When one side of a transaction knows more than the other, the market — or the institution — tends to attract the wrong participants and repel the right ones. Akerlof’s lemons, Gresham’s law, the politics of scandal, the design of oversight mechanisms. Posts here are about the structural consequences of asymmetric information, particularly when institutions fail to account for it.
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
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
As most things I encounter, This New York Times story got me to thinking about, well, me. Specifically, the article—discussing the Senate’s attempts to oversee the CIA’s interrogation programs—touches upon two strands of my research that, at first glance, might appear related only in that they both use mathematical models to analyze and characterize political phenomena. One … Read more
The IRS scandal, and in particular the handling (or, mishandling) of it by President Obama’s counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, has raised a classic question: what did the President know, and when did he know it? In my mind at least, the question is predicated on the presumption that the president ought to know everything that is going on … Read more
American politics lately has been centered on SCANDAL! In particular, President Obama has been at the center of several well-publicized controversies, ranging from Benghazi to the IRS to the Department of Justice. The politics of scandal is interesting. For example, in none of the current scandals is there any real evidence that President Obama “did” … Read more
The idea of a “permission structure” has attracted some attention this week. The basic idea of this phrase, it seems, is as follows: A doesn’t trust B to do some activity X because A fears that B does not have A’s best interests at heart in the “realm” of X. A good example of this … Read more
The US Senate is currently considering immigration reform, with a bipartisan group of Senators working toward a compromise on one of the higher profile post-election issues. At the same time, the Obama Administration has been preparing its own plan, which was leaked by USA Today. President Obama called on Congress to address the issue in … Read more
I have to be honest—I don’t actually know the criteria for being classified as naughty or nice by Santa. I also don’t know how I would find out. I do know that he flies around the world giving out “incentives” once a year. …It turns out that the Obama Administration is stealing a page from … Read more