We study a legislative assembly that chooses its agenda protocol endogenously. We generalize McKelvey and Riezman’s (1992) seminal theory on seniority in legislatures, by allowing for a large class of ordinal agenda rules that assign different recognition probability to each legislator. We consider two stages — the selection of agenda rules, and the decision making that transpires under them. W...

Introduction On January 16, 2007, the Health and Human Services Committees and the Appropriations Health Subcommittees of both the Georgia House and Senate, with support from the Georgia Health Policy Center, sponsored a session to help legislators understand Certifi cate of Need (CON) within a range of health care system issues. The session, attended by more than 91 Georgia legislators, provid...

We study repeated legislative bargaining in an assembly that chooses its bargaining rules endogenously, and whose members face an election after each legislative term. An agenda protocol or bargaining rule assigns to each legislator a probability of being recognized to make a policy proposal in the assembly. We predict that the agenda protocol chosen in equilibrium disproportionately favors mor...

For decades state legislators have called for mandatory insurance laws, some legislators arguing their view that drivers of uninsured vehicles are high risk and a public safety problem. In opposing such laws, however, insurers respond that drivers of uninsured cars closely resemble drivers of insured cars. Despite opposition by insurers, to date 48 states have adopted mandatory insurance. Since...

Recent passage of the Massachusetts law, An Act Relative to Substance Use, Treatment, Education, and Prevention, represents an admirable public health approach to substance use disorder (SUD), a stigmatized chronic disease that affects some of society's most vulnerable people. With its seven-day supply limit on first-time opioid prescriptions, this legislation takes an unusual approach to state...

We demonstrate that legislation has a simple, yet previously undetected impact on stock prices. Exploiting the voting record of legislators whose constituents are the affected industries, we show that the votes of these “interested” legislators capture important information seemingly ignored by the market. A long-short portfolio based on these legislators’ views earns abnormal returns of over 9...

Do legislators remain at one point on the ideological spectrum for their entire careers, or do they update their ideological positions in response to the demands of constituents? Although theories of the electoral connection predict that legislators should adapt to voter demands, most empirical studies instead show that they maintain consistent positions in the face of changing political condit...

campaign contributions from the tobacco industry can influence legislators’ tobaccorelated policy decisions. To our knowledge, there have been no published accounts of tobacco industry contributions to Canadian legislators. As part of a broader study examining Canadian legislators’ attitudes toward tobacco control policies and possible factors that influence those attitudes, we have documented ...