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Why do American state economies grow at such vastly different rates and manifest such wide differences in living standards? Volatile States identifies the sources of rising living standards by examining the recent economic and fiscal history of the American states. With new insights about the factors that contribute to state economic success, the book departs from traditional analyses of economic performance in its emphasis on the role of volatility. Volatile States identifies institutions and policies that are key determinants of economic success and illustrates the considerable promise of a mean-variance criterion for assessing state economic performance. The mean-variance perspective amends applications of growth models that rely on the mobility of productive factors keyed to income levels alone. Simply measuring the level of growth in state economies reveals an incomplete and perhaps distorted picture of performance. Taking the volatility of state economies explicitly into account refines the whole notion of "economic success." This book is essential reading for economists, political scientists, and policy-makers who routinely confront questions about the consequences of alternative institutional arrangements and economic policy choices. W. Mark Crain is Professor of Economics and Research Associate, James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy, George Mason University

1 The Architecture of Constitutions -- 2 Political Information Technology and Public Choice: Background -- Voter Shopping: Experience and Search -- Product Advertising and Information Theory -- Product Advertising as Political Advertising -- Technology and the Costs of Campaigning -- The Rational Voter Model -- Televised Legislatures -- History of Televised Legislatures -- Summary -- 3 Legislative Television: The Transformation of Politicians -- The Relationship Between Citizens and Politicians -- Political Services and the Content of Product Advertising -- Technology and the Relative Cost of Acquiring Political Information: Experience versus Search -- Summary -- 4 The Effect of Televising Legislatures on Elections: The Case of U.S. State Legislatures -- The Advantages to Incumbency in Televised Legislatures: State Lower Chamber -- Test for Reverse Causation -- State Upper Chambers -- Summary -- 5 The Effects of Televised Legislatures on Elections: The Case of the U.S. House of Representatives -- U.S. House Races: Before Versus After TV -- Test for Spurious Correlation -- Summary -- 6 The Effect of Televised Legislatures on the Output of Legislation -- A Model of Television and Legislative Outcomes -- Empirical Estimation -- Summary -- 7 The Politics of Adopting Televised Sessions -- Political Influences on Legislators -- Empirical Model of Support for Television in the U.S. Senate -- Summary -- 8 Modernity -- Appendix 1 Data Sources -- Appendix 2 Data.

Reducing gender inequality in the workplace is one of the most widely discussed global challenges. This paper inves-tigates empirically the impact of regulations on female participation in the private sector using panel data for a large sample of countries. The metrics examined include female ownership of businesses and female share of employment in non-agricultural sectors of the economy. The findings indicate that regulatory constraints tend to place a dispropor-tionate burden on women and shed new light on the interconnections between business regulations, firm creation, and women in the workforce.The views expressed by this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Na-tional Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. The research was supported by a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.

Academic performance is typically measured as some combination of teaching, publishing, and professional service. This paper focuses on the publication aspect of academic output, estimating the determinants of publication productivity using data for Robert D. Tollison (RDT). Robert Tollison published 433 articles and books, and collaborated with 524 coauthors while at a dozen institutions over thirty-eight years. Our findings indicate that RDT's output is significantly correlated with several factors, including co-authorship, the diversification of his research portfolio, business cycles, and academic pay. To a lesser extent, his production pattern is influenced by non-work interests and specific institutional affiliations. Adapted from the source document.

Political reputation models feature forward-looking, rational voters who re-elect incumbents based on their estimate of an incumbent's ability level. Fiscal policy is one of the ways an incumbent establishes a reputation & thereby signals this ability level to voters. The reputation-building framework implies that term limits should affect fiscal performance; a term-limited incumbent places less value on reputation-building than an incumbent eligible for reelection does. We examine differences in fiscal performance in democratic countries under alternative executive term limit regimes. Our results generally agree with the prior findings of Besley & Case (1995) who analyzed gubernatorial term limits in the American states. We provide new evidence that the fiscal effects of term limits differ under a two-term rule vs a single-term rule. 6 Tables, 2 Appendixes, 18 References. Adapted from the source document.