Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on June 17, 2009) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1985. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 336-352). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

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My dissertation is motivated by the following observation: while we care very much about the outcomes of the democratic process, there is widespread uncertainty about ex ante how to produce them - and quite often there is also disagreement and uncertainty about what they are in the first place. Consequently, unless we have a definite idea what "better decision-making" might be, it is not obvious which institutional reforms or changes in democratic structures would actually promote it. Democracy is a wide concept, and not all institutional constellations and rules and regulations that can be called democratic function equally well. In this dissertation therefore I offer a specific model of democracy - "Experimental Democracy" - that unites the view that the quality of decisions matter, with taking into account the circumstances of uncertainty and disagreement that define political problems. On this account, a desirable political mechanism is one that realizes an experimental method of policy-making directed at solving problems, such that we can expect it to make progress over time, even though we cannot rule out that it will get things wrong - possibly even frequently. I also show how democracy may best realize such an experimental method, and which particular institutional features of democracy could serve this purpose. The argument in the dissertation proceeds as follows. In the first part I develop a theory of the justifiability of political authority in the sense outlined above: a theory that is sensitive to the outcome concerns that many people share, but recognizes the fundamental disagreement surrounding this question. I establish that instrumental considerations should be of crucial importance when we evaluate political authority. Here I argue against pure proceduralist theories that see the outcome dimension as secondary. However, the facts of disagreement and uncertainty about the ends of politics, as well as concrete policy, do seem to pose a problem for any instrumental justification. In response I outline a pragmatic or experimental theory of political authority, which focuses precisely on the capacity of a political procedure to solve political problems under uncertainty. Just as in many other fields of inquiry experimentation and adaptation are seen as the adequate responses to uncertainty, I argue, an experimental and adaptive mode of policy-making is the best response to political uncertainty. In the second part I answer the question which form of democracy would best realize the ideal of experimental policy-making. Subsequently, we should evaluate democratic institutions mainly by their capacity to enable successful experimentation and adaptation. Here, contrary to popular "wisdom of crowds" arguments, I argue that since no single decision procedure can be expected to be reliable across the board, a justified political system may have to employ a plurality of first-order decision-making mechanisms. However, as I show for this to work, these mechanisms must be subject to effective democratic control. The key function of democratic institutions here is that of feedback, in order to enable successful adaptation. Finally, I offer some concrete examples how the functional requirements of a successful experimental strategy of policy-making can be institutionally realized within democratic systems.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

The goal of this dissertation is to analyze issues that arise when policy makers try to learn about the economy while their policies are affecting it. The dissertation takes the form of three essays. The first essay examines how optimal policy affects equiUbrium economic outcomes in environments in which agents are both imperfectly informed about the state of the economy and able to learn by observing the actions of others. This type of environment, in which there is social learning, has received growing attention, but to date there has been little examination of strategic policy making in such settings. In particular, the question of whether policy, in the absence of a commitment technology, can be designed to increase the speed of information revelation remains open. The essay builds on a real options model of investment and shows how this framework can be extended to derive time consistent policies and the related equilibrium outcomes in social learning environments. By comparing the equilibrium induced by a policy maker to both the laissez-faire outcome and the social optimum, it is shown that the policy maker is able to achieve the second best outcome and reduce delay to the efficient level even in the absence of commitment. The second essay raises the question of whether the fact that policy makers play a dual role, as both information gatherers and economic managers, can explain the flattening of the Phillips Curve relationship between inflation and real activity that has been observed in both Canada and the U.S. over the 1990s. The paper models the central bank as both a provider of liquidity in a world where pre-set prices would otherwise cause potential gains from trade to go unrealized and a gatherer of information about real developments in the economy. The bank's information complements that of private agents so that, the central bank and private agents both wish to learn from the other. In equilibrium, this interaction gives rise to a Phillips curve relationship which both exhibits causality running from real activity to prices and justifies a feedback from prices to the setting of monetary instruments. The model implies that a decline in the slope of the Phillips curve may be a result of improvements in the manner in which central banks gather information about the economy. An investigation of the data for Canada and the U.S. finds support for the model. The third essay attempts a more thorough empirical investigation of the issues raised in the previous chapter. The paper enriches the dynamic aspects of the model to further examine its properties, but focuses mainly on attempting to uncover whether the types of changes to the Phillips curve relationship which had been previously documented in Canada and the U.S. have occurred in other OECD countries. The paper investigates this question using both single country and panel estimation and finds that the phenomenon of a declining slope in the Phillips curve relationship is prevalent in OECD countries throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, the paper attempts to exploit the cross country data to provide more formal tests of the model's predictions regarding policy innovations and inflation targeting regimes. The results suggest that the model compares favourably to other potential explanations of the decline in the slope of the Phillips curve.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Charles J. Barrilleaux, Florida State University, College of Social Sciences, Dept. of Political Science. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 15, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 152 pages. Includes bibliographical references.