Browsing by Author "Weingast, Barry R."

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

The Economic Incidence of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Shorthaul Pricing Constraint
(1987) Gilligan, Thomas W.; Marshall, William J.; Weingast, Barry R.
"The public and private interest hypotheses permeate contemporary regulatory analyses. Both theories are used to explain the inception of the first major federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). According to the public and private interest hypotheses, the regulations promulgated by the ICC benefited either railroads or shippers. This paper presents an alternative view consistent with the multiple interest theory of regulation. It is demonstrated that the major regulatory instrument of the ICC, the shorthaul pricing constraint (SHPC), altered the equilibria of railroad markets in a way which benefitted the class of shippers (shorthaul shippers) facing monopolistic railroad markets. The SHPC also benefitted some railroads by increasing the correspondence between unregulated, cooperative and regulated, noncooperative levels of longhaul shipments. The proposition that the ICC benefited shorthaul shippers and railroads is supported by an empirical analysis of the effects of the inception of federal regulation and implementation of the SHPC on stock prices. The results of the paper indicate that the public and private interest interpretations of the ICC are neither contradictory or complete, but instead are complementary. A theoretical and empirical analysis of the chief regulatory mechanism of the ICC provides this synthesis."
The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power
(1986) Shepsle, Kenneth A.; Weingast, Barry R.
"Committees and their jurisdictions constitute a division and- specialization-of-labor in a legislature. Committees are alleged to be powerful in their respective jurisdictions because they can (i) veto changes in the status quo (ex ante veto power) and (ii) initiate changes in the status quo (proposal power). The authors demonstrate that these are insufficient to sustain committee power because committee non-members have strategies available to mitigate ex ante veto power (e.g. discharge petition) and to alter committee proposals (e.g. amendments). What, then, accounts for committee power? Much of the traditional legislative literature alludes to the notion of 'deference,' viz., that legislators participate in an institutional bargain in which each defers to committee member judgments in exchange for reciprocal deference to his own judgments when he sits as a committee member. The authors inquire into what underlies this phenomenon. They emphasize explicit enforcement mechanisms that allow committee to discourage noncommittee members from employing strategies inimical to committee interests. Specifically, they point to conference committees as the institutional manifestation of ex post veto power which gives force to ex ante veto power and proposal power."
Rational Choice Explanations of Social Facts
(1981) Shepsle, Kenneth A.; Weingast, Barry R.
"On the hypothesis that 'those who can do and those who can't do philosophy of science', we shall not dwell long on esoteric matters in this essay on theories of rational choice. Rather, our mission is pedagogical; so our task is to describe and illustrate rational explanations and to argue their utility. In doing so we shall take care to describe what a scientific commitment to rational choice entails. But we also wish to take a pragmatic line; models of rationality must satisfy scientific criteria, not religious ones!"
Regulation and the Theory of Legislative Choice: The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887
(1987) Gilligan, Thomas W.; Marshall, William J.; Weingast, Barry R.
"In this paper, we argue that federal regulatory outcomes cannot be explained apart from congressional institutions. The specific pattern of benefits is directly tied to these institutions and is determined by two factors. The first concerns how the interests are represented within the Congress, and especially on the relevant committees with policy responsibility or jurisdiction. Committees are important because they enfranchise their members with important powers, notably, veto power over the proposals made by others. The second factor is bicameralism, the need to build majority support in two separate chambers. This is relevant to the extent that interest groups are not distributed identically across both houses of Congress, for example, if different groups hold veto power in different houses. Put simply, our thesis is that specific interests are advantaged in the legislative process, not because of some 'organic' bias in favor of groups, but because of the representation of these groups within the political institutions. In order to make this point, we provide a model of political choice and demonstrate its applicability to the choice of complex regulatory legislation. Our method is constructive. We show how our model helps explain why one out of a range of policies becomes the final legislation."
Uncovered Sets and Sophisticated Voting Outcomes with Implications for Agenda Institutions
(1981) Shepsle, Kenneth A.; Weingast, Barry R.
"This paper examines the properties of majority-rule institutions given fully strategic behavior by all agents. Results are provided, characterizing majority-rule outcomes, for several alternative agenda institutions. The main conclusion is that institutional arrangements, specifically mechanisms of agenda construction, impose constraints on majority outcomes. In the last decade multidimensional voting models have become subtle and complex instruments for explicating social choices by majority rule. What has been learned from them is that little will be known about an institution based on majority rule if the focus is exclusively upon the majority preference relation between alternatives."