Public opinion about energy can be understood in a unified framework. First, people evaluate key attributes of energy sources, particularly a fuel’s cost and environmental harms. Americans, for example, view coal as relatively inexpensive but harmful, natural gas as less harmful but more...

Studies of voter turnout across states find that those with more facilitative registration laws have higher turnout rates. Eliminating registration barriers altogether is estimated to raise voter participation rates by up to 10 per cent. This paper presents panel estimates of the effects of...

This paper uses event study methodology to measure whether firms that gave soft money to political parties received excessively high rates of returns from their contributions. We measure the excess returns of firms that gave large amounts of soft money and firms that gave no soft money, and...

This paper examines evidence of statistical bias in newspaper reporting on campaign finance. We compile data on all dollar amounts for campaign expenditures, contributions, and receipts reported in the five largest circulation newspapers in the United States from 1996 to 2000. We then compare...

This paper examines the effects of party control of state governments on the distribution of intergovernmental transfers across counties from 1957 to 1997. We find that the governing parties skew the distribution of funds in favor of areas that provide them with the strongest electoral support....

We examine the relationship between parliamentary seats and cabinet posts in European governments between 1946 and 2001. Our specification improves on past studies in two respects. First, it derives and uses the voting weights of the underlying coalition formation games. This reduces the...

In this paper, we argue that campaign contributions are not a form of policy-buying, but are rather a form of political participation and consumption. We summarize the data on campaign spending, and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals, not...

The cell-phone-only (CPO) population has grown rapidly over the past several years, causing concern for researchers who rely mostly on random digit dialing (RDD) of landlines to conduct their research. While early research on CPOs has focused largely on age differences, CPOs may differ from...

Spatial models of two-party or two-candidate competition almost never have pure-strategy Nash equilibria when the issue space has more than one dimension. This paper shows that the introduction of valence issues can create conditions where equilibria exist, even in a multidimensional setting. We...