Essays in social choice theory and public sector economics

The first essay, "Order Restricted Preferences," defines a condition on individual preferences that ensures consistent choice by majority rule. A completely new theorem shows that this restriction implies Sen's Value Restriction, so quasi-transitivity and other results of Sen hold. We show that related conditions occur in the literature, but that the link with Value Restriction was missed and that much the same theorems have been proved repeatedly. We extend some of these theorems.;In the third essay, "Millage Elections and the Demand for Education," we incorporate cross section voting data on school spending proposals into the analysis. Here we address some of the concerns raised in the agenda control literature about demand estimation. A fundamental problem with using Michigan data results from the complex ballots voters face, which often present a menu of non-mutually exclusive choices. We argue that we can use an interjurisdictional voting behavior model to solve this problem. We estimate this model using a technique that does not seem to have been applied to this kind of cross section data and which works very well. We then use the results to estimate a demand equation.;The second essay, "District Power Equalization and the Demand for Education," investigates the impact of state aid on the estimation curves for education. Our data consists of Michigan School District Census Data and 1981-82 financial data provided by the Michigan State Department of Education. District Power Equalization (DPE) introduces two fundamental complexities. The first is the determination of tax price and full fiscal income. We develop a methodology to derive these quantities and show that these methods produce the results familiar from non-DPE finance systems. The second complexity is that DPE makes the budget set for consumers of education nonconvex. If we want to use the median voter model we must take into account this nonconvexity. We apply recently developed maximum likelihood methods to estimate the theoretically superior model and compare the results to those obtained using more standard techniques. We use some of the results to answer public policy questions concerning the impact of DPE on spending.