Empirical Research Workshops - Spring 2008
CAS is hosting a series of 8 workshops in spring 2008
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM
Location: Eliot 300
Dates and Speakers:
- January 18 - Ryan Black
Judicial Politics and the Search for the Holy Grail (of Salience)
ABSTRACT
Scholars have sought an accurate way to measure issue salience for our political institutions because we know political actors often act differently depending on whether they believe an issue is salient or not. The most recent focus has been on media based analysis of issue salience. Because we believe there are damaging problems with such measures, we look elsewhere. Specifically, we argue that, rather than gathering data about how the media treat a particular issue, a more productive use of scholarly energy would be to study how members of particular institutions differentially seek out information across the bills, cases, or issue areas that constitute the actor’s agenda. Here, we provide such data for the U.S. Supreme Court. These data focus on justices’ behavior during oral arguments. The results demonstrate that the more engaged the Court is in a case—defined as how many questions are asked during oral arguments—the more salient a case is for the justices. Paper - February 1 - Michael Malecki
MCMCirtHierld: An Implementation of Subject-Specific Hierarchical Parameters to Improve Inference and Identification of Bayesian Item-Response Ideal Point Models Paper - February 15 - Hong Min Park
Why do the Majority Parties bother to have Minority Party Members on Committees? Paper - February 29 - Yael Shomer and Guillermo Rosas
Non-ignorable abstentions in roll-call data analysis
ABSTRACT
How should we deal with abstentions in roll-call data analysis? We argue that abstentions are extremely common in decision-making bodies around the world, and that the appropriate use of methods to recover ideal points from roll-call datasets such as Nominate and MCMC IRT are based on assumptions about the ignorability of abstention-generating mechanisms that may be diffcult to meet in practice. We discuss different abstention-generating mechanisms to understand the conditions under which they may be deemed ignorable, and extend the MCMC IRT model so as to incorporate information from abstention patterns into inference about legislators' ideal points. - March 21 - Mariana Medina POSTPONED
- March 28 - Ryan Owens
Policy Outcomes and Jurisprudential Inuences on Supreme Court Agenda Setting
ABSTRACT
For decades, scholars have searched for data to show that Supreme Court justices are infuenced not only by their policy goals but also by legal considerations. Analyzing the justices' agenda-setting decisions, we show that while justices are often motivated by policy outcomes, jurisprudential considerations can prevail over their policy goals. When policy goals and legal considerations collide, policy gives way. If legal considerations and policy goals align toward the same end, law liberates justices to pursue policy. In short, we find that law is both a constraint on and an opportunity for justices. Paper - April 11 - Stephen Haptonstahl
Mixed Quantal Response Equilibrium, Experimental Design, and the Ultimatum Game
ABSTRACT
Bargaining games such as the Ultimatum and Principal-Agent games are commonly applied in describing political interactions such as negotiations between congress and the president or congressional oversight of the bureaucracy. Analysts typically assume that actors know perfectly each other's payoffs or that there is some constant private information about payoffs about which one can learn over the course of play. However, real bargaining involves uncertainty about players' own payoffs and often this uncertainty cannot be reduced during the game through learning. Accounting for this uncertainty using a quantal response equilibrium (QRE) provides a richer theoretical model, more reasonable behavioral predictions, and solves the statistical ``zero-likelihood" problem. There are two treatments of the ultimatum game as a QRE. Yi (2005) develops a mixed QRE model which assumes that, regardless of how much uncertainty the proposer faces, the she has no interest in proposing a division of the resource they are splitting that exceeds the bounds [0,1] of the resource, either by being negative or greater in size than the resource. The result of this assumption is that it is relatively easy to calculate the likelihood of a given offer via backward induction. Ramsay & Signorino (2005) on the other hand take the observational QRE tack, using X\beta in place of \lambda u(x) to include individual characteristics of subjects in the statistical analysis. Note that \lambda is not identified because it is wrapped into the vector \beta. This allows the payoffs to take on any real values, which means that the proposer might actually most prefer to make an offer outside the [0,1] bounds of the resource. Restriction to [0,1] leads to a Tobit-like structure where the model assigns positive probability to observing offers on the boundary. Ramsay's approach offers some advantages, but it takes some work for them to show that the latent `most preferred offer' is always finite and unique. This paper makes several important contributions. First, it compares the implications of the different approaches taken by Yi and Ramsay to determine the difference in their substantive interpretations: Yi's approach corresponds to uncertainty about actions, and Ramsay's corresponds to uncertainty about payoffs. Next, it develops a combined model which allows for inclusion of subject-level covariates and the estimation of \lambda. Finally, it describes how to use simulation to determine the number of subjects needed to observe how covariates affect the bargaining process. Paper - April 25 - Christina Boyd
Judicial Impact Revisited: The Direct Impact of Courts of Appeals on District Court Decision Making
ABSTRACT
Scholars have long theorized about the impact that higher courts have on district court decision making (e.g Gruhl 1980; Richardson and Vines 1967; Baum 1980). This article reexamines this question by focusing on the direct impact that federal courts of appeals have on district court outcomes. Using original data collected from personal injury, civil rights, and business-related cases terminated from 2000-2004 in 30 district courts, I examine the change in outcome and disposition method in a case after it has been remanded to the district courts following an appeal. In this preliminary analysis, I find that, at times, the amount of discretion in an appellate court opinion remanding the case helps explain the presence of change in the district court's outcome and method of case disposition. As additional data are compiled and analyzed, this project, through its research design and findings, promises to provide some of the first systematically collected data and evidence on judicial impact beyond that directly related to the U.S. Supreme Court. Paper
Snacks provided at each meeting.