Comments on: More eggnog, less drowning

By: John Baughman

John Baughman — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:39:46 +0000

To clarify the story I posted a few weeks ago: The paper presented by Lott was an early version of the one published in JLE. The published version was an improvement in some respects, though in other important ways it was not. Fundamentally, even ignoring issues with data and modeling, neither the paper presented nor the article shows that the apparent relationship between size of government and campaign expenditures is substantively meaningful relative to the other changes in campaign finance occurring during that period examined. I suspect that those reviewing the manuscript had only a limited knowledge of the research on campaign finance, since obvious questions simply aren’t addressed. Peer review is not a foolproof mechanism.

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:56:50 +0000

Barry, It’s not hard to find shabby or dishonest work from people with good resumes. Also, he got his Ph.D. at UCLA, not Chicago. Not that there’s anything wrong with that in the slightest; I’d be proud to have a Ph.D. from UCLA.

By: Jason Kuznicki

Jason Kuznicki — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 13:50:32 +0000

It sounds like evidence for rent seeking, though clearly some more work should have been done to connect the dots. Or is one bad presentation enough to toss the very notion of rent seeking? That would be even more, um, convenient than Lott’s presentation.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 13:49:06 +0000

Maybe they assumed “John Lott” was an alias. Aliases are glamorous. They make you think of the Lone Ranger. Dumb name, when you think he had Tonto with him. Dumb enough to suggest the Lone Ranger couldn’t count.

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 10:48:39 +0000

If Lott’s student paper was so bad, how did he get a Ph.D. in economics from Chicago? No matter how much they’d like his ideology, I’d have thought that they had standards. High ones, too.

By: Tim Lambert

Tim Lambert — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 06:53:28 +0000

There’s some more discussion on Lott’s paper in the comments on my post. For bonus marks, see if you can guess which comment was left by Lott himself (not under his own name, of course).

By: roger

roger — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 05:50:54 +0000

Actually, Lott’s argument sounds logical to me. The expansion of government economic power would logically seem to increase the value of the those offices that have the most management power in directing the distribution of that largesse; so as the value of the offices rises, one would imagine the investment in acquiring those posts would also rise. This might not always be true—one could imagine conditions that would either neutralize the market value of those offices or that would put arbitrary limits to the money that can be expended in competiting for them, but a prima facie case that candidates having a chance to acquire management power at, say, IBM would invest more in the process of trying to gain that power than candidates for the night manager position down at the local convenience store shouldn’t be too hard to mount, or even to mathematize—simply make the value of the power of management a function of the amount of economic power held by the entity managed. Isn’t this simply a question about labor markets?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 04:39:02 +0000

For those who are interested in John’s article, it was published in the Journal of Law and Economics. Here’s the abstract: Volume 43, Number 2, October 2000 A Simple Explanation for Why Campaign Expenditures Are Increasing: The Government Is Getting Bigger John R. Lott, Jr. This paper shows that most of the large recent increases in campaign spending for federal and state offices can be explained by higher government spending. This result holds for both federal and state legislative campaigns and gubernatorial races and across many different specifications. The irony is that those who seem most concerned about the level of campaign expenditures are also frequently the ones who most strongly support increasing the size of government. Evidence is also examined on whether it is the composition and not just the level of expenditures that determines campaign expenditures and whether higher government expenditures similarly results in more candidates competing for office. Finally, by focusing on the symptoms and not the root causes of ever higher campaign expenditures, this paper argues that the current public policy debate risks changing the form in which payments are made rather than actually restricting the level of competition. ______ For those wondering: the JLE is not student-edited.

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 04:07:33 +0000

Is he made up as a Star Trek alien in that photo?

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 03:53:03 +0000

Mediocracy.

By: Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 00:07:31 +0000

Another instance of Affirmative Action, Republican style.

By: Andrew McManama-Smith

Andrew McManama-Smith — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 00:01:52 +0000

Lott’s also scary looking.