Serving Two Masters

Serving two masters.

The title that I have chosen for the 108th Oration, to open the 1988 teaching session, is not an excuse to indulge in a theological discourse this is neither the time nor the place. Nor do I wish, as a joint appointment University staff member, to discuss the special arrangements in Belfast which accord such individuals a contract of employment with both the University and the Health Board. Suc...

Serving Two Masters: Using Referenda to Assess Partisan versus Dyadic Legislative Representation

Studies comparing the ideological leanings of voters and elected officials are often hampered by the lack of a common measure. The authors use legislative referenda—on which state legislators and voters both vote on the same issue—as bridging observations to develop a common measure for both. They use this measure to help assess two theories of legislative representation, the well-known dyadic ...

No one can serve two masters.

Masters of the universe: how power and accountability influence self-serving decisions under moral hazard.

This article provides an answer to the question of why agents make self-serving decisions under moral hazard and how their self-serving decisions can be kept in check through institutional arrangements. Our theoretical model predicts that the agents' power and the manner in which they are held accountable jointly determine their propensity to make self-serving decisions. We test our theory in t...

One RNA polymerase serving two genomes.

The land plant Arabidopsis thaliana contains three closely related nuclear genes encoding phage-type RNA polymerases (RpoT;1, RpoT;2 and RpoT;3). The gene products of RpoT;1 and RpoT;3 have previously been shown to be imported into mitochondria and chloroplasts, respectively. Here we show that the transit peptide of RpoT;2 possesses dual targeting properties. Transient expression assays in toba...