Comments on Stigler's Paper.

This article presents the author's view on George Stigler's paper debunking the effects of economic conditions on electoral results in the United States. I view Stigler's paper as a healthy antidote to conventional wisdom and a refreshing contrast to the frequent practice of computer-users of running regressions until they find something significant. Nonetheless, I believe there is more to the relation between voting behavior and general economic conditions than meets the jaundiced eye, and I am particularly concerned that Stigler's criticisms should be correctly interpreted as dropping the gauntlet--and not a wet blanket--on research in this area. I do not share his negative presumptions about the satisficing model in general or its applicability to voting behavior in particular. To use his example of a 3 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, it tells us far more than the extra number of people unemployed at a moment of time. It also means that an extra 12 percent of all adult male workers will have experienced some costly spell of unemployment within the preceding year. Without a reliable theoretical guide, the specification of favorable economic conditions becomes a matter of hunch and taste. In the final section of his paper, Stigler sets forth as an alternative a long-memory model of how macroeconomic performance might influence voters. Unlike the Kramer satisficing voter who sees the two parties only as ins and outs, the Stigler long-memory voter has a definite perception of Republicans and Democrats.