Sarah Binder, as usual, provides excellent insights into a difficult political problem in this post discussing the potential political and economic pitfalls of imposing greater transparency on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which essentially directs the Federal Reserve’s active participation in the economy, thereby having the most direct control over short-term interest rates and, accordingly, day-to-day … Read more
For whatever reason, I’m on a “data is complicated kick.” So, this story is one of many today discussing the gender gap in wages in ‘Merica. In a nutshell, President Obama pointed out “that women make, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns.” Critics (most notably the American Enterprise Institute) … Read more
In this post, Larry Bartels provocatively claims that Rich People Rule! In a nutshell, Bartels argues (correctly) that more and more political scientists are producing multiple and smart independent analyses of the determinants of public policy, one of which, by Kalla and Broockman, I have already opined on (“Donation Discrimination Denotes Deliverance of Democracy“). Bartel’s motivation … Read more
It’s been too long since I prattled into cyberspace. This Monkey Cage post by Kyle Dropp Joshua D. Kertzer & Thomas Zeitzoff caught my contrarian attention. In a nutshell, it says that those who are less informed about the location of Ukraine are more likely to support US military intervention. This is an intriguing and policy-relevant finding … Read more
A recent paper by Joshua Kalla & David Broockman has attracted some attention (for example, in this Washington Post story, Monkey Cage post, and this excellent, reflective post on Mischiefs of Faction by Jennifer Victor). In a nutshell, the paper reports the results of a well-designed field experiment that provides evidence that donations to a Member of Congress “open doors” in the … Read more
I’ve joked before with people that I liken social science models to rock songs. My actual mapping is horribly incomplete. So I’ll set that chatter to the side. That said, the practice of modeling, in my experience, is a lot like rock ‘n roll. You give me a topic, and I’ll think for a minute, … Read more
This post by Michael Moynihan, responding in part to this post by Thane Rosenbaum, asks how “free” free speech should be. The question of discriminating between different forms of speech—based on questions such as “is it knowingly false,” “how likely is it to incite violence,” and “is it political”—is an instantiation of an aggregation problem, exactly the … Read more
The debt ceiling drama is inexorably drawing to its next installment, and the question remains: when and, more importantly, how will a deal get done? To keep matters simple, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have stood by the long-standing pledge to not negotiate on the debt ceiling, but some Congressional Republicans have been pushing for … Read more
All is not well in Thaliand, where the opposition Democrat Party is calling for its supporters (some of whom have been actively protesting for months now) to boycott today’s parliamentary elections. Boycotting elections is not uncommon: indeed, opposition parties have recently boycotted elections in Bangladesh and the main Islamist opposition party is calling for a boycott … Read more
President Obama’s SOTU speech has revived interest in Presidential power. Erik Voeten (here) and Andrew Rudalevige (here) argue that Presidential unilateral action has declined in recent years, while Eric Posner argues here that “executive power has increased dramatically since World War II.” The question of presidential power is a classic one in political science. The recent debates illustrate three important … Read more