Brian L. Goff

Racial Integration as an Innovation: Empirical Evidence from Sports Leagues

This paper treats racial integration as an innovation in economic process in which economic entities find it advantageous to utilize potentially more productive inputs previously unavailable due to law, custom, or managerial discretion. Data on the racial integration of Major League Baseball and Atlantic Coast Conference basketball are employed to address this issue. The central question examined is which type of team integrated first—losers or winners? The results strongly support the idea that entrepreneurship trumps competitive rivalry; that is, winning teams led the process of racial integration.

Crime or punishment?: Enforcement of the NCAA football cartel

Abstract This paper presents theoretical and empirical evidence on the methods that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member schools use to detect violations of its cartel agreement. Because it is difficult to find direct evidence of cheating we suggest that the volatility of a schools winning percentage is used as a proxy by the NCAA rules has a detect violations. Empirical evidence also suggests that the enforcement of the NCAA rules has a redistributive effect that benefits consistent winners at the expense of up-and-coming schools.

Televised legislatures : political information, technology and public choice

1 The Architecture of Constitutions.- 2 Political Information Technology and Public Choice: Background.- Voter Shopping: Experience and Search.- Product Advertising and Information Theory.- Product Advertising as Political Advertising.- Technology and the Costs of Campaigning.- The Rational Voter Model.- Televised Legislatures.- History of Televised Legislatures.- Summary.- 3 Legislative Television: The Transformation of Politicians.- The Relationship Between Citizens and Politicians.- Political Services and the Content of Product Advertising.- Technology and the Relative Cost of Acquiring Political Information: Experience versus Search.- Summary.- 4 The Effect of Televising Legislatures on Elections: The Case of U.S. State Legislatures.- The Advantages to Incumbency in Televised Legislatures: State Lower Chamber.- Test for Reverse Causation.- State Upper Chambers.- Summary.- 5 The Effects of Televised Legislatures on Elections: The Case of the U.S. House of Representatives.- U.S. House Races: Before Versus After TV.- Test for Spurious Correlation.- Summary.- 6 The Effect of Televised Legislatures on the Output of Legislation.- A Model of Television and Legislative Outcomes.- Empirical Estimation.- Summary.- 7 The Politics of Adopting Televised Sessions.- Political Influences on Legislators.- Empirical Model of Support for Television in the U.S. Senate.- Summary.- 8 Modernity.- Appendix 1 Data Sources.- Appendix 2 Data.

Persistence in Government Spending Fluctuations: New Evidence on the Displacement Effect

In spite of Peacock and Wisemans 1961 NBER study demonstrating the “displacement effect”, simplistic theoretical and empirical distinctions between temporary and permanent spending are common. In this paper, impulse response functions from ARMA models as well as Cochranes non-parametric method support Peacock and Wisemans conclusion by showing 1) government spending in the aggregate displays strong persistence to temporary shocks, 2) simple decomposition methods intended to yield a “temporary” spending series have a weak statitistical foundation, and 3) persistence in spending has increased during this century. Also, as a basic “fact” of government spending behavior, the displacement effect lends support to interest group and bureaucracy models of government spending growth.

The Allocation of Death in the Vietnam War: A Public Choice Perspective

In this paper we explore a political aspect of military choices in time of war. We do not question the political origin of a military draft; we assume a draft exists. Our interest centers on the following issue: What is the probability that an individual will become a casualty in the war? We model this problem as being influenced by politics in the sense that assignment to combat or non-combat positions can be influenced by political considerations. Simply put, casualties across U.S. states will be a function of the political influence, especially in military affairs, of a states House and Senate delegations, ceteris paribus. To test this hypothesis, we develop an empirical model of casualties by state over the zenith of the Vietnam War period (1965-1971). The model includes both political influence and relevant demographic variables.

Bureaucratic Structure and Congressional Control

The interest-group theory of government (Stigler [9], Peltzman [7]) has generated many valuable insights into the workings of the political process. Although subsequent contributions to this literature (McCormick and Tollison [6], for example) have extended the theory to explain a wide variety of government behavior, the discussion of the political process tends to be carried out in terms of the interests of groups within the polity that either demand or supply wealth, and those of the legislators who broker the transfers. Little attention is normally paid to the bureaucratic organizations that enforce and, indeed, often set the policies that the legislature wishes to put in place. Exceptions are Eckert [1], who discussed how the personal incentives of regulators affect policy choices as a function of the costs and rewards of serving on a commission versus being employed by a bureaucratic agency, and Ehrlich and Posner [2], who offered a useful theoretical exposition based on legislative decision costs of why Congress delegates programs and policies to bureaus. In addition, Faith, Leavens, and Tollison [3] and Weingast and Moran [10] have shown that the composition of important oversight committees influences bureaucratic policymaking initiatives.

Racial Integration of Coaching Evidence From the NFL

Using National Football League (NFL) data from 1987 to 2007, we examine the hiring of African American head coaches. Our results partly support an innovation explanation in that integration proceeded more rapidly in larger population centers. In contrast, we find only mixed and weak evidence that winning organizations proceeded first in hiring Black managers as in the case of using Black players. This difference in the hiring process of management versus labor may reflect a difference in the relative importance of endowment versus training. Our evidence also indicates that individual owner preferences matter along with changes in social pressures over time. As with player integration, it appears that a full generation is needed for the process to work itself out.

Optimal Seigniorage, the Gold Standard, and Central Bank Financing

This paper extends the theory of optimal seigniorage to allow for money production costs. An important implication is tha t high money production costs, along with a requirement that the monet ary branch of government self-finance its operation, severs the connecti on between the tax rate on output and the tax rate on money. Using U.S. data, the authors find that tax rates on output and money move together only during periods when the government controls both tax rates and there is a close correspondence between revenue produced b y the monetary authority and revenue transferred to the treasury. Copyright 1993 by Ohio State University Press.

A MATCHED PAIRS ANALYSIS OF STATE GROWTH DIFFERENCES

The American states have provided a rich laboratory in which to examine influences on economic growth, physical capital, human capital, and a variety of policy variables. Existing studies typically use broad cross sections of all states or particular regional subsamples. Pairwise matching is an alternative design for better controlling of omitted variables. We estimate a growth model of U.S. states for 1997–2005 before and after applying different pairwise matching techniques. Our results indicate that sample estimates based on pairwise matching substantially improve the overall ability of the growth model to identify the growth‐enhancing effects of lower tax burdens in general and lower individual income‐tax rates in particular. These effects are more pronounced with narrower matching criteria.

Estimating Determinants of Passenger Air Service to Small Markets

The determinants of passenger air service to smaller US metropolitan areas and cities are examined with a data-set across almost 250 markets without federal Essential Air Service. Using a variety of regression techniques applicable to limited dependent variables, both the existence and the likelihood of air service as well as the intensity of service are investigated. The results indicate that market size, the proximity of a hub airport (of any size), the proximity of any airport offering passenger service and the close proximity of a resort or major military installation are influential in determining the existence and intensity of service. Estimates of marginal effects are derived and anomalous cases are examined.