A Constrained Choice : Productivity and Political Activity

Collective choice has been a topic of research for many years. Recent research has focused on individual’s trust in government and how a lack of trust can actually lead to an increase in the size of government; and, as the size of government increases, we may again see a further increase in the lack of trust in government. (Garen & Clark, 2011). As I thought about this interesting result I concluded it would be worthwhile to step back and look at this issue through the lens of a constrained optimization problem. In this paper, I solve for an individual making a constrained choice between work and political activity to identify some baseline stylistic characteristics of what may or may not cause increased political activity among individuals