1,721,336 research outputs found
Drivers Wanted: Motor Voter and the Election of 1996
Full text linkThe first presidential election following implementation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 was also the first in the lifetimes of most Americans in which a minority of the voting-age population bothered to vote. While that outcome must be a source of embarrassment to many reform advocates, this study has shown that the turnout decline was in fact substantially slowed by registration reform. Moreover, the full effects of the key “motor voter” innovation have yet to be felt in at least two-thirds of the states, representing more than three quarters of the voting-age population. Similarly, the disproportionately large turnout decline among the young would have been even more extreme in the absence of reform, based on evidence obtained in this study. Little evidence of other progressive effects--by race, education, income, or mobility status--is found however. Finally, although partisan identification and presidential voting moved in the Democrats’ direction between 1992 and 1996, registration reform appears to have slightly favored the Republicans. The shift toward Democratic ID and voting was largest in the states with the least reform, while the largest shift away from Democratic ID occurred in the states with the most extensive reform.Voting, Elections
Empowerment as a zero-sum game
Full text linkEmpowerment of the poor does not necessarily make them better off – or make the non-poor worse off. In some cases, empowerment may be inefficient, i.e. a negative-sum game. In other cases, it is a zero-sum game, as the poor can benefit only at the expense of someone else. But in many cases, it can be positive-sum, and these opportunities should be identified and pursued by reformers. Attempts by donor organizations and NGOs to empower the poor should focus on means by which the poor are likely to be made better off without making others worse off. Not only is this approach consistent with efficiency, it will also often be the only politically feasible way to empower the poor.empowerment, development, poverty, inequality, institutinoal development, democracy
Does motor voter work? Evidence from state-level data
Full text linkUsing time-series cross-section data on state-level registration and turnout, "motor voter" registration programs mandated by the National Voter Registration Act are found to be effective in enhancing voter participation in the states that have already adopted them. A "duration" specification for motor voter is introduced as an alternative to a simple dummy variable specification, as the typical length of states' driver's license renewal cycles implies that not all drivers have had an opportunity to register via motor voter until several elections after implementation of the program. Registration effects are estimated to reach about 13 percentage points, with a turnout impact of roughly half of that level. As very few states to date have "mature" programs in effect, most of this potential impact of motor voter has yet to be realized. Little evidence is found that mail-in or agency registration, also mandated by the NVRA, affect participation rates.voting, elections
Boondoogles and expropriation : rent-sseking and policy distortion when property rights are insecure
Full text linkMost analyses of property rights and economic development point to the negative influence of insecure property rights on private investment. The authors focus instead on the largely unexamined effects of insecure property rights on government policy choices. They identify one significant anomaly-dramatically higher public investment in countries with insecure property rights-and use it to make the following broad claims about insecure property rights; 1) They increase rent-seeking. 2) They may reduce the incentives of governments to use tax revenues for productive purposes, such as public investment. 3) They do so whether one regards the principal problem of insecure property rights as the maintenance of law and order, which government spending can potentially remedy, or as the threat of expropriation by government itself, and therefore not remediable by government spending. The authors present substantial empirical evidence to support these claims.Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,National Governance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Land and Real Estate Development
Roll-off at the top of the ballot: intentional undervoting in American presidential elections
Full text linkEvery four years, more than 2% of voters fail to cast a valid vote in the U.S. presidential contest. The 2000 election highlighted the fact that many intended votes are voided because of voter confusion associated with complicated ballot designs or voting equipment. Using survey data, this study provides estimates of the proportion of voided presidential ballots that do not represent errors but rather intentional undervotes. Voters who are older, poorer, and who do not identify with either major party are more likely to intentionally refrain from casting a presidential vote. African American-white differences are very minor, implying that racial disparities in the rate of voided votes cannot be attributed to a stronger tendency among African American voters to intentionally skip the presidential contest.voting, elections, turnout
Governance and growth: measurement and evidence
Full text linkThis paper describes the gradual accumulation of indicators and evidence of the links between governance and growth, focusing on broad cross-country analyses. While each governance indicator developed thus far is in some way imperfect, the faults of some measures are entirely independent from those of others. Therefore, in aggregate, the totality of indicators point in the same direction: good governance is crucial for growth. Unfortunately, while current indicators are getting better at determining the quality of governance, they still are unable to implicate particular institutional arrangements that donors should devote their attention and resources towards. Moreover, the subjectivity of some indicators invites suspicion from local governments and makes reform difficult.governance, growth, institutional development
Social capital, growth and poverty: a survey of cross-country evidence
Full text linkThis chapter surveys the major contributions to the rapidly growing empirical literature on social capital and economic performance, focusing primarily on cross-country approaches. It first addresses characteristics of governments that fall under broad definitions of the term social capital. It then reviews studies of “civil,” or nongovernmental, social capital. Most of this literature explores the determinants of growth in per capita income, devoting no attention to distributional effects. This chapter is a preliminary attempt to fill that gap by providing new cross-country evidence on the effects of social capital on poverty and the distribution of income. This chapter is limited primarily to cross-country studies of social capital and economic performance. It does not attempt to comprehensively review regional-, village-, or individual-level analysis or the expanding literature on social capital’s impact on noneconomic outcomes, such as health, education, or crime. Nor does it examine the rapidly growing body of work that explores the determinants of social capital.social capital, development, trust, norms
Who Uses Inferior Voting Technology?
Full text linkIn this article, we report on the incidence of punch-card and other voting equipment by ethnicity, incomes and other variables, combining county-level demographic data from the Census Bureau with county-level data on voting equipment collected by Election Data Services, Inc. Our findings, widely reported in the national print and electronic media in late January and February of 2001, provide remarkably little support for the view that resource constraints cause poorer counties with large minority populations to retain antiquated or inferior voting equipment.voting, elections
Donor fragmentation and bureaucratic quality in aid recipients
Full text linkThis paper analyzes the impact of donor fragmentation on the quality of government bureaucracy in aid-recipient nations. A formal model of a donor's decision to hire government administrators to manage donor-funded projects predicts that the number of administrators hired declines as the donor's share of other projects in the country increases, and as the donor's"altruism"(concern for the success of other donors'projects) increases. These hypotheses are supported by cross-country empirical tests using an index of bureaucratic quality available for aid-recipient nations over the 1982-2001 period. Declines in bureaucratic quality are associated with higher donor fragmentation (reflecting the presence of many donors, each with a small share of aid), and with smaller shares of aid coming from multilateral agencies, a proxy for donor"altruism."Economic Adjustment and Lending,Decentralization,Health Economics&Finance,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Public Health Promotion,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Health Economics&Finance,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation
The correlation between human capital and morality and its effect on economic performance : theory and evidence
Full text linkThis paper incorporates morality -- defined as lower utility from consuming goods obtained through appropriative rather than productive activities -- into a simple static general equilibrium model in which agents choose whether to be producers or appropriators. The authors analyze the relationship between the correlation between morality and human capital on the one hand, and aggregate economic performance on the other. They show that there is a main effect that tends to cause this relationship to be positive, and that there can be secondary effects thatcan either rein-force or oppose (or even overbalance) the main effect. They test the theory using the World Val-ues Survey as a source of proxies for morality. Using their preferred proxy, they find evidence that higher within-country correlation between morality and ability, holding constant the levels of morality and ability, increases per-capita income levels. Under the preferred specification, a one-standard-deviation increase in the correlation between morality and ability raises the log of per-capita income by about one-fourth of a standard deviation, equal to approximately $3,600 for the median income country in the sample. The results are robust to correcting for endogeneity and to changes in sample and specification. The results are mixed when the analysis uses alternative morality proxies, but the coefficient on the morality-ability correlation is still usually positive and statistically significant.Educational Sciences,Teaching and Learning,Economic Theory&Research,Ethics&Belief Systems,Statistical&Mathematical Sciences
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