One down, two to go

Just sent off one set of revisions for a journal article. That leaves just one more revise and resubmit to finish (this week?).

Then there are the pesky two concluding paragraphs that I need to write for that book review essay. Then, I swear, no more book reviews for me. (I’ve done one for each of the top journals in my field…that’s pleeenty.)

No substantive posting until I finish that essay.

Exporting cronyism to the U.S.

Mary Elena has not been ‘selected’ to represent Mexicans in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky by the SRE board. Though I don’t know the “other guy,” Mary Elena’s blog reflects her concern for Mexicans living in the U.S. and social justice.

Now that the selection process is over, I hope she brings back her old blog template.

Andale, pues

Tonight, the NFL is having its first ever NFL game in Mexico. The NFL appears to be trying to expand its market down South.


Outside the Stadium. Usually these [bootleg] souvenirs are for Mexican futbol teams, like Cruz Azul.

I could say more, but I have too much work to do.

Closer yet…

jackknife, cl(country) noi: regress y x1 x2 x3, robust

Now, I need to figure out how to save each result so that I can calculated predicted values. I think it’s the save option. Whoopee!

[Update: jackknife _b _se, saving (testresults, replace) cl(cntyid) noi: regress y x1 x2 x3, robust]

[I’m a big time dork.]

Duh

Funny how the brain works. My first thought upon waking this morning:

“keep if e(sample)”

Second thought: “Duh, that is so obvious.”

These thoughts were after waking from a dream in which my department was having a new position search, and I was applying for the position (??). Part of the dream was a conversation with one of my current colleagues asking him whether I should present some research on Mexico or something cross-national and quantitative. The good news was that I was on the short list for this position, and I think I applied for it because it paid more than my current position. The dream wasn’t really a nervous or stressful dream. Could this be related to my third year review? Probably. (Except the raise part….unfortunately.)

Back to work.

Grrrr….

I hate Stata. More precisely, I hate Stata help files. [In the voice of Friends’ Chandler: Could they make help files less helpful?]

I have unbalanced panels of time series, cross section data. I have three different dependent variables, and two models (full and restricted) for each. I want to test for unit outliers. The recommended approach is leaving out a (country) unit, estimating the model, then using the model to predict the values for the omitted unit. I have to do this for all 39 (countries) units in my sample. Then, I can determine which countries are likely to be outliers. [And regular outlier commands don’t work because I have country-years and use robust estimation.]

There is probably some simple code to have it run the regressions and do the predictions by unit without generating 200 pages of output, but I can’t seem to figure out how. I can only figure out how to do each country separately which will take FOREVER. [I can’t even figure out how to get Stata to save my e(sample) from each regression. The dataset has 1200 observations total, but due to missing data, each regression uses about 450 observations.]

Despite the fact that I just took a lunch break with Brian to have a burrito, I am in no better mood now. Grrrr.

[Update: Getting warmer, I think…]

[Update: Close, but no cigar….]

In my inbox

In the last 24 hours, number of reminders that the deadline for proposals for the MPSA meetings in Chicago is October 10: 4

Update: #5#s 5 & 6 arrived in my inbox today. (10/4/2005)
Update: #7 arrived today, via POLMETH. (10/5/2005)

At 31, I am now OLD

Last night, Coldplay had a show in Atlanta, and several of my graduate students skipped stats class to go. (They turned in their homeworks and research paper questions first, though.)

I admit: I did not know who Coldplay is or what songs they sing. I googled them, and that was no help. The picture and album names on their website meant nothing to me. The students who were in class told me that Coldplay provides the WB most of its soundtrack. Still, no help; I hate even the ads for the O.C. [oops, that’s on Fox] most shows on WB except Reba.

Brian, who I normally credit with keeping me up to date with pop culture, said he knows about Coldplay but never thought they were worth mentioning. [That is telling in itself.] Today, he sent me this. I guess it’s ok that I missed Coldplay if they are already “played out.”

But, I still feel old. I remember that when I was in high school, my dad did not “get” In Living Color, and I swore I never wanted to be so old, middle-class, and white that I didn’t get it.

I guess that’s what a PhD and working too hard will do that to you. Makes you old and out of touch before your time.

Misc Mexican news roundup

Today, there are several items that relate to news topics I’ve mentioned before.

They’ve found another murdered woman in Ciudad Juarez. That brings this year’s total to 30. Read my earlier posts.
[Updated: There’s a NYTimes article and multimedia slideshow about the femicidios this week.]

The Supreme Court will hear a case brought by the Executive regarding sugar cane industry legislation. This relates to an earlier observation (and follow-up) that I made regarding the increasing importance of the Mexican judiciary for resolving political disputes.

Subnational units of the social security union are mobilizing against the proposed reform to their labor contract and the 2004 legislation. The previous posts about the conflict are too many to list. Also notable is the subnational alliances mentioned in the article which reflect changes in the union movement post-2000. For the complete story on that, you’ll have to wait until I write that article.

And finally, representatives from the PRI and PRD are putting together an initiative to legalize abortion. [This is actually a new topic, though I posted some links to the heated debate about the day-after pill this summer.]

Independence of the Mexican Congress, redux

Recently, I suggested that legislative independence in Mexico is weakened by the branch’s lack of access to information and the technical expertise necessary to independently formulate policy and/or propose alternatives to the executive’s proposals.

Matthew Shugart has taken up the theme and insists that the legislative branch is able to act independently. As you might expect, Matthew points to the institutional incentives that legislators face, including several that I mentioned in my original post and comment thread. While I continue to agree that the institutional arrangements continue to make legislators highly responsive to the party, I think my main point is a different one.

(And, if I recall Joy Langston’s paper presented at the UCSD conference, which I discussed at length with her privately, it’s not always so clear who are the legislators’ principals–sometimes it’s the central party, but other times it may be the governors….and even then, there’s not a perfect fit, but I digress.)

My claim is that the ability to independently evaluate or formulate policy in the legislature is hindered by two information problems: 1. access to information collected by the bureaucracy of the executive branch and 2. technical expertise to evaluate or process information. The first issue was mentioned in the newspaper article that led to my initial post; legislators could not get raw data from the executive about petroleum receipts and expenditures. The second issue is something I have witnessed first hand in the area of pensions, but it is related to the first issue.

Without information and the expertise to process it, legislators cannot formulate viable alterantives to executive proposals. Instead, their opposition must be based upon ideological stances without data or analysis to back them up. [Let me finish….] Yes, they do “oppose” policy, but often not effectively if they can’t debate the information (because they can’t get the raw data or don’t have experts available to process the data) nor formulate an adequate alternative.

Let’s use an example from a policy area that I know well: pensions. Pensions are data intensive and highly technical. To evaluate existing policy and propose new policies requires a lot of data. You need data on demographic factors including future projections, the implicit pension debt, and general models of economic growth, to name just a few types of data. Technical expertise (actuarial) is needed to calculate the life tables, risk premiums, and estimate the costs of current policy and proposed reforms. [As an aside, such expertise is scarce in Mexico.]

The administration has access to all of this data and the expertise necessary to formulate a proposal. The administration may, however, have an ideological preference for a certain type of reform. For instance, according to the technical data, a parametric reform may be cheaper than a privatizing reform, but since the administration prefers privatization on ideological grounds, the administration may choose to ignore that data and present data in support of privatization. [In an interview, a Mexican bureaucrat actually told me this happened with a particular reform.]

If opposition parties hope to prevent the privatization (even for ideological grounds), they need the data necessary to independently evaluate the claims of the administration, and they need the expertise to analyze the data to expose methodological problems or formulate alternative solutions. If they do not have the data or the expertise, they cannot effectively counter the claims of the administration.

Thus far, democracy is creating more access to the types of information and data that are necessary for policy-making in Mexico. There is now an equivalent to the Freedom of Information Act. However, as the article I originally cited makes clear, legislators still don’t feel that they have access to all the information that they need. My point is that more transparency is still needed.

My other point is about expertise. Yes, the Commission for Social Security in the Chamber of Deputies has ONE actuary. That one actuary must advise the commission on pension privatization plans for at least two current pension debates: the ISSSTE and the IMSS workers’ union. That one actuary is nothing compared to the teams of actuaries that work at ISSSTE and the Secretary of the Treasury that formulated the ISSSTE reform proposal, with additional technical assistance from the World Bank. That one actuary is nothing compared to the teams of actuaries at IMSS working on the workers’ union pension plan analysis.

Yes, opposition parties can take an ideological/rhetorical stance against pension privatization, but they cannot fight claims about the costs of current policy or privatization options made by the administration in the press without the necessary data or expertise. This might mean that parties begin to devote more of their own resources to investigate policy options (by hiring their own actuaries, as some unions have begun to do), but if the administration keeps a monopoly on information, then having the technical expertise will be of no help. Clearly, legislators are also beginning to demand more data and transparency from the executive, which reflects not only a certain degree of current independence but will also increase future independence.

Based upon these observations, I still hypothesize that degree of legislative independence will vary across policy or issue areas, and that legislative independence will be weaker in highly technical or data intensive policy areas within the same institutional context. And, that last bit about institutional context is important, so I thank Matthew for pushing me on this point. Yes, the Congress is more independent now than it has ever been since the Revolution. On the other hand, I still think there is probably a lot of variation in that independence across issue areas.

In the future, I suspect that legislators will use their growing independence to demand more information and resources for policy making in the future, and this unevenness across policy areas will work itself out. The size of the independent policy office in Congress will probably expand. There is probably some analogous process (increasing need for data and expertise to formulate policy) that led to the creation of the GAO in the U.S., though that’s not my area of research.