No abstract

This study measures the effects of macroeconomic conditions upon the popularity of the incumbent party in Canadian federal general elections from 1945 to 1988. In so doing it uses a model similar to the retrospective voting models used in electoral studies in the United States. The results suggest that for the elections from 1945 to 1972, bad economic conditions preceding the election benefited the incumbent party. For the elections from 1974 to 1988, these effects were diminished or reversed. Such results have precedents in separate studies that use Canadian poll data. However, they contradict the general conclusion of American studies that bad conditions hurt the incumbent. This contradiction suggests that the model's assumptions about voting behaviour, which appear to be verified by the American studies, do not apply universally.

Liturgies or public services became less eficient as a source of state revenue in Classical Athens over the democratic period. This is illustrated in a model in which each citizen, knowing his own wealth and the probability distribution of the visible wealth of others, can engage in costly wealth concealment to improve his chances of avoiding a liturgy. Relative to a wealth tax, liturgies are efJicient as long as their perjorrners can acquire sufficient private benefits through public munijicence. The observed decline in these benepts over the democratic period reduced or eliminated this relative eflciency. (JEL N43, H26, H41)

No abstract

This paper argues, contrary to the dominant view, that the ritual of the scapegoat in Leviticus xvi is a purely native, Israelite invention, not a modification of pre-Israelite, Near Eastern rites. The key to its construction is the procedure by which the biblical lawgiver examined his nation's traditions, singled out the first time a particular issue arose, and presented a law ostensibly the product of Moses' judgment. In the case of the scapegoat ritual, the issue he focussed on is the occasion when Joseph's brothers seek forgiveness for their offence against Joseph, thereby transferring to the beast their own wrongdoing. The thesis revives a view found as early as the Book of Jubilees and which turns up again in Maimonides that the Day of Atonement was first instituted to expiate the brothers' offence against Joseph.