Why do states frequently act through supranational institutions, and why do these institutions look the way they do? While most studies emphasize the collective-gains rationale for delegated authority, the analysis presented here raises an altogether different possibility. What makes...

Optimal layoff rules in closed form are derived for all workers in a firm that downsizes under uncertainty and faces heterogeneous firing costs. The theoretical model predicts that the firm displaces workers with low firing costs, low expected future productivity growth, and low layoff option...

There are more than 500,000 elected officials in the United States, 96 percent of whom serve in local governments. Electoral density—the number of elected officials per capita or per governmental unit—varies greatly from place to place. The most electorally dense county has more than 20...

We examine the distributional consequences of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) payroll tax. Applying the ability-to-pay principle of equity, the UI payroll tax is quite regressive, while applying the benefits principle makes the UI program look quite good. We then simulate a revenue-neutral...

A recent and compelling study entitled Neurons to Neighborhoods, conducted by the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the Institute of Medicine, calls attention to the importance of early emotional development in young children.1 Based on a careful review of neuroscience and developmental...

A controversy among economists and others interested in the limits of rational choice analysis, still running after an onset at least two decades ago, concerns whether intelligent people, and especially experts, can be subject to cognitive illusions. This note provides a striking illustration...

This discussion paper was prepared for the forthcoming Handbook of Public Administration, to be published by Sage Publications, Inc.

Perhaps the common social choice problem that any of us face in practice is when we find ourselves in a group that must choose one restaurant at which all of us will eat. We propose a method where, similar to the I-choose-you-cut rule for dividing a cake, individuals in the group take turns...

In this preliminary study, we find little evidence that state campaign finance laws influence turnout in the states. These results hold for both aggregate analysis, using turnout in gubernatorial elections from 1950-2000, and individual-level analysis using self-reported voting decisions in the...

This paper examines the measurement of poverty in the United States from 1972 through 2004. We investigate how poverty rates and poverty gaps have changed over time, explore how these trends differ across demographic groups, and contrast these trends for several different income and consumption...