Sanford C Gordon
Biographic Data
| ID | 3628035 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sanford C Gordon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sanford C |
| FAMILY NAME | Gordon |
| SIGNATURE | GORDON S C |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6373-2792 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 624 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Incentive Effects of Recall Elections: Evidence from Criminal Sentencing in California Courts
Thirty-nine US states authorize recall elections, but the incentives they create are not well understood. We examine how changes in the perceived threat of recall alter the behavior of one set of officials: judges. In 2016, outrage over the sentence imposed on a Stanford athlete following his sexual assault conviction sparked a drive to recall the presiding judge. Using disposition data from six California counties and arrest records for a subset…
Stakeholder Participation in Policy Making: Evidence from Medicare Fee Schedule Revisions
To what extent do the material stakes of specific policies motivate political participation by affected interests? We address this question by examining physician participation in the annual process governing revisions to Medicare fee schedules. This setting permits us to identify the relevant universe of affected actors and to construct a novel measure of the annual financial consequences of proposed policy changes that varies idiosyncratically …
Causes, theories, and the past in political science
National Conflict in a Federal System
To explore the effect of federal institutions on national political conflict, we develop a model of two-level governance with interstate preference heterogeneity and cross-state externalities. Our analysis calls into question the conventional interpretation of federalism as a conflict-minimizing institution. We show that polarization over national policy may be higher in federal than unitary systems, even holding policy demand constant. We also s…
Polarized preferences versus polarizing policies
The Birth of Pork: Local Appropriations in America's First Century
After describing a newly assembled dataset consisting of almost 9,000 local appropriations made by the U.S. Congress between 1789 and 1882, we test competing accounts of the politics surrounding them before offering a more nuanced, historically contingent view of the emergence of the pork barrel. We demonstrate that for most of this historical period-despite contemporary accusations of crass electoral motives-the pattern of appropriations is larg…
Common Problems (or, What’s Missing from the Conventional Wisdom on Polarization and Gridlock)
We examine the intuition that in supermajoritarian settings, polarization and policy-making gridlock are fundamentally linked but that a pressing common problem can reduce both. When actors’ individual costs from a policy addressing such a problem differ, their preferences over the appropriate policy respond asymmetrically to increases in the magnitude of the problem. In a broad range of circumstances such increases can give rise to increased pol…
Distributive Politics: Federal Outlays
We provide an interpretive review of theoretical and empirical research on the distribution of federal outlays in the United States and their political antecedents. We argue that the foundational scholarly research on the subject to date can be classified to a great extent according to the perspectives it takes respecting legislative organization, political parties, and the executive branch. After reviewing theoretical and empirical research in t…
Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Investigation
Unelected officials with coercive powers (e.g., police, prosecutors, bureaucrats) vary markedly in the extent to which citizens view their actions as legitimate. We explore the institutional determinants of legitimate authority in the context of a public goods laboratory experiment. In the experiment, an “authority” can target one “citizen” for punishment following citizen contribution choices. Untargeted citizens can then choose to help or hinde…
Politicizing Agency Spending Authority: Lessons from a Bush-era Scandal
When can presidents direct bureaucrats to allocate government expenditures for electoral purposes? To address this question, I exploit a scandal concerning the General Services Administration (GSA), an agency that contracts with private vendors to provide supplies and real estate to other agencies. Shortly after Republican losses in 2006, a White House deputy gave a presentation to GSA political appointees identifying potentially vulnerable congr…
The Political Economy of Prosecution
Contemporary advances in the field of political economy, particularly those concerning the subject of delegated authority, can provide a unifying framework for analyzing the behavior and political context of criminal prosecutors in the United States. This perspective, which focuses on the extent of conflict between an official's motives and those of other actors, and the degree to which information is unevenly distributed among those actors, is w…
Do the Advantages of Incumbency Advantage Incumbents
We develop a model that calls into question some longstanding presumptions about incumbency advantage. Our results show that increases in some of the ostensible benefits of incumbency frequently cited in the empirical and theoretical literature make it difficult for voters to differentiate incumbents of higher and lower quality. While this leads to an improvement in the electoral prospects of lower-quality incumbents, it is harmful to those of hi…
Enforcement and Compliance in an Uncertain World: An Experimental Investigation
Governments are charged with monitoring citizens' compliance with prescribed behavioral standards and punishing noncompliance. Flaws in information available to enforcing agents, however, may lead to subsequent enforcement errors, eroding government authority and undermining incentives for compliance. We explore these concepts in a laboratory experiment. A "monitor" player makes punishment decisions after receiving noisy signals about other playe…
Assessing Partisan Bias in Federal Public Corruption Prosecutions
The 2007 U.S. Attorney firing scandal raised the specter of political bias in the prosecution of officials under federal corruption laws. Has prosecutorial discretion been employed to persecute enemies or shield allies? To answer this question, I develop a model of the interaction between officials contemplating corruption and a prosecutor deciding whether to pursue cases against them. Biased prosecutors will be willing to file weaker cases again…
Voter responses to challenger opportunity costs
The Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Incumbent Behavior
What is the marginal effect of competitiveness on the power of electoral incentives? Addressing this question empirically is difficult because challenges to incumbents are endogenous to their behavior in office. To overcome this obstacle, we exploit a unique feature of Kansas courts: 14 districts employ partisan elections to select judges, while 17 employ noncompetitive retention elections. In the latter, therefore, challengers are ruled out. We …
Corporate Influence and the Regulatory Mandate
Industries face collective action and commitment problems when attempting to influence Congress. At the same time, an individual firm's political investments can yield reduced bureaucratic scrutiny by indicating that firm's willingness to contest agency decisions. We develop a model in which the desirability of maintaining a political footprint for this reason enables individual firms to commit to rewarding elected officials who maintain laws ben…
Consumption or Investment? On Motivations for Political Giving
We propose a strategy to distinguish investment and consumption motives for political contributions by examining the behavior of individual corporate executives. If executives expect contributions to yield policies beneficial to company interests, those whose compensation varies directly with corporate earnings should contribute more than those whose compensation comes largely from salary alone. We find a robust relationship between giving and th…
Challenger Entry and Voter Learning
We develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents, in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters. Given incumbent failure in office, challenger entry is more likely, but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed. At the same time, challenges to incumbents who perform well …
Qualitative Leverage and the Epistemology of Expert Opinion
We discuss the motivation for integrating qualitative information in statistical models of complex, partially observable causal mechanisms and suggest ways to minimize the dangers posed by Braumoeller and Kirpichevsky. We stress the importance of linking our statistical estimators to underlying theories of the data generating process, qualitative or otherwise
Flexing Muscle: Corporate Political Expenditures as Signals to the Bureaucracy
Regulatory agencies impose costs and benefits tailored to individual firms through their discretionary enforcement activities. We propose that corporations use political expenditures in part to "flex their muscles" to regulators and convey their willingness to fight an agency's specific determinations in the political arena. Because the signaling function of political expenditures is strategically complex, we derive a formal model wherein we demo…
Quantitative Leverage Through Qualitative Knowledge: Augmenting the Statistical Analysis of Complex Causes
Social scientific theories frequently posit that multiple causal mechanisms may produce the same outcome. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to observe which mechanism was responsible. For example, IMF scholars conjecture that nations enter IMF agreements both out of economic need and for discretionary domestic political reasons. Typically, though, all we observe is the fact of agreement, not its cause. Partial observability probit models (…
Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind When It Runs for Office
Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are largely uninformed about judicial behavior, so even the o…
Stochastic Dependence in Competing Risks
spells may terminate via multiple outcomes: the term of a cabinet, for example, may end with or without an election; wars persist until the loss or victory of the aggressor. Analysts typically assume stochastic independence among risks, the duration modeling equivalent of independence of irrelevant alternatives. However, many political examples violate this assumption. I review competing risks as a latent variables approach. After discussing meth…
Citizen Oversight and the Electoral Incentives of Criminal Prosecutors
cases and prosecutor behavior. We model voter oversight of prosecutors in light of these difficulties. Voters use the promise of reelection given ob? served outputs to induce prosecutors to reduce uncertainty through investi? gation and subsequently to punish the guilty and free the innocent. The model demonstrates that an optimal voter strategy is always to reelect prosecutors who obtain convictions. Most importantly, even voters who most fear w…
Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind When It Runs for Office
Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are largely uninformed about judicial behavior, so even the o…
Flexing Muscle: Corporate Political Expenditures as Signals to the Bureaucracy
Regulatory agencies impose costs and benefits tailored to individual firms through their discretionary enforcement activities. We propose that corporations use political expenditures in part to "flex their muscles" to regulators and convey their willingness to fight an agency's specific determinations in the political arena. Because the signaling function of political expenditures is strategically complex, we derive a formal model wherein we demo…
The Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Incumbent Behavior
What is the marginal effect of competitiveness on the power of electoral incentives? Addressing this question empirically is difficult because challenges to incumbents are endogenous to their behavior in office. To overcome this obstacle, we exploit a unique feature of Kansas courts: 14 districts employ partisan elections to select judges, while 17 employ noncompetitive retention elections. In the latter, therefore, challengers are ruled out. We …
Challenger Entry and Voter Learning
We develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents, in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters. Given incumbent failure in office, challenger entry is more likely, but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed. At the same time, challenges to incumbents who perform well …
Assessing Partisan Bias in Federal Public Corruption Prosecutions
The 2007 U.S. Attorney firing scandal raised the specter of political bias in the prosecution of officials under federal corruption laws. Has prosecutorial discretion been employed to persecute enemies or shield allies? To answer this question, I develop a model of the interaction between officials contemplating corruption and a prosecutor deciding whether to pursue cases against them. Biased prosecutors will be willing to file weaker cases again…
Consumption or Investment? On Motivations for Political Giving
We propose a strategy to distinguish investment and consumption motives for political contributions by examining the behavior of individual corporate executives. If executives expect contributions to yield policies beneficial to company interests, those whose compensation varies directly with corporate earnings should contribute more than those whose compensation comes largely from salary alone. We find a robust relationship between giving and th…
Citizen Oversight and the Electoral Incentives of Criminal Prosecutors
cases and prosecutor behavior. We model voter oversight of prosecutors in light of these difficulties. Voters use the promise of reelection given ob? served outputs to induce prosecutors to reduce uncertainty through investi? gation and subsequently to punish the guilty and free the innocent. The model demonstrates that an optimal voter strategy is always to reelect prosecutors who obtain convictions. Most importantly, even voters who most fear w…
Politicizing Agency Spending Authority: Lessons from a Bush-era Scandal
When can presidents direct bureaucrats to allocate government expenditures for electoral purposes? To address this question, I exploit a scandal concerning the General Services Administration (GSA), an agency that contracts with private vendors to provide supplies and real estate to other agencies. Shortly after Republican losses in 2006, a White House deputy gave a presentation to GSA political appointees identifying potentially vulnerable congr…
Stochastic Dependence in Competing Risks
spells may terminate via multiple outcomes: the term of a cabinet, for example, may end with or without an election; wars persist until the loss or victory of the aggressor. Analysts typically assume stochastic independence among risks, the duration modeling equivalent of independence of irrelevant alternatives. However, many political examples violate this assumption. I review competing risks as a latent variables approach. After discussing meth…
Do the Advantages of Incumbency Advantage Incumbents
We develop a model that calls into question some longstanding presumptions about incumbency advantage. Our results show that increases in some of the ostensible benefits of incumbency frequently cited in the empirical and theoretical literature make it difficult for voters to differentiate incumbents of higher and lower quality. While this leads to an improvement in the electoral prospects of lower-quality incumbents, it is harmful to those of hi…
The Political Economy of Prosecution
Contemporary advances in the field of political economy, particularly those concerning the subject of delegated authority, can provide a unifying framework for analyzing the behavior and political context of criminal prosecutors in the United States. This perspective, which focuses on the extent of conflict between an official's motives and those of other actors, and the degree to which information is unevenly distributed among those actors, is w…
Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Investigation
Unelected officials with coercive powers (e.g., police, prosecutors, bureaucrats) vary markedly in the extent to which citizens view their actions as legitimate. We explore the institutional determinants of legitimate authority in the context of a public goods laboratory experiment. In the experiment, an “authority” can target one “citizen” for punishment following citizen contribution choices. Untargeted citizens can then choose to help or hinde…
Corporate Influence and the Regulatory Mandate
Industries face collective action and commitment problems when attempting to influence Congress. At the same time, an individual firm's political investments can yield reduced bureaucratic scrutiny by indicating that firm's willingness to contest agency decisions. We develop a model in which the desirability of maintaining a political footprint for this reason enables individual firms to commit to rewarding elected officials who maintain laws ben…
Quantitative Leverage Through Qualitative Knowledge: Augmenting the Statistical Analysis of Complex Causes
Social scientific theories frequently posit that multiple causal mechanisms may produce the same outcome. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to observe which mechanism was responsible. For example, IMF scholars conjecture that nations enter IMF agreements both out of economic need and for discretionary domestic political reasons. Typically, though, all we observe is the fact of agreement, not its cause. Partial observability probit models (…
Enforcement and Compliance in an Uncertain World: An Experimental Investigation
Governments are charged with monitoring citizens' compliance with prescribed behavioral standards and punishing noncompliance. Flaws in information available to enforcing agents, however, may lead to subsequent enforcement errors, eroding government authority and undermining incentives for compliance. We explore these concepts in a laboratory experiment. A "monitor" player makes punishment decisions after receiving noisy signals about other playe…
The Birth of Pork: Local Appropriations in America's First Century
After describing a newly assembled dataset consisting of almost 9,000 local appropriations made by the U.S. Congress between 1789 and 1882, we test competing accounts of the politics surrounding them before offering a more nuanced, historically contingent view of the emergence of the pork barrel. We demonstrate that for most of this historical period-despite contemporary accusations of crass electoral motives-the pattern of appropriations is larg…
Common Problems (or, What’s Missing from the Conventional Wisdom on Polarization and Gridlock)
We examine the intuition that in supermajoritarian settings, polarization and policy-making gridlock are fundamentally linked but that a pressing common problem can reduce both. When actors’ individual costs from a policy addressing such a problem differ, their preferences over the appropriate policy respond asymmetrically to increases in the magnitude of the problem. In a broad range of circumstances such increases can give rise to increased pol…
Qualitative Leverage and the Epistemology of Expert Opinion
We discuss the motivation for integrating qualitative information in statistical models of complex, partially observable causal mechanisms and suggest ways to minimize the dangers posed by Braumoeller and Kirpichevsky. We stress the importance of linking our statistical estimators to underlying theories of the data generating process, qualitative or otherwise
Incentive Effects of Recall Elections: Evidence from Criminal Sentencing in California Courts
Thirty-nine US states authorize recall elections, but the incentives they create are not well understood. We examine how changes in the perceived threat of recall alter the behavior of one set of officials: judges. In 2016, outrage over the sentence imposed on a Stanford athlete following his sexual assault conviction sparked a drive to recall the presiding judge. Using disposition data from six California counties and arrest records for a subset…
Stakeholder Participation in Policy Making: Evidence from Medicare Fee Schedule Revisions
To what extent do the material stakes of specific policies motivate political participation by affected interests? We address this question by examining physician participation in the annual process governing revisions to Medicare fee schedules. This setting permits us to identify the relevant universe of affected actors and to construct a novel measure of the annual financial consequences of proposed policy changes that varies idiosyncratically …
Causes, theories, and the past in political science
Voter responses to challenger opportunity costs
National Conflict in a Federal System
To explore the effect of federal institutions on national political conflict, we develop a model of two-level governance with interstate preference heterogeneity and cross-state externalities. Our analysis calls into question the conventional interpretation of federalism as a conflict-minimizing institution. We show that polarization over national policy may be higher in federal than unitary systems, even holding policy demand constant. We also s…
Stochastic Dependence in Competing Risks
spells may terminate via multiple outcomes: the term of a cabinet, for example, may end with or without an election; wars persist until the loss or victory of the aggressor. Analysts typically assume stochastic independence among risks, the duration modeling equivalent of independence of irrelevant alternatives. However, many political examples violate this assumption. I review competing risks as a latent variables approach. After discussing meth…
Citizen Oversight and the Electoral Incentives of Criminal Prosecutors
cases and prosecutor behavior. We model voter oversight of prosecutors in light of these difficulties. Voters use the promise of reelection given ob? served outputs to induce prosecutors to reduce uncertainty through investi? gation and subsequently to punish the guilty and free the innocent. The model demonstrates that an optimal voter strategy is always to reelect prosecutors who obtain convictions. Most importantly, even voters who most fear w…
Quantitative Leverage Through Qualitative Knowledge: Augmenting the Statistical Analysis of Complex Causes
Social scientific theories frequently posit that multiple causal mechanisms may produce the same outcome. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to observe which mechanism was responsible. For example, IMF scholars conjecture that nations enter IMF agreements both out of economic need and for discretionary domestic political reasons. Typically, though, all we observe is the fact of agreement, not its cause. Partial observability probit models (…
Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind When It Runs for Office
Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are largely uninformed about judicial behavior, so even the o…
Qualitative Leverage and the Epistemology of Expert Opinion
We discuss the motivation for integrating qualitative information in statistical models of complex, partially observable causal mechanisms and suggest ways to minimize the dangers posed by Braumoeller and Kirpichevsky. We stress the importance of linking our statistical estimators to underlying theories of the data generating process, qualitative or otherwise
Flexing Muscle: Corporate Political Expenditures as Signals to the Bureaucracy
Regulatory agencies impose costs and benefits tailored to individual firms through their discretionary enforcement activities. We propose that corporations use political expenditures in part to "flex their muscles" to regulators and convey their willingness to fight an agency's specific determinations in the political arena. Because the signaling function of political expenditures is strategically complex, we derive a formal model wherein we demo…
The Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Incumbent Behavior
What is the marginal effect of competitiveness on the power of electoral incentives? Addressing this question empirically is difficult because challenges to incumbents are endogenous to their behavior in office. To overcome this obstacle, we exploit a unique feature of Kansas courts: 14 districts employ partisan elections to select judges, while 17 employ noncompetitive retention elections. In the latter, therefore, challengers are ruled out. We …
Corporate Influence and the Regulatory Mandate
Industries face collective action and commitment problems when attempting to influence Congress. At the same time, an individual firm's political investments can yield reduced bureaucratic scrutiny by indicating that firm's willingness to contest agency decisions. We develop a model in which the desirability of maintaining a political footprint for this reason enables individual firms to commit to rewarding elected officials who maintain laws ben…
Consumption or Investment? On Motivations for Political Giving
We propose a strategy to distinguish investment and consumption motives for political contributions by examining the behavior of individual corporate executives. If executives expect contributions to yield policies beneficial to company interests, those whose compensation varies directly with corporate earnings should contribute more than those whose compensation comes largely from salary alone. We find a robust relationship between giving and th…
Challenger Entry and Voter Learning
We develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents, in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters. Given incumbent failure in office, challenger entry is more likely, but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed. At the same time, challenges to incumbents who perform well …
Voter responses to challenger opportunity costs
The Political Economy of Prosecution
Contemporary advances in the field of political economy, particularly those concerning the subject of delegated authority, can provide a unifying framework for analyzing the behavior and political context of criminal prosecutors in the United States. This perspective, which focuses on the extent of conflict between an official's motives and those of other actors, and the degree to which information is unevenly distributed among those actors, is w…
Do the Advantages of Incumbency Advantage Incumbents
We develop a model that calls into question some longstanding presumptions about incumbency advantage. Our results show that increases in some of the ostensible benefits of incumbency frequently cited in the empirical and theoretical literature make it difficult for voters to differentiate incumbents of higher and lower quality. While this leads to an improvement in the electoral prospects of lower-quality incumbents, it is harmful to those of hi…
Enforcement and Compliance in an Uncertain World: An Experimental Investigation
Governments are charged with monitoring citizens' compliance with prescribed behavioral standards and punishing noncompliance. Flaws in information available to enforcing agents, however, may lead to subsequent enforcement errors, eroding government authority and undermining incentives for compliance. We explore these concepts in a laboratory experiment. A "monitor" player makes punishment decisions after receiving noisy signals about other playe…
Assessing Partisan Bias in Federal Public Corruption Prosecutions
The 2007 U.S. Attorney firing scandal raised the specter of political bias in the prosecution of officials under federal corruption laws. Has prosecutorial discretion been employed to persecute enemies or shield allies? To answer this question, I develop a model of the interaction between officials contemplating corruption and a prosecutor deciding whether to pursue cases against them. Biased prosecutors will be willing to file weaker cases again…
Politicizing Agency Spending Authority: Lessons from a Bush-era Scandal
When can presidents direct bureaucrats to allocate government expenditures for electoral purposes? To address this question, I exploit a scandal concerning the General Services Administration (GSA), an agency that contracts with private vendors to provide supplies and real estate to other agencies. Shortly after Republican losses in 2006, a White House deputy gave a presentation to GSA political appointees identifying potentially vulnerable congr…
Distributive Politics: Federal Outlays
We provide an interpretive review of theoretical and empirical research on the distribution of federal outlays in the United States and their political antecedents. We argue that the foundational scholarly research on the subject to date can be classified to a great extent according to the perspectives it takes respecting legislative organization, political parties, and the executive branch. After reviewing theoretical and empirical research in t…
Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Investigation
Unelected officials with coercive powers (e.g., police, prosecutors, bureaucrats) vary markedly in the extent to which citizens view their actions as legitimate. We explore the institutional determinants of legitimate authority in the context of a public goods laboratory experiment. In the experiment, an “authority” can target one “citizen” for punishment following citizen contribution choices. Untargeted citizens can then choose to help or hinde…
Common Problems (or, What’s Missing from the Conventional Wisdom on Polarization and Gridlock)
We examine the intuition that in supermajoritarian settings, polarization and policy-making gridlock are fundamentally linked but that a pressing common problem can reduce both. When actors’ individual costs from a policy addressing such a problem differ, their preferences over the appropriate policy respond asymmetrically to increases in the magnitude of the problem. In a broad range of circumstances such increases can give rise to increased pol…
Polarized preferences versus polarizing policies
The Birth of Pork: Local Appropriations in America's First Century
After describing a newly assembled dataset consisting of almost 9,000 local appropriations made by the U.S. Congress between 1789 and 1882, we test competing accounts of the politics surrounding them before offering a more nuanced, historically contingent view of the emergence of the pork barrel. We demonstrate that for most of this historical period-despite contemporary accusations of crass electoral motives-the pattern of appropriations is larg…
Causes, theories, and the past in political science
National Conflict in a Federal System
To explore the effect of federal institutions on national political conflict, we develop a model of two-level governance with interstate preference heterogeneity and cross-state externalities. Our analysis calls into question the conventional interpretation of federalism as a conflict-minimizing institution. We show that polarization over national policy may be higher in federal than unitary systems, even holding policy demand constant. We also s…
Stakeholder Participation in Policy Making: Evidence from Medicare Fee Schedule Revisions
To what extent do the material stakes of specific policies motivate political participation by affected interests? We address this question by examining physician participation in the annual process governing revisions to Medicare fee schedules. This setting permits us to identify the relevant universe of affected actors and to construct a novel measure of the annual financial consequences of proposed policy changes that varies idiosyncratically …
Incentive Effects of Recall Elections: Evidence from Criminal Sentencing in California Courts
Thirty-nine US states authorize recall elections, but the incentives they create are not well understood. We examine how changes in the perceived threat of recall alter the behavior of one set of officials: judges. In 2016, outrage over the sentence imposed on a Stanford athlete following his sexual assault conviction sparked a drive to recall the presiding judge. Using disposition data from six California counties and arrest records for a subset…
Economics (23 works) · Political science (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (16 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (10 works) · Business (9 works) · Public economics (9 works) · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems (8 works) · Microeconomics (8 works)