Home Biography C.V. Publications
Publications
2006
Abstract: This article analyzes the
professionalization of American state legislatures since the 1960s and expands
on previous studies by considering the strategic incentives of members. Fiorina
and Noll's (1978a, 1978b) theory that reelection-minded legislators serve as
"ombudsmen to the bureaucracy" on behalf of their constituents
suggests that legislatures have professionalized in response to growth in
public spending in order to strengthen members' abilities to handle increased
facilitation duties. I used longitudinal analysis and instrumental variables
regression to test this hypothesis and disentangle causal directionality, since
professional legislators may have the means and incentive to spend more than
their citizen counterparts. Both methods revealed empirical support for the
Fiorina and Noll hypothesis that spending increases caused legislators to
become more professional.
2007
Abstract: Recent work in political
economics has examined the positive relationship between legislative size and
spending, which Weingast et al. (1981) formalized as the law of 1/n. However, empirical tests of this
theory have produced a pattern of divergent findings. The positive relationship
between seats and spending appears to hold consistently for unicameral
legislatures and for upper chambers in bicameral legislatures but not for lower
chambers. We bridge this gap between theory and empirics by extending Weingast
et al.'s model to account for bicameralism in the context of a Baron–Ferejohn
bargaining game. Our comparative statics predict, and empirical data from
Abstract: Since the inception of the
American National Election Study (ANES) in the 1940s, data have been collected
via face-to-face interviewing in the homes of members of area probability
samples of American adults, the same gold-standard approach used by the U.S.
Census Bureau, other federal agencies, and some nongovernment researchers for
many of the most high-profile surveys conducted today. This paper explores
whether comparable findings about voters and elections would be obtained by a
different, considerably less expensive method: Internet data collection from
nonprobability samples of volunteer respondents. Comparisons of the 2000 and
2004 ANES data (collected via face-to-face interviewing with national
probability samples) with simultaneous Internet surveys of volunteer samples
yielded many differences in the distributions of variables and in the
associations between variables (even controlling for differences between the
samples in reported interest in politics). Accuracy was higher for the
face-to-face/probability sample data than for the Internet/volunteer sample
data in 88% of the possible comparisons. This suggests that researchers
interested in assuring the accuracy of their findings in describing populations
should rely on face-to-face surveys of probability samples rather than Internet
samples of volunteer respondents.
Abstract: Government, business, and
academic statistical organizations routinely develop classification systems to
compartmentalize occupations, fields of study, foods, and many more classes of
objects. When innovations occur in living and working conditions, so must
innovations occur in these classification systems. This article explores the
feasibility of applying cognitive psychology research techniques as a tool to
guide such updating. The method entails two cognitive exercises and three
analytical approaches that assist experts in identifying the deficiencies in an
existing classification system. To illustrate application of the procedure, the
method was applied to the Standard Occupational Classification System (SOC) in
an effort to accommodate recent changes in the biotechnology industry. Various
indicators attest to the validity of the results and therefore encourage use of
the methodology with other classification systems and innovations.
Abstract: According to many theoretical
accounts of the vote choice, distal determinants (e.g., party identification)
influence proximal determinants (e.g., perceptions of candidates), which in
turn shape candidate preferences. Yet almost no research on voting has formally
tested such mediational hypotheses. Using national survey data collected
between February and September of 2004, this paper begins by illustrating how
to conduct such investigations. We explored whether public approval of
President Bush’s handling of a series of specific national problems (e.g., the
Iraq war) influenced overall assessments of his job performance and evaluations
of his likely future performance versus John Kerry’s, which in turn shaped vote
choices. The results are consistent with the claim of mediation and shed
additional light on the impact of various issues on the 2004 election outcome.
We also tested what we term the “dosage hypothesis,” derived from news media
priming theory, which posits that changes in the amount of media coverage of an
issue during the course of a campaign should precipitate changes in the weight
citizens place on that issue when evaluating the president’s overall job
performance, particularly among citizens most exposed to the news.
Surprisingly, this analysis did not yield consistent support for the venerable
dosage hypothesis, suggesting that the conditions under which priming occurs
should be specified much more precisely in future work.
Abstract: Objectives. This research note explores whether the
system of assigning each state equal representation in the U.S. Senate
adversely affects racial minorities, groups that often have common political
interests. We also project changes in
minority representation over the next twenty years using Census data. Methods.
We develop a new method of assessing racial bias due to apportionment,
which calculates the number of seats lost by groups due to equal
representation, a more substantively meaningful statistic than correlational
measures. Results. We find that both African-Americans and
Hispanics are substantially underrepresented due to their greater presence in
high-population states as compared to low-population states. Whereas bias against African-Americans
appears to be falling, the demographic patterns of Hispanics will make them
even more underrepresented in coming years.
Conclusions. These findings are
especially consequential considering that malapportionment has important public
policy implications, including greater per capita distributive benefits for smaller
states. Further, given that the Senate
serves as a major veto point in American politics, racial bias due to equal
apportionment may have a significant impact on current and future political
debates relevant to minority groups.
2008
Abstract: When government fails, whom do
citizens blame? Do these assessments
rely on biased or content-rich information?
Despite the vast literatures on retrospective voting in political
science and attribution in psychology, there exists little theory and evidence
on how citizens apportion blame among public officials in the wake of
government failure. We designed a survey
experiment in which respondents ranked seven public officials in order of how
much they should be blamed for the property damage and loss of life in
Abstract: A central puzzle in the
comparative politics literature has been why certain societies are able to
achieve political stability while others suffer from strife, repression and
authoritarian rule. This article applies the solution concept of quantal
response equilibrium (QRE) to Weingast's Sovereign-Constituency Co-ordination
Game in order to show how our understanding of political stability can be
enhanced when uncertainty and limited rationality are explicitly modeled.
Comparative statics results first confirm the intuitive logic that civil
conflict is unlikely when regimes threaten penalties for revolt that are much
more severe than current living conditions and when the benefits to a
successful revolt are not sufficiently enticing. In addition, our analysis
provides a logic for the outbreak of civil conflict, noting that it is most
likely when key payoffs are in their intermediate regions and far from critical
‘thresholds’, resulting in ambiguous and counterintuitive decision making by
leaders and citizen opposition groups.
In Press
Malhotra,
Neil. In press. “Order Effects in Complex and Simple
Tasks.” Public Opinion Quarterly.
Abstract: There is strong evidence that the
order in which response options are presented in surveys significantly affects
the answers that respondents provide. According to the theory of survey
satisficing, the severity of order effects should increase with task
difficulty. However, the tasks provided to respondents in existing studies of
response-order effects are generally very simple, making it difficult to
evaluate the satisficing hypothesis. Further, evidence from cognitive
psychology suggests a completely different mechanism: people are more motivated
to persist in completing tasks when these tasks are intricate, challenging, and
enriching. I designed survey experiments administered over the Internet
consisting of two types of tasks: (1) a complex task in which respondents were
asked to rank seven public officials in order of how much they should be blamed
for the property damage and loss of life caused by Hurricane Katrina in the
city of New Orleans; and (2) a series of simple tasks in which respondents
answered items with ordinal response choices on rating scales. I found almost
no order effects in the complex task among all educational groups. Conversely,
I found significant and substantial order effects in the simple tasks,
particularly among low-education respondents. These results suggest that
theories of survey satisficing may simplify matters by assuming that satificing
monotonically increases with task difficulty. Moreover, my findings have
important implications for survey researchers designing their own
questionnaires, underscoring the importance of randomizing response options.
Malhotra,
Neil. In press. “Completion Time and Response Order
Effects in Web Surveys.” Public Opinion
Quarterly.
Abstract: The use of the World Wide Web to
conduct surveys has grown rapidly over the past decade, raising concerns
regarding data quality, questionnaire design, and sample representativeness.
This research note focuses on an issue that has not yet been studied: Do
respondents who complete self-administered Web surveys more quickly—perhaps
taking advantage of participation benefits while minimizing effort—also
“satsifice” and produce data of lower quality? We surveyed a random sample of
the
Malhotra,
Neil, Jon A. Krosnick, and Randall K. Thomas. In press.
“Optimal Design of Branching Questions to Measure Bipolar Constructs.” Public Opinion Quarterly.
Abstract: Scholars routinely employ rating
scales to measure attitudes and other bipolar constructs via questionnaires,
and prior research indicates that this is best done using sequences of
branching questions in order to maximize measurement reliability and validity.
To identify the optimal design of branching questions, this study analyzed data
from several national surveys using various modes of interviewing. We compared
two branching techniques and different ways of using responses to build rating
scales. Three general conclusions received empirical support: (1) after an
initial three-option question assessing direction (e.g., like, dislike,
neither), respondents who select one of the endpoints should be asked to choose
among three levels of extremity, (2) respondents who initially select a
midpoint with a precise label should not be asked whether they lean one way or
the other, and (3) bipolar rating scales with 7 points yield measurement
accuracy superior to that of 3-, 5-, and 9-point scales.
Malhotra,
Neil. In press. “Disentangling the Relationship
between Legislative Professionalism and Government Spending.” Legislative Studies Quarterly.
Abstract: Recent movements to
deprofessionalize American state legislatures have been driven partly by the
notion that professional legislators spend more than their citizen
counterparts. This paper explores the relationship between legislative
professionalism and government spending, a question muddled by the possibility
that legislators in high-spending states may choose professional institutions
to better handle their responsibilities. Propensity score matching, an
increasingly used technique of causal inference, is employed to disentangle the
relationship. Contrary to previous academic work and popular notions,
professional legislatures do not spend significantly more than part-time
bodies, accounting for the fact that legislatures in high-spending states have
a greater need to be professionalized and therefore select those structural
frameworks. The findings have important implications for the study of the
effects of legislative institutions on public policies more generally, and
attest to the utility of recently developed techniques of causal inference to
disentangle these relationships.
Gerber, Alan S., and Neil Malhotra. In
press. “Publication Incentives and Empirical Research: Do Reporting
Standards Distort the Published Results?” Sociological
Methods and Research.
Abstract: Despite great attention to the
quality of research methods in individual studies, if the publication decisions
of journals are a function of the statistical significance of research
findings, the published literature as a whole may not produce an accurate
measure of true effects. This paper examines the two most prominent sociology
journals (the ASR and the AJS) and another important, though less
influential journal (TSQ) to see if
there is evidence of publication bias. We examine the effect of the .05
significance level on the pattern of published findings using a “caliper” test
(Gerber and Malhotra 2006) and can reject the hypothesis of no publication bias
at approximately the 1 in 10,000,000 level. Our findings suggest that some of
the results reported in the leading sociology journals may be misleading and
inaccurate due to publication bias. We also discuss some of the reasons for
publication bias and propose reforms to reduce its impact on research.
Gerber, Alan S., and Neil Malhotra. In press.
“Do Statistical Reporting Standards Affect What Is Published? Publication Bias in Two Leading Political Science Journals.”
Quarterly Journal of
Political Science.
Abstract: We examine the APSR and the AJPS for the presence of publication bias due to reliance on the
.05 significance level. Our analysis employs a broad interpretation of
publication bias, which we define as the outcome that occurs when publication
practices produce bias in the published parameter estimates. This can happen in
several ways: (1) editors and reviewers may prefer significant results and
reject methodologically-sound articles that do not achieve certain statistical
significance thresholds; (2) scholars may send studies with statistically
significant results to journals and place the rest in “file drawers”; (3)
researchers may engage in data mining to find model specifications and
sub-samples that achieve significance thresholds. We examine the effect of the
.05 significance level on the pattern of published findings using a “caliper”
test, a novel method for comparing studies with heterogeneous effects, and can
reject the hypothesis of no publication bias at the 1 in 32,000,000,000 level.
Our findings therefore raise the possibility that the results reported in the
leading political science journals may be misleading due to publication bias.
We also discuss some of the reasons for publication bias and propose reforms to
reduce its impact on research.
Malhotra,
Neil. In press. “The Impact of Public Financing on
Electoral Competition: Evidence from
Abstract: Does complete public financing of
campaigns enhance electoral competition?
Malhotra,
Neil. In press. “Partisan Polarization and Blame
Attribution in a Federal System: The Case of Hurricane Katrina.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism.
Abstract: When multiple government
authorities at overlapping levels of administration fail to do their jobs
properly, whom do citizens hold responsible? People can potentially make more
accurate judgments by taking into account the roles and responsibilities of the
officials involved. However, if party identification plays a major role in
shaping Americans’ attitudes on federalism, such information may potentially
lead to even greater partisan polarization. This article explores these
questions using a controlled experiment in which citizens were provided job
titles of government officials involved in the poor response to Hurricane
Katrina. Both Republican and Democratic citizens update their blame
attributions in the same direction in response to new information. Despite
polarized general attitudes on federalism, partisans do not polarize further
when using specific information.