John G. Matsusaka | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Economist and political scientist, academic, author |
Academic background | |
Education | B.A., Economics M.A., Economics Ph.D., Economics |
Alma mater | University of Washington University of Chicago |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Southern California Initiative and Referendum Institute |
Website | https://www.johnmatsusaka.com/ |
John G. Matsusaka is an economist,political scientist,author,and academic. He is the Charles F. Sexton Chair in American Enterprise,Professor of Finance and Business Economics,Business and Law,and Political Science,at the University of Southern California, [1] and the Executive Director at the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California. [2]
Matsusaka has contributed to the fields of direct democracy,political economy,government finance,corporate finance,and corporate governance,with publications spanning economics,finance,law,and political science. [3] He is the author of two books,For the Many or the Few:The Initiative,Public Policy,and American Democracy and Let the People Rule:How Direct Democracy Can Meet the Populist Challenge, [4] and provides commentary for print media including New York Times , Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , [5] Sacramento Bee , Bloomberg News , Financial Times , USA Today , The Huffington Post , [6] Politico , [7] and The Hill ,and for television and radio media,including NPR,CBS,CNN,CNBC,BBC,and CTV (Canada). He has also consulted for the White House Council of Economic Advisors and is the recipient of Merton Miller Prize for the most significant article by the Journal of Business,the Duncan Black Prize for best article in Public Choice . [8]
Matsusaka serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy [9] and is a member of the editorial boards of Public Choice [10] and ProMarket Blog. [11]
Matsusaka received his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Washington. He received his master's degree and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. [12]
For most of his career,Matsusaka has been a professor at the University of Southern California (USC),where he is Professor of Finance and Business Economics in the Marshall School of Business,Professor of Business and Law in the Gould School of Law,and Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science and International Relations. [1] Since 2009 he has held the Charles F. Sexton Chair in American Enterprise at USC. [13]
Matsusaka also serves as executive director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC,which he has led since 2004. Prior to that,he was a director of IRI starting in 1998. [2]
Matsusaka served as vice dean for faculty and academic affairs in the USC Marshall School of Business from 2007 to 2013. [14] He served as interim vice provost for faculty at USC from 2019 to 2020. He was elected to the executive board of the Academic Senate in 2022. [15]
Matsusaka has appeared in podcasts,written opinion pieces,and offered commentary for various media outlets, [16] including the New York Times,The Wall Street Journal,The Washington Post, [17] Los Angeles Times, [18] Sacramento Bee,USA Today,Bloomberg News,The Financial Times,CNN,and NPR. His book,Let the People Rule:How Direct Democracy Can Meet the Populist Challenge,was referenced in a 2020 Tribune India piece that discussed the flaws and challenges within the United States' democracy. [19]
Matsusaka's first book,For the Many or the Few:The Initiative,Public Policy,and American Democracy,published by the University of Chicago Press in 2004,shows empirically that voter initiatives lead to majority rule and do not empower narrow special interests. In her review for The Journal of Politics ,Caroline Tolbert noted that the book offers valuable insights into American democratic institutions by examining ballot initiatives on public policy. [20] His second book,Let the People Rule:How Direct Democracy Can Meet the Populist Challenge,published by Princeton University Press in 2022,explores the populist pressures that are challenging democracies across the world,and proposes solutions based on greater use of direct democracy. [21]
Matsusaka has authored scholarly articles and books focusing on direct democracy,political economy,corporate governance,and corporate finance. His political economy research encompasses topics such as tax policy,voter turnout,and representation as well as the role of initiatives and referendums in American politics. His corporate finance and corporate governance research encompasses mergers and acquisitions,divestitures,capital budgeting,shareholder proposals,and shareholder democracy. [22]
Much of Matsusaka's research focuses on the political phenomenon of direct democracy,evaluating both its promises and potential pitfalls. His most cited findings are that initiatives resulted in state taxes and spending,and that initiatives tend to align policies with the preferences of the majority,rather than empower narrow special interests. [23] He has produced a series of papers showing how direct democracy affects the tax and spending policies,social policies,the executive branch,election laws,union wages,and corporations. [24] His article in the Journal of Political Economy (1995) showed for the first time that states with initiatives adopt different fiscal policies,specifically lower taxes and spending and less redistribution,in the postwar period. [25] A follow up paper in The Journal of Law and Economics (2000) found that initiative states actually spent more than noninitiative states in the early 20th century,showing that initiative effects vary over time. His Journal of Public Economics article (2002) with Lars Feld,studied Swiss cantons,and found that requiring voter approval for new spending programs (mandatory referendums) resulted in significantly less government spending. [26] His article in Public Choice (2018) tested for the importance of the order propositions are listed on the ballot,and using data from California 1958-2014 and Texas 1986 showed that propositions listed at the top of the ballot do not enjoy a significant advantage over those at the bottom. [27] His most recent article in The Journal of Law and Economics (2023) shows that businesses and unions have usually been harmed rather that hurt by democracy. [28]
Matsusaka's work in finance and corporate governance has focused on mergers and acquisitions,corporate diversification,and corporate governance. His study in The Rand Journal of Economics (1993) analyzed the stock market's response to acquisition announcements during the conglomerate merger wave of the late 1960s,finding that investors valued the creation of conglomerate corporations,contrary to the then-prevailing wisdom that conglomerates were inefficient. [29] His Journal of Business article (2001) developed a dynamic theory of corporate diversification as a search process for new opportunities,which explained why diversified firms might trade at discounts compared to single-segment firms even though their strategies are efficient. [30] The article received the Merton Miller Prize for best paper in the journal. His 2002 study in the Journal of Financial Intermediation with Vikram Nanda presented a theory of organization based on the benefits and costs associated with internal capital markets. [31] His article in Journal of Financial Economics (2010) with Ran Duchin and Oguzhan Ozbas estimates the effect of independent boards of directors on a firm's performance,finding that independent directors improve performance as long as information costs are not too high. The paper introduced the idea of using changes imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to identify the effects of governance on performance. [32] His article in the Review of Financial Studies (2019),with Oguzhan Ozbas and Irene Yi,shows that union shareholders use shareholder proposals opportunistically to influence collective bargaining outcomes. [33] His most recent research focuses on shareholder democracy,seeking to understand when it can work and when it fails. Among the topics investigated are shareholder proposals,shareholder voting,and proxy advice. [22]
Matsusaka's research in political economy,other than that related to direct democracy,has covered voter turnout,tax and spending policy,representation,and government responsiveness. In two empirical studies with Thomas W. Gilligan,he provided some of the first evidence that larger legislatures tended to spend more due to a "fiscal commons" problem. [34] [35] In a series of articles on voter turnout published in Public Choice,some with Filip Palda,he examined the validity of the rational choice model,and has extended the model theoretically to incorporate limited information. [36] His 2010 article in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science was one of the first to provide statistical evidence that state policies quite often do not reflect the preference of a majority of citizens. Most recently,his article in the Journal of Comparative Economics (2023) with Ekkehard Kohler and Yanhui Wu,reported the results of a field experiment gauging the responsiveness of low-level bureaucrats to citizen requests for information in China,Germany,and the United States. [37]
Logrolling is the trading of favors,or quid pro quo,such as vote trading by legislative members to obtain passage of actions of interest to each legislative member. In organizational analysis,it refers to a practice in which different organizations promote each other's agendas,each in the expectation that the other will reciprocate. In an academic context,the Nuttall Encyclopedia describes logrolling as "mutual praise by authors of each other's work". Where intricate tactics or strategy are involved,the process may be called horse trading.
Public choice,or public choice theory,is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science." Its content includes the study of political behavior. In political science,it is the subset of positive political theory that studies self-interested agents and their interactions,which can be represented in a number of ways—using standard constrained utility maximization,game theory,or decision theory. It is the origin and intellectual foundation of contemporary work in political economy.
A referendum is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal,law,or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a new policy or specific law,or the referendum may be only advisory. In some countries,it is synonymous with and also known as plebiscite,votation,popular consultation,ballot question,ballot measure, or proposition.
James McGill Buchanan Jr. was an American economist known for his work on public choice theory originally outlined in his most famous work,The Calculus of Consent,co-authored with Gordon Tullock in 1962. He continued to develop the theory,eventually receiving the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986. Buchanan's work initiated research on how politicians' and bureaucrats' self-interest,utility maximization,and other non-wealth-maximizing considerations affect their decision-making. He was a member of the Board of Advisors of The Independent Institute as well as of the Institute of Economic Affairs,a member of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) and MPS president from 1984 to 1986,a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute,and professor at George Mason University.
Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies,which are representative democracies. The theory and practice of direct democracy and participation as its common characteristic was the core of work of many theorists,philosophers,politicians,and social critics,among whom the most important are Jean Jacques Rousseau,John Stuart Mill,and G.D.H. Cole.
Campaign finance,also known as election finance,political donations or political finance,refers to the funds raised to promote candidates,political parties,or policy initiatives and referendums. Donors and recipients include individuals,corporations,political parties,and charitable organizations.
Democratic capitalism,also referred to as market democracy,is a political and economic system that integrates resource allocation by marginal productivity,with policies of resource allocation by social entitlement. The policies which characterise the system are enacted by democratic governments.
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti,435 U.S. 765 (1978),is a U.S. constitutional law case which defined the free speech right of corporations for the first time. The United States Supreme Court held that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns. The ruling came in response to a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporate donations in ballot initiatives unless the corporation's interests were directly involved.
In social science and economics,corporate capitalism is a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical and bureaucratic corporations.
A publicly funded election is an election funded with money collected through income tax donations or taxes as opposed to private or corporate funded campaigns. It is a policy initially instituted after Nixon for candidates to opt into publicly funded presidential campaigns via optional donations from tax returns. It is an attempt to move toward a one voice,one vote democracy,and remove undue corporate and private entity dominance.
Anthony Downs was an American economist specializing in public policy and public administration. His research focuses included political choice theory,rent control,affordable housing,and transportation economics. He wrote a number of books including,An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) and Inside Bureaucracy (1967),which have been major influences on the public choice school of political economy. In Downs's Law of Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion (1962),he predicted that expanding expressways could not reduce traffic congestion,since demand would increase as well,and that reducing speeds increases capacity.
William Simon U'Ren was an American lawyer and political activist. U'Ren promoted and helped pass a corrupt practices act,the presidential primary,and direct election of U.S. senators. As a progressive,U'Ren championed the initiative,referendum,and recall systems. These measures were also designed to promote democracy and weaken the power of backstage elites. His reforms in Oregon were widely copied in other states. He supported numerous other reforms,such as the interactive model of proportional representation,which was not enacted. He had little success in battles for a Georgist "Single Tax" on the unimproved value of land.
The U.S. state of Oregon is one of the many states in the United States that has direct democracy in the form of initiatives and referendums. Oregon residents introduced this system in 1902 with a ballot measure. Nationwide,referendums and initiatives became known as the "Oregon System" of direct government.
Direct democracy refers to decision making or direct vote a proposal,law,or political issue by the electorate,rather than being voted on by representatives in a state or local legislature or council.
Eleven national referendums were held in Switzerland during 2013. Voters approved six proposals related to spatial planning,executive pay,family policy,amendments to the laws on asylum and epidemics and an increase in the length of petrol station shop opening hours. The other five proposals on directly electing the Federal Council,abolishing compulsory military service,limiting salaries in a company to 12 times the lowest paid worker,tax credits for stay-at-home parents and an increase in road tax were rejected.
Quadratic voting is a collective decision-making procedure which involves individuals allocating votes to express the degree of their preferences,rather than just the direction of their preferences. By doing so,quadratic voting seeks to address issues of the Condorcet paradox and majority rule. Quadratic voting works by allowing users to "pay" for additional votes on a given matter to express their support for given issues more strongly,resulting in voting outcomes that are aligned with the highest willingness to pay outcome,rather than just the outcome preferred by the majority regardless of the intensity of individual preferences. The payment for votes may be through either artificial or real currencies. Quadratic voting is a variant of cumulative voting. It differs from cumulative voting by altering "the cost" and "the vote" relation from linear to quadratic.
Henrik Cronqvist is the Robert J. and Carolyn A. Waltos Dean and Professor of Economics of the George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University in Orange,California,a position he has held since August 2022. He previously served as a professor of finance,Bank of America scholar,and vice dean for faculty and research at the University of Miami School of Business,where he conducted interdisciplinary research and taught finance and management courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
Karen L. Remmer is an American political scientist,academic,author and researcher. She is a professor emerita of political science at Duke University.
The financial referendum is a form of the referendum and an instrument of direct democracy. It always relates to parts of the public budget of a government and allows citizens to vote directly on individual budget items.