Suchergebnisse

This paper propounds a contract-theoretic model where dowry acts as a screening device to differentiate grooms of varying qualities. In 'arranged' marriage settings that are characterized by incomplete information in the sense that the true quality of the groom remains unobservable to the bride, and in the presence of observable traits like education that are easier for the better quality groom to achieve, education-dowry contracts can potentially serve as a screening instrument. Moreover, increasing dowry levels can be explained through increased educational attainments brought about by modernization and government policies. The paper also discusses historical and narrative evidences in support of its main hypotheses.

Students in institutes of higher education often engage in campus-politics. Typically there are student-parties who electorally compete with each other to gain control of the union which is usually the apex student body dealing directly with the higher authorities on student-related and other academic issues. Often however, campus politics act as fertile breeding grounds for future politicians of the country. As a result there is often direct intervention by larger political parties into student affairs. In fact, the student parties on campus are essentially student wings of larger national parties, which command huge amounts of resources that are used during elections, often instigating conflict and violence on-campus. This paper game-theoretically models the interplay of such `extra-electoral' investments and electoral outcomes in an otherwise standard probabilistic voting model. We find that the political party who is likely to be more popular is also more likely to expend greater resources towards `extra-electoral' elements, in turn spawning greater violence on-campus, even when such investments are disliked by student-voters. We also look at some plausible extensions of the benchmark model where this basic conclusion still holds true. The essential flavor and predictions of the model are borne out by several historical and contemporary instances of student politics in some countries like India, Burma, and Latin America.

Though women's suffrage was federally mandated in the United States by the nineteenth amendment in 1920, many states had granted suffrage to women prior to that and most of these early suffrage states were clustered in the west. The author revisits some of the popular conjectures that have been put forward to explain why these states moved first to give women the vote and offer a hypothesis of partisan competition leading to suffrage extension. Using event history analysis, she finds strong evidence that early enfranchisement of women in the western states was driven by the intensity of competition between Republicans and Democrats, as well as by adverse female-male ratios and greater concentration of the population in urban areas. Moreover, as might be expected from the geographic concentration of the suffrage states, she finds evidence that suffrage adoption was strongly and positively related to whether a neighboring state had women's suffrage. Also, the 'risk' of suffrage enactments was increasing over time foreshadowing the success of the nineteenth amendment.

"Though women's suffrage was federally mandated in the United States by the nineteenth amendment in 1920, many states had granted suffrage to women prior to that and most of these early suffrage states were clustered in the west. The author revisits some of the popular conjectures that have been put forward to explain why these states moved first to give women the vote and offer a hypothesis of partisan competition leading to suffrage extension. Using event history analysis, she finds strong evidence that early enfranchisement of women in the western states was driven by the intensity of competition between Republicans and Democrats, as well as by adverse female-male ratios and greater concentration of the population in urban areas. Moreover, as might be expected from the geographic concentration of the suffrage states, she finds evidence that suffrage adoption was strongly and positively related to whether a neighboring state had women's suffrage. Also, the 'risk' of suffrage enactments was increasing over time foreshadowing the success of the nineteenth amendment." (author's abstract)