|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
Econ-E scores legislators on efficiency 3:57 p.m., Oct. 15, 2004--With the 2004 election season in full swing, economists at the University of Delaware have announced the development of a novel approach to evaluate the economic performance of the nation’s U.S. senators and representatives. The new approach calculates an economic efficiency, or Econ-E, score for each senator and congressman based on his or her votes on legislation that had clear economic efficiency implications, according to Burton Abrams, professor of economics in UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics. Simply put, efficiency enhancing legislation produces expected benefits for all affected persons that exceed corresponding expected costs, Abrams said. “Most legislation produces both winner and losers,” he said. “For legislation to be efficiency enhancing, winners must gain more than losers lose, providing an overall net gain to society. For instance, economists have long known that tariffs on imports provide gains to protected industries, but consumers lose more than producers gain. Therefore, eliminating tariffs is efficiency enhancing.” Abrams worked with Russell Settle, former UD professor of economics, and UD doctoral candidate Martin Kennedy, who has since joined the faculty at Aquinas College in Nashville, Tenn., to review votes from the 106th and 107th Congresses. To ensure enough votes for reliability, only members who voted in both Congresses were included in the sample. “The Econ-E score is unique among the various political scoring indexes,” Abrams said. “Many special interest groups, such as the Americans for Democratic Action and the Chamber of Commerce, use scoring methods for measuring congressional members’ support for their preferred legislative proposals. The Econ-E score, which focuses on social benefits and costs, essentially treats all within our society equally. “A congressional member’s support for legislation that fails the benefit-cost criterion lowers that member’s score regardless of which specific groups gained or lost. Agricultural price supports and tariff protection, for example, are often politically popular, but usually fail the benefit-cost criteria. Thus, voting for such proposals would lower a member’s Econ-E score,” Abrams said. The potential range for scores is 0-100. To illustrate, a score of 0 indicates that a member always voted against efficiency enhancing legislation. The actual range turned out to be 18-91 for the Senate and 0-87 in the House. Where do the major party presidential candidates rank? U.S. Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards received scores of 36 and 50, respectively. By comparison, the average score for Democratic senators was 40. On average, Republicans outscored Democrats 69 to 40 in the Senate and 54 to 20 in the House. The Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates escaped assessment, as neither was a member of Congress during the period under review. “The Econ-E score is likely to be controversial and a subject for and a tool in academic research,” Abrams said. “Party affiliation, gender and age all appear to play roles in determining a member’s score.” These issues are subjects of ongoing research by Abrams, Settle and Kennedy. To find the Econ-E score of a particular senator or congressmen, or to learn more about the scoring system, see the web site at [www.lerner.udel.edu/econ-e/]. Article by Neil Thomas To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here. |
|
|
