Which electorates receive targeted funding, and does targeted funding swing votes? To answer these questions, I analyze four discretionary programs funded by the Australian federal government during the 2001–2004 election cycle. Controlling for relevant demographic characteristics of the electorate, those electorates held by the governing coalition received a larger share of discretionary fundi...

Market makers in over-the-counter markets often make offsetting trades and have significant market power. We develop a market making model that captures this market feature as well as other important characteristics such as information asymmetry and inventory risk. In contrast to the existing literature, a market maker in our model can optimally shift some trade with the informed to other discr...

Taking advantage of the structure of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), we study the tradeoff between efficiency and equity associated with different levels of discretionary power when delegating regulatory authority to lower levels of government. Exploiting an instrumental variables approach, we provide evidence that the benefits of the 1990 CAAA were highly localized and accrued dispro...

n 1992, President Bush proposed legislation intended to speed up the recovery from the 1990-91 recession. Congress rejected this proposal for countercyclical fiscal policy stimulus. In early 1993 President Clinton proposed his own stimulus package, but Congress rejected this proposal too. Many reasons were given for deciding against these two discretionary fiscal policy proposals, but perhaps t...

A critical incident is reported where a discretionary user needed to partition the spreadsheet grid into an arithmetic series of blocks and a p p l y a function to each, but was unable to devise a solution. The incident is first scrutinized to explicate the reasons for the failure. Then, a new method for progressional computation on tabular displays is described and reviewed for usability. The ...

A simple model of discretionary worker investment in human capital is developed in which worker productivity is affected by a firm-specific match and employers bid strategically for workers. The labor market returns a share of specific capital productivity to workers without Nash bargaining power and without recourse to long-term contracts, because efficient turnover transforms a worker’s forme...

Taking advantage of the structure of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), we study the tradeoff between efficiency and equity associated with different levels of discretionary power when delegating regulatory authority to lower levels of government. Exploiting an instrumental variables approach, we provide evidence that the benefits of the 1990 CAAA were highly localized and accrued dispro...

BACKGROUND Discretionary salt use varies according to socio-demographic factors. However, it is unknown whether salt knowledge and beliefs mediate this relationship. This study examined the direct and indirect effect of socio-demographic factors on salt knowledge and discretionary salt use in a sample of 530 Australian adults. METHODS An internet based cross-sectional survey was used to colle...