Amihai Glazer

Congressional Responsiveness to Constituency Change

This paper uses the natural experiment of redistricting to measure how much congressmen adjust their positions when the prevailing opinion in their districts changes. The evidence indicates an appreciable amount of responsiveness. Ideological responsiveness is higher among congressmen who win reelection than among those not returned to office, and is greater among senior congressmen than among junior ones. Substantial differences appear on the group level, with Democrats following mostly liberal changes and Republicans following conservative ones.

The Strategy of Candidate Ambiguity

If candidates are uncertain about the policy position preferred by the median voter and therefore face the risk of stating an unpopular position, in equilibrium both candidates may prefer to make their positions ambiguous rather than to specify them. The incentives to be ambiguous are further increased if the position announced by one candidate allows the other candidate to estimate the preferences of the voters better.

Stable priority purchasing in queues

We consider an MG1 queueing system where each customer can purchase the priority with which he will be served. Customers may differ in their time valuation. They know the statistical distrubution of the queue length and amounts paid by others, but not their actual values. We determine the payment policy from which no customer will deviate as long as the others use it, and compare it to the first-come first-served discipline.

?/M/1: On the equilibrium distribution of customer arrivals

Abstract Each day a facility commences service at time zero. All customers arriving prior to time T are served during that day. The queuing discipline is First-Come First-Served. Each day, each person in the population chooses whether or not to visit the facility that day. If he decides to visit, he arrives at an instant of time such that his expected waiting time in the queue is minimal. We investigate the arrival rate of customers in equilibrium, where each customer is fully aware of the characteristics of the system. We show that the arrival rate is constant before opening time, but that in general it is not constant between opening and closing time. For the case of exponential distribution of service time, we develop a set of equations from which the equilibrium queue size distribution and expected waiting time can be numerically computed as functions of time.

Local regulation may be excessively stringent

Abstract A jurisdiction can export pollution by imposing regulations that induce firms causing the pollution to move elsewhere. Jurisdictions may therefore not “race to the bottom,” but instead impose excessively stringent regulations.

Allies as rivals: internal and external rent seeking

A Manager of other leader can more effectively obtain rents or other benefits for his organization the higher the quality of his staff. But these same staff may seek rents within the firm, with the most able staff best able to do so. A Manager may therefore prefer to employ staff of low quality.

More monitoring can induce less effort

Abstract If an agents compensation decreases sharply for observed shirking rates above a critical level, shirking may increase the more information the principal has about the agent. Furthermore, monitoring decisions may be deliberately assigned to poorly informed principals. Compensation methods that disregard some information may be optimal. Signals about the agent may reduce the expected profits of the principal.

A new theory of voting: Why vote when millions of others do

ConclusionI believe to have shown that a signalling model of voter behavior is bothconsistent with neo-classical economic theory, and in agreement withmany of the important features of the political system. I cannot provethat the theory is a correct one, only that the assumptions appearreasonable, that these assumptions lead to some testable predictions, andthat many of these predictions agree with the available evidence.The argument may appear to be discomforting to some; I often findit so. For the view here is that important decisions - war, peace, civil rights- are not made on the basis of considered judgment by the citizens.Instead, citizens realize that their votes will not matter and they there-fore do not vote to affect policy. Voters view politics as a game orentertainment; it is only one of many ways to impress ones friends orassociates, and fulfills the same function for many voters that designerjeans do.

Taxation of rent seeking activities

We consider taxes on firms which engage in rent-seeking contests. The taxes can be on realized profits or on rent-seeking expenditures, and the firms can engage in a context where either the hoghest bidder wins the prize, or else a firms probability of winning equals the ratio of its expenditures to expenditures by all firms. We find the deadweight loss, and cause no reduction in the profits of firms.

On the economics of subscriptions

Firms sell journals both by offering subscriptions, which provide the purchaser with all issues of the journal, and by selling individual copies at a comparatively high price. We show that by selling subscriptions in addition to individual copies a monopolist can price-discriminate, thereby increasing his profits, and that such price discrimination may increase the level of social welfare compared to a situation in which no subscriptions are sold.