计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Offering a unifying theoretical perspective not readily available in any other text, this innovative guide to econometrics uses simple geometrical arguments to develop students' intuitive understanding of basic and advanced topics, emphasizing throughout the practical applications of modern theory and nonlinear techniques of estimation. One theme of the text is the use of artificial regressions for estimation, reference, and specification testing of nonlinear models, including diagnostic tests for parameter constancy, serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, and other types of mis-specification. Explaining how estimates can be obtained and tests can be carried out, the authors go beyond a mere algebraic description to one that can be easily translated into the commands of a standard econometric software package. Covering an unprecedented range of problems with a consistent emphasis on those that arise in applied work, this accessible and coherent guide to the most vital topics in econometrics today is indispensable for advanced students of econometrics and students of statistics interested in regression and related topics. It will also suit practising econometricians who want to update their skills. Flexibly designed to accommodate a variety of course levels, it offers both complete coverage of the basic material and separate chapters on areas of specialized interest.

Estimation and Inference in Econometrics

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

1. Introduction: Political Choice in Britain 2. Theories of Party Support 3. Party Support in Britain Before 2001 4. Electoral Choice in 2001 5. Electoral Choice and the 2001 Campaign 6. The Dynamics and Nature of Party Identification 7. Theories of Turnout 8. The Decision (Not) to Vote 9. The 2001 Election and Democracy in Britain 10. Conclusion: Valenced Voting and Political Choice

Political Choice in Britain

What matters most to voters when they choose their leaders? This book suggests that performance politics is at the heart of contemporary democracy, with voters forming judgments about how well competing parties and leaders perform on important issues. Given the high stakes and uncertainty involved, voters rely heavily on partisan cues and party leader images as guides to electoral choice. However, the authors argue that the issue agenda of British politics has changed markedly in recent years. A cluster of concerns about crime, immigration and terrorism now mix with perennial economic and public service issues. Since voters and parties often share the same positions on these issues, political competition focuses on who can do the best job. This book shows that a model emphasizing flexible partisan attachments, party leader images and judgments of party competence on key issues can explain electoral choice in contemporary Britain.

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Performance Politics and the British Voter

Although political scientists have begun to investigate the properties of Internet surveys, much remains to be learned about the utility of the Internet mode for conducting major survey research projects such as national election studies. This paper addresses this topic by presenting the results of an extensive survey comparison experiment conducted as part of the 2005 British Election Study. Analyses show statistically significant, but generally small, differences in distributions of key explanatory variables in models of turnout and party choice. Estimating model parameters reveals that there are few statistically significant differ ences between coefficients generated using the in-person and Internet data, and the relative explanatory power of rival models is virtually identical for the two types of data. In general, the in-person and Internet data tell very similar stories about what matters for turnout and party preference in Britain. Determining if similar findings obtain in other countries should have high priority on the research agenda for national election studies.

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Does Mode Matter For Modeling Political Choice? Evidence From the 2005 British Election Study

MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson (1992) recently have challenged a long-standing conventional wisdom by claiming that sociotropic prospections dominate presidential approval models. Net of long-term expectations about the economy, judgments about its past performance are not significant. However, when nonstationarity in the time series of interest is taken into account, analyses of models similar to MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson's and analyses of an alternative error correction model both indicate that retrospections as well as prospections are influential. They also contend that the electorate forms its economic expectations according to a rational expectations model. This claim is unfounded because their analyses and data are inadequate for assessing it.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2111734.pdf

Prospections, Retrospections, and Rationality: The "Bankers" Model of Presidential Approval Reconsidered

▪ Abstract In recent years, volatility in the electoral fortunes of major political parties in Western democracies has invigorated scholarly debate over the roles that parties play in the political process and the positions that they occupy in the public mind. Data from national election surveys and inter-election public opinion polls reveal that parties have declined in the minds of citizens in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain over the past 40 years. Varying combinations of decreasing percentages of strong party identifiers, increasing percentages of independents and nonidentifiers, and increasing individual-level instability in party identifications indicate that the electorates of all three countries have experienced significant “dealignments of degree.” The three cases are not atypical; survey evidence indicates that partisan attachments have weakened in a wide variety of mature democracies.

Marianne C. Stewart

Papers

Political Choice in Britain

Performance Politics and the British Voter

Does Mode Matter For Modeling Political Choice? Evidence From the 2005 British Election Study

Prospections, Retrospections, and Rationality: The "Bankers" Model of Presidential Approval Reconsidered

The decline of parties in the minds of citizens