I will listen to all your political ideas and theories because then I will believe you have the Intelectual capacity to comprehend complex systems. and even though 90% of you will not, you still have the right to vote in America, have kids, feed your families, get laid and drink beer. worship or not worship and live a safe healthy life.
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default...16_updated.pdf
III. Conclusion
This paper reviews a provocative but well-supported hypothesis that Democratic presidents have overseen superior economic performance since at least Harry Truman. I confirmed the basic hypothesis using updated data from the same sources that also include the second Obama term. Section I explored whether Blinder-Watson’s hypothesis hinges on their use of a one-quarter lag in defining a presidential term. It does.
The high degree of variability of presidential growth rates relative to the lag timing throws significant doubts on the Blinder-Watson hypothesis. Without a better rationale, there seems little reason to trust a hypothesis that hinges on a coincidental use of a short lag that has no historical foundation, particularly when that lag coincidentally maximizes the D-R gap and the statistical significance of partisan identity as an explanatory variable.
A superior way of assessing the economic performance of a presidential administration might be to consider overlapping influence of current and former presidents during a term, an approach that was developed in Section II. Whether overlapping quarters or years, the results were different than when any discrete lagging of terms is utilized.
Future work on presidential economic performance is needed, but it should recognize that party identification is an elastic concept. Political writers often observe that a Republican (or Democrat) in the White House today would have been a Democrat (or Republican) three decades ago. Ronald Reagan advocated for greater levels of immigration and signed legislation that granted
Presidents - 17
amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in 1986, a policy anathema to conservatives in recent years. Richard Nixon enacted wage and price controls, and famously went to China, both decidedly non-conservative positions. Liberal JFK cut income tax rates at all levels, the first president to do so since before the Great Depression, and tax-cutting (especially for the rich) is decidedly out of step with modern progressive ideology. These examples show that the inconsistent relationship between partisanship and ideology is a challenge that blurs the important question of how policy affects the economy
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default...16_updated.pdf
III. Conclusion
This paper reviews a provocative but well-supported hypothesis that Democratic presidents have overseen superior economic performance since at least Harry Truman. I confirmed the basic hypothesis using updated data from the same sources that also include the second Obama term. Section I explored whether Blinder-Watson’s hypothesis hinges on their use of a one-quarter lag in defining a presidential term. It does.
The high degree of variability of presidential growth rates relative to the lag timing throws significant doubts on the Blinder-Watson hypothesis. Without a better rationale, there seems little reason to trust a hypothesis that hinges on a coincidental use of a short lag that has no historical foundation, particularly when that lag coincidentally maximizes the D-R gap and the statistical significance of partisan identity as an explanatory variable.
A superior way of assessing the economic performance of a presidential administration might be to consider overlapping influence of current and former presidents during a term, an approach that was developed in Section II. Whether overlapping quarters or years, the results were different than when any discrete lagging of terms is utilized.
Future work on presidential economic performance is needed, but it should recognize that party identification is an elastic concept. Political writers often observe that a Republican (or Democrat) in the White House today would have been a Democrat (or Republican) three decades ago. Ronald Reagan advocated for greater levels of immigration and signed legislation that granted
Presidents - 17
amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in 1986, a policy anathema to conservatives in recent years. Richard Nixon enacted wage and price controls, and famously went to China, both decidedly non-conservative positions. Liberal JFK cut income tax rates at all levels, the first president to do so since before the Great Depression, and tax-cutting (especially for the rich) is decidedly out of step with modern progressive ideology. These examples show that the inconsistent relationship between partisanship and ideology is a challenge that blurs the important question of how policy affects the economy
welcome being proved wrong
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