Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Congress approved the superconducting supercollider (SSC), but later cut all funding after construction for the project had begun. We claim that this reversal was due, in part, to a problem of time inconsistency. Representatives from states in contention to receive the project had an incentive to support it early in the process. Once Texas was chosen as the SSC site, the other contender states had a greatly diminished incentive to continue to support it. Our empirical results show that the probability of switching from 'for' to 'against' the project is significantly higher for representatives from the former contender states. Copyright 1999 by Kluwer Academic Publishers