IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v46y1986i01p79-111_04.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Economic Model of Voting Behaviour over Specific Issues at the Constitutional Convention of 1787

Author

Listed:
  • McGuire, Robert A.
  • Ohsfeldt, Robert L.

Abstract

Despite hundreds of studies of the influence of economic interests on the formation of the U.S. Constitution, no consensus has been reached. Our study of the Constitutional Convention differs from previous ones by offering an explicit theoretical model of delegates' voting behavior and employing multivariate statistical techniques. We extend our earlier work by analyzing new information on constituents' economic interests and ideology. Further our econometric results on individual roll-call votes strongly suggest delegates who owned slaves or represented slaveowning constituents were more likely to oppose issues favoring a national form of government.

Suggested Citation

  • McGuire, Robert A. & Ohsfeldt, Robert L., 1986. "An Economic Model of Voting Behaviour over Specific Issues at the Constitutional Convention of 1787," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 79-111, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:46:y:1986:i:01:p:79-111_04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700045514/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. George Crowley, 2012. "Spatial dependence in constitutional constraints: the case of US states," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 134-165, June.
    2. Paul D. Carlsen & Jac C. Heckelman, 2016. "State bloc versus individual delegate voting at the constitutional convention: Did it make a difference?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(3), pages 781-800, January.
    3. Jan Fałkowski & Katarzyna Metelska-Szaniawska, 2015. "Przyczyny ustanawiania i stabilność konstytucji państwa - perspektywa ekonomiczna," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 3, pages 79-105.
    4. Keith Dougherty, 2006. "To Form a More Perfect Union: A new economic interpretation of the United States Constitution," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 128(3), pages 501-503, September.
    5. Denise L. Anthony & Douglas D. Heckathorn & Steven M. Maser, 1994. "Rational Rhetoric in Politics," Rationality and Society, , vol. 6(4), pages 489-518, October.
    6. Jean-Michel Josselin & Alain Marciano, 2000. "Displacing your Principal. Two Historical Case Studies of Some Interest for the Constitutional Future of Europe," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 217-233, November.
    7. Mwangi Kimenyi & William Shughart, 2010. "The political economy of constitutional choice: a study of the 2005 Kenyan constitutional referendum," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 1-27, March.
    8. Farley Grubb, 2003. "Creating the U.S. Dollar Currency Union, 1748–1811: A Quest for Monetary Stability or a Usurpation of State Sovereignty for Personal Gain?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1778-1798, December.
    9. Cohen, Alon, 2014. "Independent judicial review: A blessing in disguise," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 209-220.
    10. Morong, Cyril, 1996. "Socio-economic elements in Public Choice research," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 559-569.
    11. Clifford F. Thies, 2005. "Money and the Adoption of the U.S. Constitution," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 20(Spring 20), pages 148-165.
    12. Anton Lowenberg & Ben Yu, 1992. "Efficient constitution formation and maintenance: The role of “exit”," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 51-72, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:46:y:1986:i:01:p:79-111_04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.