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Abstract Public pay-for-performance (P4P) programs tie hospital payments to predetermined sets of quality measures and are intended to encourage or discourage certain outcomes. To the extent that financial penalties from these programs induce some response by hospitals, such penalties may translate into higher negotiated payments from commercial insurance payers. In this paper, we employ data on commercial insurance payments from a large, multi-payer database to study the extent to which penalties levied under the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) and the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) program, two major P4P components of the Affordable Care Act, caused changes in private hospital payments. We find that the bulk of any penalties resulting from HRRP and HVBP are borne by private insurance patients in the form of higher private insurance payments. Specifically, we show that HRRP and HVBP financial penalties led to increases in private payments of 1.9 percent, with effects concentrated among circulatory system procedures. These penalties were also associated with a 3.1 percent reduction in Medicare discharges. Our estimates are larger for hospitals with higher shares of privately insured patients, which suggests the importance of hospital bargaining power in facilitating higher commercial insurance payments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes and estimates a static transferable utility model of the marriage market. The model generates a nonparametric marriage matching function with spillover effects. It rationalizes the standard interpretation of marriage rate regressions and points out its limitations. The model was used to estimate U.S. marital behavior in 1971/72 and 1981/82. The marriage matching function estimates show that the gains to marriage for young adults fell substantially over the decade. Unlike contradictory marriage rate regression results, the marriage matching function estimates showed that the legalization of abortion had a significant quantitative impact on the fall in the gains to marriage for young men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends Stigler and Pehzman's approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature. The model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications. The paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior. The first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion; the second assumes that Congress controls agency decisions. The recent behavior of the Federal Trade Commission provides the empirical setting. Substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model, including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over FTC decisions. In this paper, we develop a model of agency decision making based on the premise that agencies are controlled by the legislature. We argue, therefore, that to understand the genesis of agencies, as well as the stability and change in agency policy, we must understand the underlying legislative politics. With this in mind, we develop a model of legislative choice. The model characterizes the nature of policy equilibrium and, perhaps more important, it yields comparative statics results that lead to predictions about policy change. Following the theoretical development of the model, we turn to an empirical application that tests the specific assertions of our model as well as the hypothesis of legislative control. The recent changes occurring at the FTC and the relation of these changes to Congress provide the setting for our tests. We find substantial evidence for both the hypothesis of legislative control and the predictions of our specific model of Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of evidence from state public utility commissions, we find that revolving-door laws--laws that restrict the post-government-employment opportunities of public sector workers, including public utility regulators--do not do much, at least with respect to electricity prices. In this paper, we take advantage of a quasi experiment afforded by the fact that revolving-door laws were introduced in different states at different times to investigate their effects on electricity prices. Our findings suggest that while revolving-door laws temporarily dampen industrial electricity prices, they have no effect on commercial or residential prices. There is also some evidence that these regulations affect the characteristics of state public utility commissioners; commissioners from states with revolving-door regulations serve shorter terms and are less likely to be subsequently employed in the private sector, compared with their counterparts from states without revolving-door laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much empirical research has been devoted to the study of “killer amendments” in recent years, few studies have explicitly examined the theoretical foundations of the phenomenon. The goal of this paper is to investigate why some killer amendment attempts are successful, when theory suggests that they should always fail. More specifically, we examine the practical political constraints on legislators’ abilities to neutralize the imminent threat of killer amendments through sophisticated voting. We also present two new cases, both occurring during the Reconstruction era, in which killer amendments were used successfully. In the end, our findings support previous research on all successful killer amendments detailed in the congressional literature: race was the issue under consideration at the amendment stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes effect of legally mandating codetermination rights on corporate operations and performance in West Germany. During the recent past, West Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, and Luxembourg introduced or expanded legislation requiring corporations to grant worker representatives voting power on their governing boards. This paper analyzes the effect of legally mandating these codetermination rights on corporate operations and performance. Opponents, however, argue that codetermination expropriates firm owners, furthers the separation of ownership and control of productive resources, reduces investment incentives, and worsens the working environment. Surprisingly, given the heated debate typically surrounding the issue, the author find little evidence that codetermination has any effect. This result suggests that employees are unable or unwilling to affect management decisions, possibly because they lack a common objective.

Increases in oil and gas prices and the decline of nuclear power have led to an increase in the competitiveness of coal. This change in relative economics has been particularly great for the six western coal-producing states where large low cost deposits of environmentally acceptable low-sulfur coal are found. Montana and Wyoming have responded to this situation by raising severance taxes substantially, and other states are considering similar actions. This has led to congressional attempts to limit state coal taxes. Using an integrated model of the U.S. coal and electric utility industries, this paper estimates how high coal severance taxes might rise with and without such legislation. Competition and incentives for cooperation between Montana, Wyoming, and other western states arc examined. Efficiency and distributional implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Amid rising opioid-related deaths and hospital use, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law, with the central coverage provisions implemented in 2014. We leverage these ACA coverage expansions (including Medicaid expansion and Marketplaces) to study the impact of health insurance on opioid-related emergency department (ED) visits while accounting for potentially confounding changes in relevant state-level policies. We use zip code–level ED utilization data from the 2010–18 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) State Inpatient Databases (SID) and State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD) for 29 states. In difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) models that compared low- and high-uninsurance areas within states, we found evidence of a dose-response relationship between pre-ACA uninsurance and changes in ED visit rates in both expansion and non-expansion states: areas with higher uninsurance rates prior to the ACA saw larger reductions in opioid-related ED visits after the ACA took effect. Effects were also time-varying, with no significant dose-response relationship emerging until the third year of ACA implementation. These estimates suggest that increasing insurance coverage among the uninsured may help mitigate harms of the opioid crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains legislative effectiveness in multiparty presidential systems? We explore the role of the president in a multiparty legislature without a majority party and develop several theoretical expectations regarding ties to the president's party, the role of opposition parties, and the importance of controlling certain committees to explain legislative effectiveness. Drawing upon data from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and a new measure of legislative effectiveness adaptable to other legislatures, we argue that legislators who share partisanship with the president are often constrained by the executive branch. Thus, legislators from governing parties are generally less effective when it comes to their own legislative initiatives. Deputies from opposition parties do not face these same restrictions, and consequently, are generally more effective at navigating their own proposals through the legislative process. These findings extend to the committee level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kelo decision provoked considerable legislative activity as 46 states adopted legislation on eminent domain in its aftermath. Only about half adopted restrictions that were more than symbolic, however. This paper examines those responses using a logistic regression analysis and finds that all else equal: (1) states where legislatures were more constrained by tax and expenditure limits were less likely to adopt substantive restrictions; (2) a larger number of Republicans in the state legislature made a state more likely to adopt a substantive restriction; (3) overall Republican strength (as measured by gubinatorial elections) made states less likely to adopt a substantive response, suggesting political competitiveness not ideology motivated action; (4) there was no evidence that measures of an electorate's overall ideology (with respect to environmental, liberal, or conservative causes) made a difference; (5) economically growing states were more likely to adopt substantive restrictions; and (6) greater degrees of inequality and larger African-American populations were not correlated with the type of response. Taken together, these results suggest a public choice model of legislative action, rather than an ideological one, with legislatures facing other constraints (e.g. TEL and slower growth) being less likely to give up valuable eminent domain powers and legislatures where adoption of real reform was less costly (faster growth) or more beneficial (more competitive political environments) more likely to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act transformed welfare from an ongoing cash assistance program by restricting participation through time limits and emphasizing rapid entrance into the labor force. Changes in welfare dependency induced by these legal reforms had the potential to impact rates of domestic violence. Using decennial census, welfare caseload, and police report data, this paper investigates the introduction of time Limits and work mandates across Connecticut towns. For a variety of reasons, Connecticut proves to be an ideal laboratory from which to obtain evidence. We find that rates of domestic violence fell in Connecticut with the passage of the new welfare Law, especially in towns most subject to the law's provisions. Using Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report data, we also find evidence that such results hold independent of the reform's effects on other personal crimes and crimes in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How should social scientists measure institutional complexity? Formal (textually defined) institutional design—and particularly the complexity of formal institutions—is an important object of study across political science, law, and public administration. However, because of measurement constraints, existing work on formal institutional design focuses either on single policy areas or "important" legislation, creating clear selection problems. In this article, I propose and validate a novel natural language processing approach designed to extract networks of institutional relationships from legal texts scalably. These "implementing networks" offer a straightforward way to represent the institutional content of law and naturally suggest measures for quantities like institutional complexity. I then apply this method to measure institutional complexity in all American laws enacted from 1993 to 2014. This approach reveals a surprising disconnect between partisan disagreement and institutional complexity among lower-profile legislation, which would have been difficult to detect without this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information related to Bush-Leaguers teed up several cases based on a seemingly plausible but ultimately preposterous constitutional theory that had won the support of three notable justices back in 2000. Topics discussed includes Article II that permits states to use its "legislature", also errors and evils of Bush v. Gore that went far beyond the Independent State Legislature (ISL) ideas at the heart of the Rehnquist-Scalia Thomas concurrence.

This article examines the effects of the Mexican debt moratium in August 1982 on foreign loans. The announcement by Mexico in August 1982 of a moratorium on foreign debt payments provided the primary impetus for the passage of regulations and legislation requiring public disclosure by banks of foreign loan exposure. The study examines empirically whether investors were able to distinguish among banks with differing degrees of lending exposure to Mexico. The authors study a sample of banks known ex post to have made loans to Mexico and a sample of banks that had not Mexican exposure. The findings of this study represent one piece of evidence for evaluating the bank exposure regulations currently in effect. For atleast two reasons, however, the relation between abnormal returns and exposure could not conclusively test the critical regulatory assumption and the desirability of these mandatory disclosure rules. While the Mexican debt crisis was a culmination of escalating liquidity problems, the critical time period concerning Mexico's default on foreign loans was the third week in August 1982.

The U.S. Coinage Act of 1873 eliminated provision for the free coinage of silver. That act cast the die for a gold standard. The conventional view is that "the act of 1873 was a piece of good fortune." This paper indicates that it was the opposite—a mistake that had highly adverse consequences. This is a judgment about 1873, not 1896. By 1896, when William Jennings Bryan ran for president on a "free-silver ticket," it was too late to undo the damage. Bryan was trying to close the barn door after the horse had been stolen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the publication of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that offers information on the work of the bureau. It discusses the objectives of the publication in which it intends to present economic facts and interpretation in scientific manner. It offers information on the work of the president of the bureau wherein he or she performs internal review to assure that the publication do not contain policy recommendations.

Scholars and other congressional observers argue that the erosion of so-called regular order legislative processes exacerbates partisan conflict in Congress. In this article, we investigate whether laws passed via more unorthodox and leadership-led legislative processes garner less bipartisan support than those passed under regular order processes. Drawing on an original data set of important laws passed by Congress from 1987 to 2016 (the 100th–114th Congresses), we find little connection between violations of regular order and the amount of partisanship observed on either initial or final passage votes. In-depth interviews with long-time members of Congress and high-level congressional staffers reveal that centralized and unorthodox processes are frequently used not to pass partisan bills but because these methods are efficient in resolving legislative impasses. The flexibility and secrecy permitted by unorthodox processes can assist in negotiating agreements to enact even highly bipartisan legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a model to analyze the effects of complexity of policy areas on the desirability of bundling or unbundling policy-making authority. We find that bundling tends to increase political accountability when the complexities of bundled policy areas are sufficiently symmetric and decrease it when the complexities are sufficiently asymmetric. When bundling is beneficial, its advantage comes from the possibility of sustaining in equilibrium a mechanism that makes greater investment into policy in multiple issue areas a form of insurance purchase for the officeholder. The appeal of such insurance purchases and the edge they give to bundling persist in the presence of the possibility of policy capture by special interests, upending the conventional wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional political economy models such as those founded on the work of Duncan Black and Anthony Downs cannot capture certain important features of the dynamics of policy outcomes in the United States. Because these models assume that policy change is directly responsive to the median voter, they cannot address questions about policy gridlock and drift. Because the Black-Downs model assumes that only the median matters, it assumes away other changes to the distribution of preferences of voters and legislators. In particular, it cannot address the potential consequences of polarization for policy outcomes, gridlock, or uncertainty. I argue that the pivotal politics framework of Keith Krehbiel may be quite useful in understanding the relationship between political polarization and policy uncertainty in addition to its traditional application to the study of gridlock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the value of committee service to an individual legislator? Self-selection and party control of appointments typically obscure this relationship. We estimate the causal effect of committee service on legislative behavior and parliamentary careers by exploiting a natural experiment in the French Third Republic (1870–1940). Yearly lotteries divided the legislature into groups that nominated members to the budget committee, and we use the random composition of these groups as an instrument for individual appointment. We find that appointment increased legislative entrepreneurship concerning budget legislation but not other types, suggesting that committee members acquire specialized expertise. Committee service also led to ministerial appointment but not to higher office that does not require specific policy expertise, such as party or senatorial positions. Finally, we discuss alternative mechanisms, including reputation effects, political networks, and distributional targeting via pork barrel legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a theory of agenda setting in a legislature. A proposer supports a platformcomprising several policies. Policies are divisible and can be bundled--the proposer can slice each policy into parts, and she can aggregate the various policy parts into bills. The proposer chooses an agenda, which is a collection of bills. The legislature votes each bill up or down, and all the policy parts in each approved bill are implemented. We address the following questions: In equilibrium, which agenda is chosen? What are the consequences for voters? What are the implications for institutional design?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the intuition that in supermajoritarian settings, polarization and policy-making gridlock are fundamentally linked but that a pressing common problem can reduce both. When actors' individual costs from a policy addressing such a problemdiffer, their preferences over the appropriate policy respond asymmetrically to increases in the magnitude of the problem. In a broad range of circumstances such increases can give rise to increased polarization but may also simultaneously yield net welfare-enhancing policy adjustments rather than entrenchment of gridlock. The association of polarization and gridlock is contingent on how the problem responds to the policy solution, institutional structure, and the location of the status quo policy when the extent of the problem changes. We illustrate the model's logic by comparing US national policy making in the Progressive Era and the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly half of all lobbying activity targeting specific bills between 1998 and 2012 happened after the Congress passed legislation, yet existing theories of lobbying generally fail to account for lobbying that occurs after a bill is passed. I argue that ex post lobbying aims to influence the distribution of particularistic benefits that will arise from legislation by targeting regulatory rule-making processes. I develop a model that describes lobbying as a collective action problem among interest groups, who must trade off between spending money to lobby for a bill's passage and spending money to lobby over the details of its implementation. The implications of the model suggest that bills with high proportions of particularistic provisions draw more ex post lobbying and that trade associations and larger firms bear a disproportionately large share of the ex ante lobbying burden. Empirical analysis of lobbying reports is consistent with these predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidents play a central role in legislative activity in Latin America. Previous research highlights that some form of ideological compromise on behalf of the president is vital to sustain successful legislative coalitions. Yet, primarily due to the lack of a firm empirical basis on which to measure such presidential give-and-take, the extent to which presidents make use of such policy compromise, and under what conditions this is a viable strategy, remains unknown. Applying quantitative text analysis to 305 annual “state of the union” addresses of 73 presidents in 13 Latin American countries, we remedy this situation and provide comparable time-series data for Latin American presidential movements in a one-dimensional issue space between 1980 and 2014. Our results indicate that presidents will compromise in response to changes in the median party, although this effect will be mediated by the institutional context within which the president operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article discusses "crony capitalism," a form of rentseeking, and its sources. Although the term crony capitalism is generally applied to non-Western economies, any economy is susceptible to three primary sources of cronyism: standard special interest legislation, "bootlegger and Baptist" coalitions, and pathological altruism. Identifying cronyism requires care, as what appears to be cronyism is often a second-best response to the inefficiency of an existing government intervention. Reducing cronyism is therefore difficult without limiting the overall size and scope of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In legislative studies, a "roll rate" refers to the proportion of votes where a member or group of members is "rolled"- voting no on a measure that passes. Roll rates analysis is a potentially useful tool for evaluating arguments that the majority party in the House exercises influence by controlling what does and does not make it onto the agenda. Despite its promise, so far the use of roll rates to test these arguments has faced the problem of observational equivalence-that the predictions of partisan theories of agenda control are indistinguishable from those of arguments that have no place for parties. I address this problem by calculating party-less and partisan counterfactual roll rates data to pin down the predictions of these theories. This offers a powerful research design to evaluate observed roll rates from sample Congresses. The results provide intriguing evidence for partisan theories of the House agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most states and Congress allow only one version of a bill to be reported out of a conference committee. Because of their control over the conference membership, party leaders may use conferences to produce nonmedian outcomes. However, in three states the rules allow a minority to propose its own competing conference report. A formal model demonstrates that this institutional design produces more moderate legislative outcomes despite the preferences of the majority coalition. The model’s predictions are tested using coalition sizes on conference report votes in the states. Controlling for other factors, chambers which allow the minority to propose a competing conference report have larger coalitions, on average, though this effect is mitigated by interchamber distance. Further, rejection of the conference bill is also much less likely because the majority cannot propose extreme bills. The article demonstrates that conference committee proposal rules are an important source of majority coalition power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While the distributional consequences of economic reform have captivated political scientists, few studies have investigated the ability of different firms to reap gains from policy change. Reforms indeed create winners and losers, but there is scant evidence on specifically which firms benefit and which firms lose out. We propose that the benefits from liberalizing reform accrue mostly to firms that are not vulnerable to extortion by the state and that have past experience with lobbying through a business association. This theory goes against the common intuition that liberalization reduces the importance of the state in the distribution of gains from economic activity. To test the theory, we examine how India’s national electricity reform in 2003 changed the quality of power supply for 1,094 manufacturing firms between 2002 and 2005. We find that liberalization produced highly skewed benefits and identify the politically salient characteristics that drive firm-level distributional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1988, New Zealand commissioned a study by John Fountain to review the literature on the economics of spectrum management. As that report was being completed, New Zealand contracted with National Economic Research Associates to study the management of the radio frequency spectrum. I discuss the influence of Ronald Coase's 1959 and 1962 articles on both studies and on the statute that was ultimately enacted and subsequently implemented in New Zealand. I touch on how I was inspired by Coase's articles while I was a graduate student exploring approaches to defining spectrum property rights and how Coase's work informed legislative options related to spectrum rights in common-carrier legislation introduced in the 1970s. The article closes with a thought experiment that explores the potential benefits of a broader and earlier implementation of Coase's insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics of legislative delegation to the bureaucracy worry that delegation undermines the accountability of politicians to voters. This article provides microfoundations for such concerns by examining a model of electoral agency in which legislators can either determine policy directly or delegate policymaking authority to an expert bureaucrat. In our model, when deciding whether to delegate, a politician must consider not only the policy consequences of his delegation decision but also the electoral consequences. We identify conditions under which delegation can provide politicians with an element of plausible deniability which they lack when they determine policy directly. In some circumstances, therefore, voters can be better off when legislators’ ability to delegate is restricted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Can majority parties control legislative outcomes by controlling the agenda, or are roll-call patterns simply the product of legislators' preferences? We argue that, holding members' preferences constant, the majority party's ability to set the agenda gives it the power to influence legislative outcomes. We present the implications of this view of party power formally and then explore them empirically in two quasi-experiments from American state legislatures. In both, agenda control varies while legislator preferences remain constant. Our consistent finding is that the majority party uses its control over the agenda to screen out bills that would split its own membership, devotes more floor time to bills that divide majority from minority party legislators, and ultimately uses agenda control to protect the policy interests of its members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys selected contributions of economics to the literature on water pollution and the regulation of water quality. While not a comprehensive review, the article highlights water pollution issues to which economics has made important contributions, as well as areas in which further research might illuminate critical questions from the perspective of theory, empirics, or applied policy analysis. The focus is on drinking water regulation and provision; water quality standards in local, national, and transboundary settings; and the issue of policy instrument choice for water quality regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How successful should we expect chief executives to be in their relationships with the legislature? Answering this question is key to making judgments about the political prowess and lawmaking abilities of particular rulers. I introduce a standard to compare the actual performances of chief executives around the world based on the notion that variations in chief executives' legislative success rates stem from the unpredictability of legislators' behavior. The results underscore the role of uncertainty in statutory policymaking: on average, chief executives' performances are not much different from what should be expected if legislators flip coins to decide how to respond to their proposals. I also analyze the individual performance of chief executives statistically. The findings suggest that the standard by which we should judge the performance of chief executives cannot be conceived in isolation of the conditions under which they operate. So, for example, to be deemed as successful, a typical Westminster-style prime minister should be able to obtain passage of almost all of her pieces of legislation. In contrast, if a chief executive operating in a separation-of-powers system, with a highly fragmented legislature, secures passage for more than two-thirds of her proposals, she can be considered a very successful lawmaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a unified theory of lawmaking that integrates preferences, institutional features, and imperfect party discipline. This model both parsimoniously subsumes numerous extant models and allows for examination of heretofore unexplored equilibria behavior. To demonstrate this, we pinpoint what effects the kinds of changes that reformers often focus on—strengthening parties and loosening the filibuster rule—might have on the equilibrium gridlock interval and generate a number of nonintuitive results. We also find that our unified model's empirical implications are consistent with the gridlock pattern found in the data. We conclude that this model is theoretically important and empirically relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents evidence about the effects of dismissals-for-cause requirements, a specific component of employment protection legislation that has received little attention. I study a quasi-experiment generated by a law introduced in Portugal: out of the 12 paragraphs in the law that dictated the costly procedure required for dismissals for cause, eight did not apply to small firms. Using matched employer-employee longitudinal data and difference-in-differences methods, I examine the impact of that differentiated change in firing costs upon several variables. The results do not indicate robust effects on job or worker flows, although some estimates suggest an increase in hirings. However, firms that gain flexibility in their dismissals exhibit sizable increases in their relative performance. This finding suggests that reducing firing costs of the type studied here increases workers' effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]