Maximizing models of legislative choice

✍ Scribed by Ronald S. Warren

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1984
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 349 KB
• Volume: 42
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-5829
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00124947

✦ Synopsis

A number of recent studies have reported estimates of single equation and simultaneous equations models of the decisions of state legislatures. These investigations have been 'economic' ones, in the sense that considerations of the relative costs and benefits to some self-interested person or group capable of affecting legislative outcomes have motivated the choice of explanatory variables. Thus, perhaps implicitly, these studies have assumed utility maximization by some critical agent(s) in the political marketplace. This essay draws attention to the implications of this maximizing assumption for the proper specification and estimation of the associated empirical models.

* Financial support from a Faculty Fellowship for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Virginia is gratefully acknowledged. Peter H. Aranson, William R. Johnson, and three anonymous referees provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Responsibility for remaining errors is mine.