Working Papers Series
Papers below are in pdf.
Jeff Milyo
WP 13-01
Do State Campaign Finance Reforms Reduce Public Corruption?
Adriana Cordis & Jeff Milyo
The Supreme Court has long held that campaign finance regulations are permissible for the purpose of preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. Yet the implied hypothesis that campaign finance reforms are effective tools for combating public corruption has gone essentially untested. We conduct the first systematic evaluation of the effects of campaign finance laws on actual corruption rates in the states. We examine the effects of state reforms on both convictions and filings in public corruption cases over the last 25 years; overall, we find no strong or convincing evidence that state campaign finance reforms reduce public corruption. Earlier research that employs similar methods also finds little support for the contention that state campaign finance regulations increase public trust and confidence in government. Together, these results call into question the legal rationale for campaign finance regulations.
JEL Codes: D72, D78, H70, K40
Keywords: public corruption, campaign finance, regulation
WP 11-13
Health Insurance and Mortality in US Adults: A Cautionary Tale
Jenny Kim & Jeffrey Milyo
A 2009 observational study reported that private insurance status is associated with decreased mortality risk compared to no insurance. Employing the same statistical model but with more recent data, we observe a weaker and statistically insignificant relationship. However, Medicaid coverage is associated with increased mortality risk; the adjusted hazard ratio for Medicaid compared to no insurance is 1.32 (95% CI = 1.01, 1.72). These findings bolster concerns about using observational studies to understand the health consequences of insurance.
JEL Codes: I12, I18
Keywords: health, insurance, mortality
WP 11-12
Sincere Versus Sophisticated Voting When Legislators Vote Sequentially
Tim Groseclose & Jeffrey Milyo
Elsewhere (Groseclose and Milyo, 2010), we examine a game where each legislator has preferences over (i) the resulting policy and (ii) how he or she votes. The latter preferences are especially important when the legislator is not pivotal. We show that when the game follows the normal rules of legislatures - most important, that legislators can change their vote after seeing how their fellow legislators have voted - then the only possible equilibrium is one where all legislators ignore their policy preferences. That is, each legislator votes as if he or she is not pivotal. The result, consistent with empirical studies of Congress, suggests that legislators should tend to vote sincerely, rather than sophisticatedly. In this paper we examine how outcomes change if we change the rules for voting. Namely, instead of a simultaneous game, we consider a game where legislators vote sequentially in a pre-determined order. We show that, opposite to the simultaneous game, an alternative wins if and only if a majority of legislators' policy preferences favor that alternative. Our results suggest that if Congress adopted this change in rules, then sophisticated voting would become frequent instead of rare.
JEL Codes: A1, C7
Keywords: sophisticated voting
WP 08-13
How Do States Formulate Medicaid and SCHIP Policy? Economic and Political Determinants of State Eligibility Levels
Reagan Baughman & Jeffrey Milyo
We exploit the existence of substantial variation in state policies toward public health insurance for children between 1990 and 2002 to estimate the economic and political determinants of state eligibility levels. Controlling for state and year effects, eligibility levels are not significantly associated with either the percentage of uninsured children in the state or the eligibility policy of neighboring states; further, variation in eligibility levels within state is negatively associated with both the federal matching rate and state fiscal capacity. We also observe that state political preferences, measured by the Democrats’ share of seats in the lower chamber of the state legislature, are a relatively important a determinant of state eligibility levels. However, other political factors, such as party control of state government, voter turnout, legislative term limits and campaign finance regulations do not influence state eligibility levels.
JEL Codes: D78, H75, I78
Keywords: medicaid, SCHIP, political economy, race-to-the-bottom
WP 08-12
Explaining Public Attitudes on State Legislative Professionalism
David M. Konisky, Jeffrey Milyo & Lilliard E. Richardson, Jr.
Scholars have long argued that state legislative professionalism, or the provision of staff, legislator salary, and session length, has behavioral incentives for legislators and implications for legislative capacity. Scant attention, however, has been devoted to public attitudes on the provision of these legislative resources. Using survey data on preferences for features associated with a citizen legislature versus a professional legislature, we examine the contours of public attitudes on professionalism and test models on the factors associated with these attitudes. Results suggest partisanship, trust, and approval of the local delegation matter, but the factors differ by the legislative professionalism of the respondent’s state and for low versus high knowledge citizens.
JEL Codes: D72, H79, H83
Keywords: legislative professionalism, public opinion, political economy
WP 08-11
Environmental Policy Attitudes: Issues, Geographical Scale, and Political Trust
David M. Konisky, Jeffrey Milyo & Lilliard E. Richardson, Jr.
Objectives. This article examines environmental policy attitudes, focusing on
the differences in preferences across issue type (i.e., pollution, resource preservation)
and geographical scale (i.e., local, national, global). In addition, we study
whether an individual’s trust in government influences environmental policy attitudes.
Methods. Analyzing data from the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election
Study, we estimate a series of OLS regression models to examine the public’s
environmental policy attitudes. Results. We find stronger public support for government
action to address pollution issues than resources issues, and stronger support
for local and national pollution abatement than dealing with global problems.
We also find that Republicans and ideological conservatives are less likely to support
further government effort to address the environment, and that more trusting
individuals are more favorable to government action to address pollution and global
issues.
Conclusion. Environmental policy attitudes vary by the nature of the issue;
however, political ideology and partisan affiliation are consistent predictors of
preferences across issues, even when controlling for an individual’s level of trust in
government.
JEL Codes: Q5, H1, R5
Keywords: environment, NIMBY, public opinion, political economy
Published in Social Science Quarterly 2008
WP 06-03
Estimating the Impact of State Policies and Institutions with Mixed-Level Data
David M. Primo, Matthew L. Jacobsmeier & Jeffrey Milyo
Researchers often seek to understand the effects of state policies or institutions on individual behavior or other outcomes in sub-state-level observational units (e.g., election results in state legislative districts). However, standard estimation methods applied to such models do not properly account for the clustering of observations within states and may lead researchers to overstate the statistical significance of state-level factors. We discuss the theory behind two approaches to dealing with clustering—clustered standard errors and multilevel modeling. We then demonstrate the relevance of this topic by replicating a recent study of the effects of state post-registration laws on voter turnout (Wolfinger, Highton, and Mullin 2005). While we view clustered standard errors as a more straightforward, feasible approach, especially when working with large datasets or many cross-level interactions, our purpose in this Practical Researcher piece is to draw attention to the issue of clustering in state and local politics research.
JEL Codes: C10, D79, H79
Keywords: mixed-level data, voter turnout
WP 05-16
The Effects of Campaign Finance Laws on Turnout, 1950-2000
David M. Primo & Jeff Milyo
Scholars have proposed many routes by which campaign finance laws may impact turnout. For instance, laws restricting campaign spending may decrease mobilization, resulting in lower turnout. Alternatively, such laws might increase the competitiveness of elections, resulting in higher turnout. Existing studies tend to focus on only one causal pathway, ignoring the net effects of campaign finance reforms on voter turnout. We exploit the variation in state campaign finance laws from 1950 to 2000 in order to estimate the reduced-form relationships between reform and turnout. Using both aggregate and individual-level data, we find that campaign finance laws on net have little impact on turnout in gubernatorial elections. There are two exceptions to this finding: Limits on organizational contributions are shown in an individual level analysis to increase turnout prior to a sea change in campaign finance ushered in by the Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976, while public financing laws are shown to have an equally large negative impact on turnout in the post-Buckley era. These results strengthens the existing literature, which finds similarly perverse effects of public financing on the “quality of democracy,” and demonstrates the advantages of reduced-form analysis for understanding the influence of laws on behavior.
JEL Codes: D72, H79, K39
Keywords: voting, campaign finance
WP 05-13
Campaign Finance Laws and Political Efficacy: Evidence From the States
David M. Primo & Jeff Milyo
The decline of political efficacy and trust in the United States is often linked to the rise of money in politics. Both the courts and reform advocates justify restrictions on campaign donations and spending as necessary for the improvement of links between the government and the governed. We conduct the first test of whether campaign finance laws actually influence how citizens view their government by exploiting the variation in campaign finance regulations both across and within states during the last half of the 20th century. Our analysis reveals no large positive effects of campaign finance laws on political efficacy. Public disclosure laws and limits on contributions from organizations are in some cases associated with modest increases in efficacy, but public financing is associated with a similarly modest decrease in efficacy.
JEL Codes: D78, H8, Z13
Keywords: campaign finance, trust, social capital
Published in Election Law Journal 2006
WP 05-12
Did the Devil Make Them Do It? The Effects of Religion and Religiosity in Public Goods and Trust Games
Lisa R. Anderson, Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeff Milyo
We test whether religious affiliation and participation in religious services are associated with behavior in public goods and trust games. Overall, religious affiliation is unrelated to individual behavior. However, we find some weak evidence that among subjects attending religious services, increased participation is associated with behavior in both public goods and trust games.
JEL Codes: C9, H4 and Z12
Keywords: public goods, experiments, religion, trust
WP 05-02
An Experimental Study of the Effects of Inequality and Relative Deprivation on Trusting Behavior
Lisa R. Anderson, Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeff Milyo
Several non-experimental studies report that income inequality and other forms of population-based heterogeneity reduce levels of trust in society. However, recent work by Glaeser et al. (2000) calls into question the reliability of widely used survey-based measures of trust. Specifically, survey responses regarding trust attitudes did not reflect subjects’ actual behavior in a trust game. In this paper, we conduct a novel experimental test of the effects of inequality on trust and trustworthiness. Our experimental design induces inequality by varying the show-up fees paid to subjects, in contrast to previous experiments that focus on broad cultural or national differences in trust. We do not find robust support for the hypothesis that inequality per se dampens trusting behavior among all subjects; however, we do find some evidence that trust and trustworthiness are influenced by an individual’s relative position in the group. Finally, we confirm previous findings that common survey-based measures of social trust are not associated with actual trusting behavior.
JEL Codes: C9, Z13
Keywords: trust, social capital, heterogeneity, inequality, experiment
WP 05-01
A Measure of Media Bias
Tim Groseclose & Jeff Milyo
In this paper we estimate ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) scores for major media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, Fox News’ Special Report, and all three network television news shows. Our estimates allow us to answer such questions as “Is the average article in the New York Times more liberal than the average speech by Tom Daschle?” or “Is the average story on Fox News more conservative than the average speech by Bill Frist?” To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same groups in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. By comparing the citation patterns we construct an ADA score. As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, and suppose that the New York Times cited the first think tank twice as often as the second. Our method asks: What is the typical ADA score of members of Congress who exhibit the same frequency (2:1) in their speeches? This is the score that we would assign to the New York Times. Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as USA Today, NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC’s Nightly News and ABC’s World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC’s Good Morning America. Fox News’ Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks’ evening news broadcasts. All of our findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.
JEL Codes: D29, D79, H89
Keywords: media bias
Published in Quarterly Journal of Economics 2005
WP 04-19
State Social Capital and Individual Health Status
Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo
Recent studies have found that two state-level measures of social capital, average levels of civic participation and trust, are associated with improvements in individual health status. In this study we employ these measures, together with the Putnam (2000) index, to examine several key aspects of the relationship between state social capital and individual health. We find that for all three measures, the association with health status persists after carefully adjusting for household income, and that for two measures, mistrust and the Putnam index, the size of this association warrants further attention. Using the Putnam index, we find particular support for the hypothesis that social capital has a more pronounced salutary effect for the poor. Our findings generate both support for the social capital and health hypothesis and a number of implications for future research.
JEL Codes: I12, Z13
Keywords: social capital, health
Published in Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 2005
WP 04-18
Inequality, Group Cohesion, and Public Good Provision: An Experimental Analysis
Lisa Anderson, Jennifer Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo
Recent studies argue that inequality reduces group cohesiveness and dampens support for expenditures on public goods and social programs. In light of competing theoretical explanations and mixed empirical evidence of the effect of inequality on public goods provision, we conduct a test using a public goods experiment. Our design introduces inequality by manipulating the levels and distributions of fixed payments given to subjects for participating in the experiment. When made salient through public information about each individual’s standing within the group, inequality in the distribution of fixed payments reduces contributions to the public good for all group members.
JEL Codes: D31, H41, Z13
Keywords: public good, inequality, free rider
WP 04-17
Do Liberals Play Nice? The Effects of Party and Political Ideology in Public Goods and Trust Games
Lisa Anderson, Jennifer Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo
We test the conventional wisdom that political ideology is associated with generosity or compassion by comparing the behavior of experimental subjects in public goods or trust games. We find that self-described liberals and those identifying more closely with the Democrat party are just as likely to free-ride as conservatives or Republican-leaners; likewise, political ideology is unrelated to observed trusting behavior or trustworthiness in a bilateral trust game.
JEL Codes: D63, H41
Keywords: political party, free rider
chapter in: Advances in Applied Microeconomics: Experimental and Behavioral Economics. John Morgan, Ed. JAI Press: Stamford, CT 2005