Presidents and Patronage

Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Death: Closing the Constitution's Succession Gap

Optimal Patronage∗

We study the design of promotions in an organization where agents belong to groups that advance their cause. Examples and applications include political groups, ethnicities, agents motivated by the work in the public sector and corruption. In an overlapping generations model, juniors compete for promotions. Seniors have two kinds of discretion: direct discretion which allows an immediate advanc...

Academic patronage

Patronage, expansively conceived as covering all forms of bias and discrimination, is pervasive in organisations and professions, including academia. Four key types of academic patronage operate through decisions made, processes used, assistance given to individuals and personal interactions. Some forms of patronage, especially discrimination on the basis of gender and ethnicity, have come unde...

Underwriting the presidents.

The United States has had 43 presidents. We examined whether they survive significantly longer or shorter than their contemporaries. We found that survival was better for presidents elected in the 1789-1841 and 1933-2001 periods (SMRs of 0.7 and 0.6, respectively), but worse for those elected in 1845-1929 (SMR = 2.9). We also found increased mortality during the years lived in office (SMR = 1.4...

Presidents who value science.

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 323 13 FEBRUARY 2009 843 COVER An image of Mare Moscoviense on the lunar farside, taken by the Terrain Camera aboard the SELENE (Kaguya) spacecraft on 17 January 2008. Crater frequency distributions derived from such images yield ages of about 2.5 billion years for several volcanic deposits in this mare, indicating that volcanism on the lunar farside lasted about ...