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| 1 |
ID:
123092
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
JAE HYEOK SHIN analyzes cabinet duration in ten presidential democracies in Latin America. He ?nds that cabinet attributes greatly affect cabinet durability and that the performance of the cabinet has larger effects on its stability than do its handling of exogenous crises.
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| 2 |
ID:
121590
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
It is important to know what wealthy Americans seek from politics and how (if at all) their policy preferences differ from those of other citizens. There can be little doubt that the wealthy exert more political influence than the less affluent do. If they tend to get their way in some areas of public policy, and if they have policy preferences that differ significantly from those of most Americans, the results could be troubling for democratic policy making. Recent evidence indicates that "affluent" Americans in the top fifth of the income distribution are socially more liberal but economically more conservative than others. But until now there has been little systematic evidence about the truly wealthy, such as the top 1 percent. We report the results of a pilot study of the political views and activities of the top 1 percent or so of US wealth-holders. We find that they are extremely active politically and that they are much more conservative than the American public as a whole with respect to important policies concerning taxation, economic regulation, and especially social welfare programs. Variation within this wealthy group suggests that the top one-tenth of 1 percent of wealth-holders (people with $40 million or more in net worth) may tend to hold still more conservative views that are even more distinct from those of the general public. We suggest that these distinctive policy preferences may help account for why certain public policies in the United States appear to deviate from what the majority of US citizens wants the government to do. If this is so, it raises serious issues for democratic theory.
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| 3 |
ID:
166501
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| Summary/Abstract |
Many social welfare programs, including the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) consider both income and assets to determine assistance eligibility. LIHEAP is historically an underfunded block grant program that helps low-income households pay their utility bills. LIHEAP's eligibility requirements, including the presence of an asset test, are at the discretion of the state. Asset tests are included in welfare programs to limit abuse of the benefit; however, the literature suggests that building assets is important to overall well-being. Using a generalized difference-in-difference model, we evaluate the effect of eliminating an asset test on LIHEAP's participation rates and administration costs. We find that the inclusion of an asset test reduces program participation in a regressive manner, hurting the lowest-income households the most, and increases average administrative costs of program operations. On average, we estimate that the elimination of asset tests would allow each state that retained an asset test to heat an additional 9097 households in 2014. Therefore, LIHEAP's asset tests may divert resources that could be used to assist low-income households. In the absence of expanding LIHEAP funding, we recommend eliminating asset tests and lowering the income-eligibility thresholds so that existing funds can be targeted to the lowest-income households.
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