Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck Recent documents in Michael S Lewis-Beck en-us Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:01:25 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/171 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/171 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:01:21 PDT Michael S. Lewis-Beck Poetry http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/170 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/170 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:59:00 PDT Michael S. Lewis-Beck Poetry http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/169 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/169 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:57:11 PDT Michael S. Lewis-Beck Poetry http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/168 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/168 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:40:51 PDT Michael S. Lewis-Beck Political Science http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/167 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/167 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:37:26 PDT Presidential election forecasting models may miss the mark, sometimes grossly, as the 1992 contest demonstrated. The reason for this, we argue, is specification error. The models include irrelevant variables and exclude relevant ones. In particular, prospective voting variables have been ignored. When prospective economic and political evaluations are added, alongside traditional retrospective evaluations, forecasting quality improves sharply. These full-time forecasting models that tap voter onentations toward the future, as well as toward the past, promise long-run accuracy gains. Michael S. Lewis-Beck Political Science http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/166 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/166 Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:55:04 PDT During spring 2000, we released to the press a preliminary forecast of a Gore victory. Indeed, one of us, in a widely-read quotation, declared, "It's not even going to be close" (Washington Post, May 26, 2000, p. 1). We were wrong, as were all of our fellow modelers. Indeed, among "five of the best forecasters" identified by Robert Kaiser (Washington Post, May 26, 2000, p. 1), the Gore projection ranged from 53% to 60% of the two-party popular vote, pointing to a Democratic landslide. Such gross error raises the question: Should the models be junked? Some journalists, pundits, and scholars have suggested the answer is "yes." We disagree. Remember that forecasters of all stripes -- modelers, pollsters, marketers, campaign experts -- failed to call 2000. (See the review of 49 forecasts, from multiple and international sources, in Lafay and Lewis-Beck 2000). The virtually total inability to predict the Bush-Gore result also reminds us that no model will ever be perfect, that electoral behavior can never be fully determined. Still, while falling short of perfection, we believe that modeling can be improved. Michael S. Lewis-Beck Political Science http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/165 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/165 Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:55:01 PDT In comparative politics, an established finding--that economic development fosters democratic performance--has recently come under challenge. We counter this challenge with a dynamic pooled time series analysis of a major, but neglected data set from 131 nations. The final generalized least squares-autoregressive moving averages estimates (N = 2,096) appear robust and indicate strong economic development effects, dependent in part on the nation's position in the world system. For the first time, rather hard evidence is offered on the causal relationship between economics and democracy. According to Granger tests, economic development "causes" democracy, but democracy does not "cause" economic development. Overall, the various tests would seem to advance sharply the modeling of democratic performance. Ross E. Burkhart Political Science http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/164 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/164 Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:54:59 PDT Evans and Andersen make the provocative argument that the effects of economic perceptions on political support are greatly exaggerated, owing to the endogeneity of economic perceptions with respect to partisanship. I question their claim, for several reasons. First, the dependent variable measure of popularity is unusual. Second, the causal modeling is based on debatable assumptions that could be behind these surprising results. Third, in the United Kingdom and the United States, evidence suggests that national economic perceptions reflect closely the real economy. There may well be an endogeneity problem in economic voting studies, but it more likely runs from economic perceptions to partisanship, rather than vice versa. Panel studies, available for both the United Kingdom and the United States in national election surveys, offer ideal databases for testing these rival claims in the future. Great care must be given to exogenize properly the partisanship variable. Michael S. Lewis-Beck Political Science http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/163 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/163 Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:54:57 PDT Political scientists usually view the New Deal as transforming the American state. A sizable literature in economics and history, however, has cast doubt on the significance of the changes wrought by the FDR administration. In this paper we propose a model of the state, and then test important hypotheses about it. More specifically, we focus on the New Era-New Deal period to test how, if at all, the American state changed during this critical time in its history. We systematically analyze five state functions: stabilization, redistribution, regulation, police power, and administration. Within each category, quantitative policy measures are evaluated. Although the FDR administration produced many notable changes in government policy and structure, our analysis suggests that the American state, measured in these several ways, was not transformed from the New Era to the New Deal. Michael S. Lewis-Beck Political Science http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/162 http://works.bepress.com/michael_lewis_beck/162 Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:54:55 PDT Michael S. Lewis-Beck Political Science