National statistical systems are the enterprises tasked with collecting, validating and reporting societal attributes. These data serve many purposes – they allow governments to improve services, economic actors to traverse markets, and academics to assess social theories. National statistical...

One consequence of the president's use of rhetoric to shape the public agenda, the media, and congressional attention is less recognized: presidential rhetoric shapes the priorities of the administrative agents over whom he seeks managerial control. We present statistical tests of the managerial...

In this article we assess the ramifications of the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore for the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Presidency and the Court. In Part I, we briefly explore how the Court came to help determine the outcome of the election, and reflect on several short-term political...

Few issues are more contentious for local communities than industrial pollution. When local industries pollute, lawmakers and regulators must balance two primary concerns: economic prosperity and the environment. The role of political pressure is well-documented in environmental policy. What is...

Few issues are more contentious for local communities than industrial pollution. When local industries pollute, lawmakers and regulators must balance two primary concerns: economic prosperity and the environment. The role of political pressure is well-documented in environmental policy. What is...

We offer a comparative study of the differences in civil service systems across countries in order to observe how these systems relate to one another. We compare the civil service systems of twenty-six countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and eight...

While many studies have examined the association between merit-based pay and organizational performance, few have assessed the psychological well-being of employees in agencies with such financial incentive schemes. We show that employees in agencies with merit-based pay are less satisfied with...

Like the first-mover in an ultimatum game, the principal is a first-mover with foreknowledge of the agent’s “rational” best response function. The solution to the “principal’s problem” is to choose a contract that maximizes the principal’s expected profit given the agent’s...

This paper addresses the intersection of coalition formation, judicial strategies, and regulatory politics. Coalitions are a low-cost means for assembling minority interests into more powerful blocs. However, in most cases in regulatory politics, judicial strategies are high cost efforts. I...