Adjudicating Death: Professionals or Politicians?

Professionals or Politicians: The Uncertain Empirical Case for an Elected Rather than Appointed Judiciary

Conventional wisdom holds that appointed judges are superior to elected judges because appointed judges are less vulnerable to political pressure. However, there is little empirical evidence for this view. Using a data set of state high court opinions, we construct measures for three aspects of judicial performance: effort, skill, and independence. The measures permit a test of the relationship...

Political Careers or Career Politicians?∗

Two main career paths are prevalent among politicians in modern democracies: there are career politicians (i.e., politicians who work in the political sector until retirement), and political careers (i.e., there are politicians who leave politics before retirement and work in the private sector). In this paper, we propose a dynamic equilibrium model of the careers of politicians in an environme...

Politicians : be killed or survive Benno

In the course of history, a large number of politicians have been assassinated. To investigate this phenomenon, rational choice hypotheses are developed and tested using a large data set covering close to 100 countries over a period of 20 years. Several strategies, in addition to security measures, are shown to significantly reduce the probability of politicians being attacked or killed: extend...

Why Politicians Like Electoral Institutions: Self-interest, Values, or Ideology?

Are Pacs Trying to Influence Politicians or Voters?

Political Action Committees (PACs) can a€ect public policies in either of two ways: altering legislators' roll-call voting behavior, or in ̄uencing election outcomes. This paper develops a dynamic model demonstrating that the relative importance of the election-in ̄uencing channel is easily underestimated. A one-time contribution to a candidate who supports the PAC's position that alters an elect...