Leaving on a Jet Plane: Polarization,Foreign Travel,and Comity in Congress

No political observer, politician, or political scientist doubts that party polarization has weakened the social fabric of Congress. Measuring that effect, however, is exceedingly difficult. In this article, we operationalize the congressional social fabric by examining the foreign travel behavior of members of Congress over time. We evaluate the social disintegration in Congress by examining if and whether changes in member travel can explain why the social connectedness of members has waned. Using a unique dataset of foreign travel for House members from 1977 to 2012, we find that Republican House members, in particular, have altered their foreign travel patterns. Ideologically extreme members have always been less likely to take foreign trips, but extremely conservative Republican have become much more likely to travel only with co-partisans as polarization has increased in Congress. Ideologically moderate Republicans, while still traveling as members of bipartisan delegations, have also increased their willingness to travel only with fellow Republicans. Our results suggest that bipartisan foreign travel is a victim of the partisan war waging in Congress.     

Geographic Data Science

It is widely acknowledged that the emergence of “Big Data” is having a profound and often controversial impact on the production of knowledge. In this context, Data Science has developed as an interdisciplinary approach that turns such “Big Data” into information. This article argues for the positive role that Geography can have on Data Science when being applied to spatially explicit problems; and inversely, makes the case that there is much that Geography and Geographical Analysis could learn from Data Science. We propose a deeper integration through an ambitious research agenda, including systems engineering, new methodological development, and work toward addressing some acute challenges around epistemology. We argue that such issues must be resolved in order to realize a Geographic Data Science, and that such goal would be a desirable one.     

Labor Productivity in Western Europe 1975–1985: An Intercountry, Interindustry Analysis

Using intercountry input-output tables and disaggregated employment data, we decompose labor productivity growth between 1975 and 1985 in six Western European countries into partial effects of six determinants including changing international trade and changing final demand. To this end, new multiplicative decomposition formulas are derived and implemented. In a similar way, we study labor productivity changes in vertically integrated industries. The effects of structural change on convergence are investigated also. We see this paper as an attempt to merge the convergence literature with earlier single-country productivity-change decompositions using input-output data.