions in government on the scale of government and gubernatorial approval using a formal model of accountability. We construct an index of fiscal transparency for the American states from detailed budgetary information. With cross-sectional data for 1986-95, we find that—on average and controlling for other factors—fiscal transparency increases both the scale of government and gubernatori…
Aggregation Among Binary, Count, and Duration Models
Binary, count, and duration data all code discrete events occurring at points in time. Although a single data generation process can produce all of these three data types, the statistical literature is not very helpful in providing methods to estimate parameters of the same process from each. In fact, only a single theoretical process exists for which known statistical methods can estimate the same parameters—and it is generally used only for cou…
A Dynamic Model of State Budget Outcomes under Divided Partisan Government
This article analyzes the politics of fiscal adjustment in a bicameral system when parties prefer different scales of taxes and public spending. Data from 33 non-southern American states for the years 1952-1995 show that Democrats nearly everywhere target a larger share of state incomes for the public budget than Republicans, though exact party positions vary from state to state. Republicans react more strongly to budget surpluses by reducing rev…
Thoughts on Mancur Olson's contribution to political science 1932–1998
Asset Specificity and the Political Behavior of Firms
Previous research into endogenous trade policy has described extensively the political incentives of firms with specific assets, but no studies have shown directly that firms behave as predicted. We adopt insights from transaction costs economics to develop measures of asset specificity and to investigate how variation in these measures affects the political behavior of firms. In particular, we examine the lobbying choices of Norwegian firms in t…
Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States
Clear fiscal policy effects appear in American state gubernatorial and legislative elections between 1968 and 1992, independent of the effects of incumbency, coattails, term limits, and macroeconomic conditions. The results show that accountability is generally stronger following a period of unified party control than under divided government. Voter reactions to taxes and spending relative to the state economy are conditional on expectations, whi…
The Political Economy of International Trade
A similar set of concepts has been central to the literatures on the formation of trade policy coalitions and the “new economics of institutions”: the political and economic consequences of the degree to which assets are specific to a particular economic activity. In this survey, the authors take the necessary first step of summarizing the main findings of these two literatures and then suggest ways in which the issue might be joined. In addition…
Quiet Revolution in the South
The Political Economy of Trading States
Transfers of Governmental Power
King, Alt, Burns, and Laver (1990) proposed and estimated a unified model in which cabinet durations depended on seven explanatory variables reflecting features of the cabinets and the bargaining environments in which they formed, along with a stochastic component in which the risk of a cabinet falling was treated as a constant across its tenure. Two recent research reports take issue with one aspect of this model. Warwick and Easton replicate th…
Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Budget Deficits
Does partisan control of American state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels? Does divided control affect the government's ability to make hard decisions? Do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter? Using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the American states from 1968 to 1987, we conclude that (1) aggregate state budget totals are driven by d…
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
A Unified Model of Cabinet Dissolution in Parliamentary Democracies
The literature on cabinet duration is split between two apparently irreconcilable positions.The attributes theorists seek to explain cabinet duration as a fixed function of measured explanatory variables, while the events process theorists model cabinet durations as a product of purely stochastic processes.In this paper we build a unified statistical model that combines the insights of these previously distinct approaches.We also generalize this …
Reputation and Hegemonic Stability
We develop and explicate a game-theoretic model in which repeated play, incomplete information, and reputation are major elements. A significant advance of this model is the way it represents cooperation under incomplete information among rational actors of different sizes. The model is used to formalize certain aspects of the "theory of hegemonic stability." It shows that the "dilemma" or "limits" of hegemonic stability look like natural attribu…
Britain's Economic Renaissance
As the recession in Britain intensified in 1980/81, Margaret Thatcher, despite the dictates of contemporary economic doctrine, did not the fiscal deficit in order to increase aggregate demand. Instead, she did just the opposite, hoping to restore confidence to the market and credibility to government policy. In this analysis of her policy, the Prime Minister's personal economic advisor, the First Lord of the Treasury, argues that the course of Br…
Crude Politics
This article extends existing political-economic models to deal more rigorously with politics in countries with trade-dependent economies, and in particular with the policy consequences of oil-exporting in industrial countries. Models drawn from economics and finance show how much of Britain's recent unemployment results from North Sea oil, at first through speculation in sterling in rapidly-growing international currency markets and more recentl…
Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Budget Deficits
Does partisan control of American state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels? Does divided control affect the government's ability to make hard decisions? Do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter? Using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the American states from 1968 to 1987, we conclude that (1) aggregate state budget totals are driven by d…
A Unified Model of Cabinet Dissolution in Parliamentary Democracies
The literature on cabinet duration is split between two apparently irreconcilable positions.The attributes theorists seek to explain cabinet duration as a fixed function of measured explanatory variables, while the events process theorists model cabinet durations as a product of purely stochastic processes.In this paper we build a unified statistical model that combines the insights of these previously distinct approaches.We also generalize this …
Transparency, Political Polarization, and Political Budget Cycles in OECD Countries
We investigate the effects of fiscal transparency and political polarization on the prevalence of electoral cycles in fiscal balance. While some recent political economy literature on electoral cycles identifies such cycles mainly in weak and recent democracies, in contrast we show, conditioning on a new index of institutional fiscal transparency, that electoral cycles in fiscal balance are a feature of many advanced industrialized economies. Usi…
Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States
Clear fiscal policy effects appear in American state gubernatorial and legislative elections between 1968 and 1992, independent of the effects of incumbency, coattails, term limits, and macroeconomic conditions. The results show that accountability is generally stronger following a period of unified party control than under divided government. Voter reactions to taxes and spending relative to the state economy are conditional on expectations, whi…
The Political Economy of International Trade
A similar set of concepts has been central to the literatures on the formation of trade policy coalitions and the “new economics of institutions”: the political and economic consequences of the degree to which assets are specific to a particular economic activity. In this survey, the authors take the necessary first step of summarizing the main findings of these two literatures and then suggest ways in which the issue might be joined. In addition…
Political Parties, World Demand, and Unemployment
This article replicates and extends earlier work on the politics of macroeconomic policy by considering political effects on unemployment in 14 western industrial nations between 1960 and 1983. Changes of party control of government display broadly the expected effects, namely that unemployment falls under left-wing governments and rises under right-wing governments. However, the principal conclusions of this article are that partisan effects on …
The Political Economy of Trading States
A Dynamic Model of State Budget Outcomes under Divided Partisan Government
This article analyzes the politics of fiscal adjustment in a bicameral system when parties prefer different scales of taxes and public spending. Data from 33 non-southern American states for the years 1952-1995 show that Democrats nearly everywhere target a larger share of state incomes for the public budget than Republicans, though exact party positions vary from state to state. Republicans react more strongly to budget surpluses by reducing rev…
Reputation and Hegemonic Stability
We develop and explicate a game-theoretic model in which repeated play, incomplete information, and reputation are major elements. A significant advance of this model is the way it represents cooperation under incomplete information among rational actors of different sizes. The model is used to formalize certain aspects of the "theory of hegemonic stability." It shows that the "dilemma" or "limits" of hegemonic stability look like natural attribu…
The Political Economy of Institutions and Corruption in American States
Theoretically, this article draws on political agency theory to formulate hypotheses. Empirically, it shows that political institutions have a role in explaining the prevalence of political corruption in American states. In the states, a set of democracies where the rule of law is relatively well established and the confounding effects of differing electoral systems and regimes are absent, institutional variables relating to the openness of the p…
Asset Specificity and the Political Behavior of Firms
Previous research into endogenous trade policy has described extensively the political incentives of firms with specific assets, but no studies have shown directly that firms behave as predicted. We adopt insights from transaction costs economics to develop measures of asset specificity and to investigate how variation in these measures affects the political behavior of firms. In particular, we examine the lobbying choices of Norwegian firms in t…
Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters
When does new economic information cause voters to reevaluate the government's competence and ultimately vote economically? Since politically relevant information is often conveyed by actors with incentives to influence voter perceptions, the credibility of information sources can vary significantly. This article randomly varies whether voters receive an aggregate unemployment forecast from the central bank, government or main opposition party us…
Fiscal Transparency, Gubernatorial Approval, and the Scale of Government
We explore the effect of the transparency of fiscal institutions in government on the scale of government and gubernatorial approval using a formal model of accountability. We construct an index of fiscal transparency for the American states from detailed budgetary information. With cross-sectional data for 1986-95, we find that—on average and controlling for other factors—fiscal transparency increases both the scale of government and gubernatori…
Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures
In this article it is proposed to take another look at what have elsewhere been called ‘sources of diversity’ in British local government. The purpose is to show that across a sample of English and Welsh county boroughs, significant associations can be found between levels of expenditure in certain public service areas and both socio-economic and political variables. In particular, it will be shown that the presence of greater Labour representati…
Aggregation Among Binary, Count, and Duration Models
Binary, count, and duration data all code discrete events occurring at points in time. Although a single data generation process can produce all of these three data types, the statistical literature is not very helpful in providing methods to estimate parameters of the same process from each. In fact, only a single theoretical process exists for which known statistical methods can estimate the same parameters—and it is generally used only for cou…
Transfers of Governmental Power
King, Alt, Burns, and Laver (1990) proposed and estimated a unified model in which cabinet durations depended on seven explanatory variables reflecting features of the cabinets and the bargaining environments in which they formed, along with a stochastic component in which the risk of a cabinet falling was treated as a constant across its tenure. Two recent research reports take issue with one aspect of this model. Warwick and Easton replicate th…
Some Problems in Formulating and Testing a Politico-Economic Model of the United Kingdom
Journal Article Some Problems in Formulating and Testing a Politico-Economic Model of the United Kingdom Get access K. Alec Chrystal, K. Alec Chrystal University of Essex Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar James E. Alt James E. Alt Washington University, St Louis Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 91, Issue 363, 1 September 1981, Pages 730–736…
Transparency and Accountability
Recent formal models of accountability allow us to make different conditional predictions about how transparency affects voters’ willingness to re-elect incumbents and acceptance of higher taxes. We review two models and investigate empirical implications derived from or related to them, using panel data from 1972—2000 for U.S. state budget process transparency, gubernatorial elections, and tax increases in a small structural model. We do not fin…
Reaction Functions, Optimization, and Politics
A central concern of policy research is to disentangle the consequences of discretionary acts of authorities from the constraints under which they operate. In economic policy research, reaction functions, a broad class of single-equation models, appear to offer insights into this problem. However, reaction functions share many of the pitfalls of the empirical use of optimizing models of policy, and particular difficulties attach to disentangling …
Diffusing Political Concerns
National audience
The evolution of tax structures
Crude Politics
This article extends existing political-economic models to deal more rigorously with politics in countries with trade-dependent economies, and in particular with the policy consequences of oil-exporting in industrial countries. Models drawn from economics and finance show how much of Britain's recent unemployment results from North Sea oil, at first through speculation in sterling in rapidly-growing international currency markets and more recentl…
Partisanship and Policy Choice
Inherent in many models of voting, as well as in defences of representative democracy, is the assumption that the voting public has knowledge of and opinions about public policy issues. In recent years in the United States a stream of scholarly articles has been devoted to assessing not just the extent to which issue knowledge and opinions exist but also the extent to which they influence electoral decisions. This new literature suggests that iss…
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
The Case of the Silk-Stocking Socialists and the Calculating Children of the Middle Class
Recent developments in the political behaviour of the British electorate have called into question the once-prevalent view that class was what counted when it came to voting and all else was ‘embellishment and detail’. Two streams of thought dominate the recent literature. One notes the continuing prominence of social class in the context of voting behaviour, but stresses the extent to which class is no longer expressable as a simple function of …
Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures
In this article it is proposed to take another look at what have elsewhere been called ‘sources of diversity’ in British local government. The purpose is to show that across a sample of English and Welsh county boroughs, significant associations can be found between levels of expenditure in certain public service areas and both socio-economic and political variables. In particular, it will be shown that the presence of greater Labour representati…
Partisanship and Policy Choice
Inherent in many models of voting, as well as in defences of representative democracy, is the assumption that the voting public has knowledge of and opinions about public policy issues. In recent years in the United States a stream of scholarly articles has been devoted to assessing not just the extent to which issue knowledge and opinions exist but also the extent to which they influence electoral decisions. This new literature suggests that iss…
Politics and Expenditure Models
The quantitative study of local government expenditure has seen to a great extent British political scientists (as has been so often the case in urban politics) responding to an American lead. What were tested in this country were the Easton-based models of Dawson and Robinson, Dye, Sharkansky, and others, which postulated a very simple (three-variable) system. The three variables were expenditure, socio-economic context and political control, an…
Can Government Go Bankrupt
Journal Article Can Government Go Bankrupt? The Politics of Economic Decline. Economic Management and Political Behaviour in Britain Since 1964 Get access Can Government Go Bankrupt? By RICHARD ROSE and GUY PETERS. (London: Macmillan, 1978. Pp. xix + 283. £7.95.)The Politics of Economic Decline. Economic Management and Political Behaviour in Britain Since 1964. By James E. ALT. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Pp. viii + 296. £12.50.…
Some Problems in Formulating and Testing a Politico-Economic Model of the United Kingdom
Journal Article Some Problems in Formulating and Testing a Politico-Economic Model of the United Kingdom Get access K. Alec Chrystal, K. Alec Chrystal University of Essex Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar James E. Alt James E. Alt Washington University, St Louis Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 91, Issue 363, 1 September 1981, Pages 730–736…
Reaction Functions, Optimization, and Politics
A central concern of policy research is to disentangle the consequences of discretionary acts of authorities from the constraints under which they operate. In economic policy research, reaction functions, a broad class of single-equation models, appear to offer insights into this problem. However, reaction functions share many of the pitfalls of the empirical use of optimizing models of policy, and particular difficulties attach to disentangling …
The Case of the Silk-Stocking Socialists and the Calculating Children of the Middle Class
Recent developments in the political behaviour of the British electorate have called into question the once-prevalent view that class was what counted when it came to voting and all else was ‘embellishment and detail’. Two streams of thought dominate the recent literature. One notes the continuing prominence of social class in the context of voting behaviour, but stresses the extent to which class is no longer expressable as a simple function of …
The evolution of tax structures
Political Economics
Journal Article Political Economics Get access Political Economics. By JAMES E. ALT and ALEC K. CHRYSTAL. (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books 1983. Distributed by Harvester Press. Pp. xii + 275. £20.00 hardback, £5.95 paperback.) Paul Mosley Paul Mosley University of Bath Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 94, Issue 375, 1 September 1984, Pages 667–668, https://doi.org/10.2307/2232721 Pub…
Macroeconomics and Micropolitics
Party strategies, world demand, and unemployment in Britain and the United States, 1947?1983
Political Parties, World Demand, and Unemployment
This article replicates and extends earlier work on the politics of macroeconomic policy by considering political effects on unemployment in 14 western industrial nations between 1960 and 1983. Changes of party control of government display broadly the expected effects, namely that unemployment falls under left-wing governments and rises under right-wing governments. However, the principal conclusions of this article are that partisan effects on …
Britain's Economic Renaissance
As the recession in Britain intensified in 1980/81, Margaret Thatcher, despite the dictates of contemporary economic doctrine, did not the fiscal deficit in order to increase aggregate demand. Instead, she did just the opposite, hoping to restore confidence to the market and credibility to government policy. In this analysis of her policy, the Prime Minister's personal economic advisor, the First Lord of the Treasury, argues that the course of Br…
Crude Politics
This article extends existing political-economic models to deal more rigorously with politics in countries with trade-dependent economies, and in particular with the policy consequences of oil-exporting in industrial countries. Models drawn from economics and finance show how much of Britain's recent unemployment results from North Sea oil, at first through speculation in sterling in rapidly-growing international currency markets and more recentl…
Reputation and Hegemonic Stability
We develop and explicate a game-theoretic model in which repeated play, incomplete information, and reputation are major elements. A significant advance of this model is the way it represents cooperation under incomplete information among rational actors of different sizes. The model is used to formalize certain aspects of the "theory of hegemonic stability." It shows that the "dilemma" or "limits" of hegemonic stability look like natural attribu…
A Unified Model of Cabinet Dissolution in Parliamentary Democracies
The literature on cabinet duration is split between two apparently irreconcilable positions.The attributes theorists seek to explain cabinet duration as a fixed function of measured explanatory variables, while the events process theorists model cabinet durations as a product of purely stochastic processes.In this paper we build a unified statistical model that combines the insights of these previously distinct approaches.We also generalize this …
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
Quiet Revolution in the South
The Political Economy of Trading States
Transfers of Governmental Power
King, Alt, Burns, and Laver (1990) proposed and estimated a unified model in which cabinet durations depended on seven explanatory variables reflecting features of the cabinets and the bargaining environments in which they formed, along with a stochastic component in which the risk of a cabinet falling was treated as a constant across its tenure. Two recent research reports take issue with one aspect of this model. Warwick and Easton replicate th…
Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Budget Deficits
Does partisan control of American state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels? Does divided control affect the government's ability to make hard decisions? Do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter? Using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the American states from 1968 to 1987, we conclude that (1) aggregate state budget totals are driven by d…
The Political Economy of International Trade
A similar set of concepts has been central to the literatures on the formation of trade policy coalitions and the “new economics of institutions”: the political and economic consequences of the degree to which assets are specific to a particular economic activity. In this survey, the authors take the necessary first step of summarizing the main findings of these two literatures and then suggest ways in which the issue might be joined. In addition…
Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States
Clear fiscal policy effects appear in American state gubernatorial and legislative elections between 1968 and 1992, independent of the effects of incumbency, coattails, term limits, and macroeconomic conditions. The results show that accountability is generally stronger following a period of unified party control than under divided government. Voter reactions to taxes and spending relative to the state economy are conditional on expectations, whi…
Thoughts on Mancur Olson's contribution to political science 1932–1998
Asset Specificity and the Political Behavior of Firms
Previous research into endogenous trade policy has described extensively the political incentives of firms with specific assets, but no studies have shown directly that firms behave as predicted. We adopt insights from transaction costs economics to develop measures of asset specificity and to investigate how variation in these measures affects the political behavior of firms. In particular, we examine the lobbying choices of Norwegian firms in t…
Economics (32 works) · Political science (31 works) · Politics (25 works) · Law (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy (15 works) · Public economics (12 works) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (11 works) · Government (linguistics (11 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (11 works)