Using Louisiana school board property tax elections from the past decade, the authors study the question of whether or not special elections tend to produce lower turnout and a greater percentage of yes votes than do general elections. With the problem focusing on the choice of voting yes, voting no, or abstaining from voting, modified minimum chi-square methods are used in the analysis. The authors find that opposition to local school taxes increases with turnout. They also find that turnout is affected by the size of the tax, by the presence or absence of other taxes on the ballot, and by the presence or absence of state or federal matters on the same ballot. Both the inclusion of state or federal issues (or candidates) on the ballot and a higher tax rate lead to increased relative opposition at the polls.

Interest rates in the Civil War South were quite stable and even declined a bit during the war. In this article we explain the mechanism that produced this puzzling result. The existence of a fixed-rate call certificate redeemable at par anchored interest rates expressed in terms of Confederate dollars. When expressed in terms of gold, they were volatile, high, and reflected war events.

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