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What Does Health Reform Mean for the Healthcare Industry? Evidence from the Massachusetts Special Senate Election

Al-Ississ, Mohamad; Miller, Nolan H. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2010

The recent reform of the U.S. health care system has been described both as a boon and a death blow for the healthcare industry and for private insurers in particular. We exploit the surprise election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate, which dealt a serious blow to the prospects for...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008625944

Does Less Income Mean Less Representation?

Ross, Stephen; Brunner, Eric J.; Washington, Ebonya L. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011

We assemble a novel dataset of matched legislative and constituent votes and demonstrate that less income does not mean less representation. We show 1) The opinions of high and low income voters are highly correlated; the legislator's vote often reflects the desire of both. 2) What differences in...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008855526

Trust in Public Institutions over the Business Cycle

Stevenson, Betsey; Wolfers, Justin - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011

We document that trust in public institutions--and particularly trust in banks, business and government--has declined … over recent years. U.S. time series evidence suggests that this partly reflects the pro-cyclical nature of trust in … the most suffered the biggest loss in confidence in institutions, particularly in trust in government and the financial …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008868169

Is It Whom You Know or What You Know? An Empirical Assessment of the Lobbying Process

Bertrand, Marianne; Trebbi, Francesco; Bombardini, Matilde - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011

What do lobbyists do? Some believe that lobbyists' main role is to provide issue-specific information and expertise to congressmen to help guide the law-making process. Others believe that lobbyists mainly provide the firms and other special interests they represent with access to politicians in...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008836707

Kosher Pork

Drazen, Allan; Ilzetzki, Ethan - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011

Both conventional wisdom and leading academic research view pork barrel spending as antithetical to responsible policymaking in times of crisis. In this paper we present an alternative view. When agents are heterogeneous in their ideology and in their information about the economic situation,...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008784918

The Effect of Newspaper Entry and Exit on Electoral Politics

Gentzkow, Matthew Aaron; Shapiro, Jesse; Sinkinson, Michael - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2009

We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008628348

The Political Economy of the Subprime Mortgage Credit Expansion

Mian, Atif; Sufi, Amir; Trebbi, Francesco - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2010

We examine how special interests, measured by campaign contributions from the mortgage industry, and constituent interests, measured by the share of subprime borrowers in a congressional district, may have influenced U.S. government policy toward the housing sector during the subprime mortgage...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008631088

Rational Choice and Voter Turnout: Evidence from Union Representation Elections

Farber, Henry S. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2010

The standard theoretical solution to the observation of substantial turnout in large elections is that individuals receive utility from the act of voting. However, this leaves open the question of whether or not there is a significant margin on which individuals consider the effect of their vote...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008634674

Regulation Versus Taxation

Alesina, Alberto; Passarelli, Francesco - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2010

We study which policy tool and at what level a majority chooses in order to reduce activities with negative externalities. We consider three instruments: a rule, that sets an upper limit to the activity which produces the negative externality, a quota that forces a proportional reduction of the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008674237

Do Majority Black Districts Limit Blacks' Representation? The Case of the 1990 Redistricting

Washington, Ebonya L. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011

Conventional wisdom and empirical academic research conclude that majority Black districts decrease Black representation by increasing conservatism in Congress. However, this research generally suffers from three limitations: 1) too low a level of aggregation 2) lack of a counterfactual and 3)...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009025245