Essays in political economy

This dissertation consists of three essays in political economy. In Chapter 1, I analyze the management of state public employee retirement systems. Public pensions are managed by combinations of state politicians, employees and political appointees, creating a spectrum of decision-making authority that runs from the state legislature to retirees. The chapter examines whether delegating control away from the state legislature to independent pension agencies impacts pension fund financial health and retirement benefit allocations. Results suggest that the form of governance dues not affect pension fund financial health, but has a substantial impact on benefit levels.;Chapter 2 examines compensation negotiations between public employees and government agencies. I analyze how the scope of public sector collective bargaining negotiations influences compensation packages. The paper addresser the two dominant views of collective bargaining and unionism, the monopoly and collective voice view, and suggests that both models describe elements of compensation outcomes. When the legal environment surrounding collective bargaining is more inclusive for benefits, those benefits rise. The increase in total compensation, however, is less than the individual benefits, suggesting that the compensation mix shifts in the face of different negotiation parameters.;Chapter 3 (coauthored with Jason Snyder) shifts focus from public employees to the media, and examines a major issue in political economy: the interaction between public opinion, the media and elections. We study media effects on election outcomes by analyzing the Hearst newspaper empire in the early 1900s, which enjoyed 20% market penetration and was overtly political. We find that there was no "Hearst effect" on vote shares or election turnout - a zero parameter estimate. This result may suggest that, at least in the early 1900s, media bias did not change elections. Media effects is an issue with a rich and growing literature, yet this analysis suggests that in this extreme case of market control, the media had a negligible influence on elections.