John E. Jackson

Ideology, Interest Group Scores, and Legislative Votes

This article reviews writings by economists and political scientists on the importance of ideology in governmental decision making. We consider various problems in this research, discuss several shortcomings in these recent studies in the context of the larger literature on legislative behavior, and demonstrate the statistical inconsistency of the commonly used methodologies based on interest group scores.

Firm creation and economic transitions

Virtually all industrial countries are experiencing some form of transformation in their economies, from the dramatic move from centrally planned to market economies in East-central Europe, to the rebuilding of the economies in the so-called Rust Belt of the USA, to the efforts by Asian countries to return to their recent high growth levels. The analysis builds on the work of Schumpeter, Hannan and Freeman, and Kornai to develop a picture of an economy as an evolutionary process in which the creation, survival and growth of firms is the key to continued growth. This entrepreneurial activity is vital to successful transformations at critical points when the existing enterprises are not well suited to market conditions - what Schumpeter refers to as creative destruction. This paper uses detailed data on the transitions in the Polish and Michigan economies to present evidence to support these propositions. Showing that the successful transformation of two economies with obvious historical differences both depended upon the creation of new firms rather than on the restructuring of existing firms shows that entrepreneurial activity is a universal necessity.

Election Night Reporting and Voter Turnout

This report gives the results of the analysis of data collected from a subset of the respondents in the 1980 Presidential Election Study, which ascertained what time of day the person voted, what election night news they heard, and when they heard that news. This analysis indicates that many people heard projections of the presidential election outcome before the local polls closed, that hearing news of the projected outcome decreased the likelihood of voting among those who had not already voted, and that exposure affected the likelihood of turnout among Republicans more than among Democrats (although Democrats were less likely than Republicans to vote late on election day).

Constituencies and Leaders in Congress: Their Effects on Senate Voting Behavior.

1. Legislative Behavior and the Determinants of Public Policy 2. A Model of Legislative Voting Behavior 3. Measuring Senate Voting Behavior 4. Voting Behavior of Individual Senators 5. Estimates of 1963 Voting Behavior: A Test of the Models 6. Voting Behavior on Specific Legislation 7. Constituencies, Leaders, and Public Policy Appendixes A: The Development of the Constituency Variables B: Problems of Guttman Scaling, Functional Form, and Coefficient Estimation Notes Index

THE ATTITUDINAL CLIMATE FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY

Successful entrepreneurial activity is a major source of job creation and a vital part of a healthy market economy. This article examines the attitudes that, taken collectively within a region, may contribute to a climate that is conducive to and supportive of this activity. Four different components that char- acterize these attitudes are identified-the willingness to take risks and accept the possibility of failure, the perceived difficulty of starting new firms, the importance and respect accorded to new and small firms and their owners, and the socialization chil- dren are likely to receive from their parents. These attitudinal components are related to measures of the structure and perfor- mance of the respondents local economy and to individual fac- tors. The most important finding is that pro-entrepreneurial atti- tudes are lower among individuals working in large organizations and among those who live in areas dominated by large organiza- tions regardless of the size of their own employer. Other mea- sures of the local economy, such as past success in creating new businesses, were not associated with differences in attitudes. At- titudes also are related to individual attributes such as age and income.

Economic Transition and Elections in Poland

Polands economic and political transition, one of the most successful transitions, has depended very heavily on the job creation in new firms to replace the jobs lost in the formerly state-owned enterprises. This uses evidence from both survey and aggregate data to analyze four Polish elections during the transition. These analyses indicate that these de novo firms, the individuals they employ, and the residents in the local areas where they exist become an important constituency supporting pro-reform political parties and constraining the actions of parties less sympathetic to the reforms. The creation of this political constituency helps explain how countries can successfully pursue both economic and political reforms.

Democratic Institutions and Economic Reform: The Polish Case

Analysis of the economic transformation of the Polish economy and of the 1993 elections for Parliament suggest that it is possible to proceed with pro-market and democratic reforms simultaneously. As demonstrated by the Polish case, the key to this process is the rate at which new enterprises are created. These enterprises, not the privatization of existing ones, are responsible for the creation of a private economy. This evolving new economy based on firm creation and growth creates a pro-reform constituency in the regions where it is occurring. This constituency provides strong support for pro-reform parties. The Polish case also illustrates how electoral rules and their interaction with the evolution of pro-reform constituencies affect the representation of pro-reform interests. The Polish case offers important lessons about the reform process and about the way scholars conceptualize political-economic processes.

Bank structure and new business creation lessons from an earlier time

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between bank structure and the birth and growth of new manufacturing firms. It also extends and tests a path-dependent model of new firm creation that incorporates an agglomeration hypothesis. The results indicate that the rates of birth and growth of new manufacturing firms are negatively related to average bank size and the presence of interest rate ceilings, and positively associated with the degree of local bank concentration. The results also confirm the agglomeration and path-dependent hypotheses.

Politics and the budgetary process

Abstract A set of equations incorporating alternative explanations of municipal expenditures is estimated using data from Cleveland, Ohio. One explanation is the determinants of demand or external theory, the second is the bureaucratic or internal explanation, and the third is a political or electoral approach. This latter view accepts the notion that mayors, department heads and financial officers may behave in a bureaucratic fashion. However, the political explanation contends that mayors are elected to and remain in office on their ability to provide the services desired by their constituents. This political explanation was tested by including variables measuring the different budgetary strategies followed by the three post-World War II municipal administraitons in Cleveland. These differences refer to each administrations decisions on the overall size of the public sector and to the different expenditure priorities within this total budget. Additional variables were included to represent the determinants model, e.g., crime rates, population, and income and the bureaucratic model, e.g., a constant incremental increase and changes in total revenues. The results suggest that all three explanations have some validity as well as some shortcomings. Changes in budgetary strategies could be associated with changes in administrations for some expenditures. At the same time, the demand-related variables were significant in many equations, as was the change in total revenue variable. One conclusion from these results is that administrations and elections are important and that the next step is to relate these changes directly to the electoral process.

Studying (Small) Businesses with the Michigan Employment Security Commission Longitudinal Data Base

This paper addresses the usefulness of a longitudinal data file constructed from records on employers from the Michigan Employment Security Commission. We describe the main features of the data file, which includes quarterly (and in some cases, monthly) data from the third quarter of 1978 through the first quarter of 1983, plus the fourth quarters of 1983–87. We then illustrate the uses of the data with two examples: (1) studying changes in the Michigan economy, in particular the early growth and survival of new units of different sizes; and (2) studying the behavior of wages and employment following changes in ownership.