Videos

Dr. Larry Young, Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine, speaks about “Neurobiology of Social Bonding: Implications for New Treatments For Autism” at the Second Annual Brain Awareness Day hosted by the Conte Center for Compu...

To create an optimal and efficient tax system, it’s essential to understand the whole tax burden and how people respond to taxes. That was the idea behind the Mirrlees Review, a comprehensive examination of theory and data led by the Institute for Fi...

It’s been well established that states allowing voter referendum initiatives spend less than states that don’t give voters this power. UChicago’s Christopher Berry shows for the first time that the spending cuts in states with initiatives are spe...

In an ongoing project on the political economy of education finance, Thomas Romer reports on some developments in school spending in one state during a time when some of the state’s constitutional rules governing local school district taxing powers c...

Becker Friedman Institute Visiting Fellow John Hatfield presents economic analysis that shows higher air pollution in regions with a larger number of local governmental jurisdictions. Water quality, which is controlled at the local level and not subjec...

Andrea Mattozzi and colleagues say bureaucratic competition explains why voters support wealthy candidates who may hold policy views contrary to their interests. In a competitive legislative environment, voters assume that candidates who have succeeded...

UChicago’s Richard Van Weelden explores the conditions that lead politicians to invest time and effort in divisive political issues, even when the majority of voters care more about more generally relevant issues and beneficial policies. Presented by...

Patrick Le Behan reveals that when voters hold the power of the referendum, elected officials are more likely to implement policies favored by the majority—even on issues not subject to referendum. Presented by Patrick Le Bihan (New York University);...

Researchers study unified and divided executive authority, shedding light on the conditions under which it is optimal to bundle tasks into a single elected official or separate offices: It depends on how voters weight their interests. Presented by Scot...

Policy preferences can lead people to hide or misrepresent information when sharing it with superiors who make policy decisions. Washington University’s John Patty shows how delegating decision-making power to staff increases their incentive to share...