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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | François Durand (Nokia Bell Labs, LINCS - Laboratory of Information, Network and Communication Sciences - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - SU - Sorbonne Université); Antonin Macé (PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Matias Nunez (CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - X - École polytechnique - ENSAE ParisTech - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | We study how voting rules shape voter coordination in large three-candidate elections. We consider three rules, varying according to the number of candidates that voters can support in their ballot: Plurality (one), Anti-Plurality (two) and Approval Voting (one or two). We show that the Condorcet winner—a normatively desirable candidate—can always be elected at equilibrium under Approval Voting. We then numerically study a dynamic process of political tâtonnement. Monte-Carlo simulations of the process deliver rich insights on election outcomes. The Condorcet winner is virtually always elected under Approval Voting, but not under the other rules. The dominance of Approval Voting is robust to alternative welfare criteria and to the introduction of expressive voters. |
| Keywords: | Approval voting,Poisson games,Strategic voting,Condorcet consistency,Fictitious play,Expressive voting |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-03162184&r=all |
| By: | Marcus Noland (Peterson Institute for International Economics); Eva Yiwen Zhang (Peterson Institute for International Economics) |
| Abstract: | By Election Day 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had killed 234,244 Americans and caused the sharpest macroeconomic downturn in US history. Regression analysis shows that in a “no pandemic†counterfactual or a counterfactual in which the severity of the pandemic was mitigated by 30 percent, Donald Trump would have lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. In the 20 percent mitigation scenario, the electoral vote would have been tied, giving Trump a presumptive victory in the House of Representatives. For the second time in a row (and the third time since 2000), the candidate who lost the popular vote would have been elected president of the United States. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, coronavirus, pandemic, Donald Trump, sociotropic voting, electoral college |
| JEL: | H1 I18 D72 F68 Z13 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp21-3&r=all |
| By: | Felix Bierbrauer (University of Cologne); Aleh Tsyvinski (Yale University); Nicolas Werquin (Toulouse School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We develop a model of political competition with endogenous turnout and endogenous platforms. Parties trade off incentivizing their supporters to vote and discouraging the supporters of the competing party from voting. We show that the latter objective is particularly pronounced for a party with an edge in the political race. Thus, an increase in political support for a party may lead to the adoption of policies favoring its opponents so as to asymmetrically demobilize them. We study the implications for the political economy of redistributive taxation. Equilibrium tax policy is typically aligned with the interest of voters who are demobilized. |
| Keywords: | Political competition, Income Taxation, Turnout |
| JEL: | D72 D82 H21 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:071&r=all |
| By: | James Rockey (University of Birmingham); Nadia Zakir (University of Leicester) |
| Abstract: | American corporate and political elites are connected by the donations that the latter receive from the former. Using a novel dataset, this paper analyzes these connections as a social network. This analysis uncovers the changing structure of this network, and thus of the changing nature of money in US politics. In particular, beyond the well understood increase in the scale of donations, we document how donation patterns have become more polarized and more concentrated. We show that the determinants of this network's structure have remained broadly constant over time. Donors associated with the same firm or industry are substantially more likely to donate to the same candidates in all the elections we study. Likewise, politicians serving on the same congressional committees have been consistently more likely to receive campaign funds from the same donors. Yet, there has been a transformation in the concentration of donations on a small number of donors and recipients connected with a small number of committees and a small number of industries. This concentration is reflected in substantial increases in the power (centrality) of the most important donors and politicians. |
| Keywords: | Donations, Campaign Contributions, Networks |
| JEL: | D72 L14 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bir:birmec:21-03&r=all |
| By: | David Szakonyi (George Washington University); Ora John Reuter (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee & Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Does electoral fraud stabilize authoritarian rule or undermine it? The answer to this question rests, in part, on how voters evaluate regime candidates who engage in fraud. Using a survey experiment conducted after the 2016 elections in Russia, we find that voters withdraw their support from ruling party candidates who commit electoral fraud. This effect is especially large among strong supporters of the regime. Core regime supporters are more likely to have ex ante beliefs that elections are free and fair. Revealing that fraud has occurred significantly reduces their propensity to support the regime. These findings illustrate that fraud is costly for autocrats not just because it may ignite protest, but also because it can undermine the regime’s core base of electoral support. Because many of its strongest supporters expect free and fair elections, the regime has strong incentives to conceal or otherwise limit its use of electoral fraud. |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2020-19&r=all |
| By: | Amory Gethin (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab); Marc Morgan (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the transformation of electoral cleavages in Brazil since 1989 using a novel assembly of electoral surveys. Brazilian political history since redemocratization is largely a history of the rise and fall of the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT). We show that the election of Lula da Silva as President in 2002, followed by the implementation of redistributive policies by successive PT governments, was at the origin of the marked socioeconomic cleavages that emerged. In a relatively short space of time the PT transformed itself from a party of the young, highly educated, high-income elite of the Southern party of the country, to a party of the poor and lesser educated voters, increasingly located in the disadvantaged region of the Northeast. Controlling for a host of socio-demographic factors, a voter in the Northeast was 20 percentage points more likely to vote for the PT in 2018 than voters in other regions, compared to being 5 percentage points less likely to do so in 1989. In sharp contrast to other western democracies, political conflict in Brazil has followed an increasingly unidimensional class-based path. This culminated in the unification of elites and large parts of the middle class behind Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election. We argue that contextual policy-driven factors and programmatic alliances are key to understand the PT's singular evolution, and thus the transformation of electoral cleavages in Brazil. |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-03165718&r=all |
| By: | Stephan Schneider (ETH Zurich, Switzerland); Sven Kunze (Heidelberg University, Alfred-Weber-Institute for Economics) |
| Abstract: | Allocation decisions are vulnerable to political influence, but it is unclear in which situations politicians use their discretionary power in a partisan manner. We analyze the allocation of presidential disaster declarations in the United States, exploiting the spatiotemporal randomness of all hurricane strikes from 1965–2018. We show that biased declaration behavior is not politically affordable if a disaster is either very strong or weak, when relief provision is clearly necessary or not. However, in ambiguous situations, after medium-intensity hurricanes, presidents favor areas governed by their co-partisans. Our nonlinear estimations demonstrate that this hump-shaped alignment bias exceeds average estimates up to eightfold. |
| Keywords: | : disaster relief, distributive politics, hurricanes, natural disasters, nonlinearity, party alignment, political inuence, political economy. |
| JEL: | D72 H30 H84 P16 Q54 |
| Date: | 2021–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kof:wpskof:21-491&r=all |
| By: | Paola Azar (University of the Republic, Uruguay); Sergio Espuelas (Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | By the turn of the 20th century, nation-building reformers in Spain tried to stimulate schooling expansion to improve (or at least dignify) Spain’s position in the international arena. However, in this paper we find that democratic imperfections help explaining the modest spread of primary schooling after the 1902 reforms. Regression results show that the lack of effective electoral competition and political patronage lowered public primary education spending across Spanish provinces in 1902-22. Voter turnout had a positive impact but it was not big enough to compensate for this negative effect. |
| Keywords: | Education, Spain, Democracy, distributive politics. |
| JEL: | D72 H52 I28 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ewp:wpaper:409web&r=all |
| By: | Uppenberg, Carolina (Department of Economic History, Lund University); Olsson, Mats (Department of Economic History, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | The Swedish Municipality Act, issued in 1862, consolidated a plutocratic system in which ownership and income, and the resulting level of taxation, translated into political power. However, as a measure to hinder large landowners from holding a majority of the votes, the Act guaranteed voting rights for tenants. The aim of the article is to analyse how power relations played out after this challenge to landlords’ hegemony. Through an analysis of tenants’ contracts, appeals to the King in Council and minutes from municipal board meetings, we show how landlords did not trust a political culture of deference to secure power, even if they had demanded subservience in contracts. In a deliberate and specific way, they also reserved voting rights for themselves, which we find to have been a widespread pattern although it was repeatedly pointed out as illegal by the King in Council.However, through the analysis of the board meetings, it becomes clear that the position of manorial landlords in these municipalities was so obvious that they rarely had to confront their tenants with their illegal contractual restrictions. The results empirically challenge a narrative of slow but steady democratization and theoretically challenge the alleged reciprocity of landlord-tenant relations. |
| Keywords: | landlord; tenant farmer; municipality; Swedish Municipality Act; 1862; deference; local politics; voting rights; political culture |
| JEL: | N43 N53 N93 |
| Date: | 2021–02–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0218&r=all |
| By: | Claudio Ferraz (University of British Columbia); Federico Finan (UC-Berkeley); Monica Maretinez-Bravo (CEMFI, Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes how changes in the concentration of political power affect long-run development. We study Brazil’s military dictatorship whose rise to power dramatically altered the distribution of power of local political elites. We document that municipalities that were more politically concentrated prior to the dictatorship in the 1960s are relatively richer in 2000, despite being poorer initially. Our evidence suggests that this reversal of fortune was the result of the military’s policies aimed at undermining the power of traditional elites. These policies increased political competition locally, which ultimately led to better governance, more provision of public goods, and higher income levels. |
| Keywords: | Political power, elites, regime transition, economic development. |
| JEL: | D72 O43 N46 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cmf:wpaper:wp2020_2008&r=all |
| By: | Julian Freitag; Anna Kerkhof; Johannes Münster |
| Abstract: | We present a new measure for the political position of news outlets based on politicians' selective sharing of news items. Politicians predominantly share news items that are in line with their political position, hence, one can infer the political position of news outlets from the politicians' revealed preferences over news items. We apply our measure to twelve major German media outlets by analyzing tweets of German Members of Parliament (MPs) on Twitter. For each news outlet under consideration, we compute the correlation between the political position of the seven parties in the 19th German Bundestag and their MPs' relative number of Twitter referrals to that outlet. We find that three outlets are positioned on the left, and two of them are positioned on the right. Several robustness checks support our results. We also apply our procedure to nine major media outlets from the USA and find that two outlets are positioned on the right, five are positioned on the left of the political spectrum. |
| Keywords: | political media bias, political position, selective sharing, social media, Twitter |
| JEL: | H41 L82 L86 P16 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8943&r=all |
| By: | Clulow, Z.; Ferguson, M.; Ashworth, P; Reiner, D. |
| Abstract: | We explore the relationship between political ideology and public attitudes towards a range of energy technologies (namely: biomass, coal, shale (or coal seam) gas, natural gas, carbon capture and storage, hydroelectricity, nuclear, solar thermal and photovoltaic, wave and wind energy). Our empirical analysis draws on the results of two similar nationally representative public surveys that were conducted in Australia and the UK in 2017. Our findings suggest that political ideology is significantly associated with public attitudes towards energy technologies. Specifically, supporters of left-leaning political parties tend to be more supportive of renewables and opposed to biomass, shale (coal seam) gas, nuclear and fossil fuel energies compared to right-leaning individuals. We also create an alternative ideological proxy to capture the relative emphasis that parties place on the environment and economy and find that supporters of environmentally focused parties generally express similar energy preferences to left-leaning individuals and economy-focused respondents align with right-leaning attitudes. Our findings are robust to different choices of proxy. |
| Keywords: | Political parties, public opinion, climate policy, energy policy |
| JEL: | D72 P18 Q42 Q48 |
| Date: | 2021–03–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2126&r=all |
| By: | Yann Nounamo (Douala, Cameroon); Simplice A. Asongu (Yaoundé, Cameroon); Henri Njangang (Dschang , Cameroon); Sosson Tadadjeu (Dschang , Cameroon) |
| Abstract: | The main contribution of this study is the determination of an endogenous threshold of institutional quality, beyond which external debt would affect economic growth differently. The focus is on 14 countries of the African Franc zone over the period 1985-2015. Based on the panel Smooth Threshold Regression model, the results reveal that the relationship between external debt and economic growth is based on institutional quality. It is found that the level of indebtedness at which the effect of external debt on economic growth becomes negative is higher in countries with lower levels of corruption and high levels of democracy. This means that poor institutional quality prevents a country from taking full advantage of its credit opportunities. Thus, the more countries become democratic, the more debt helps finance economic growth. These results are robust to sensitivity analysis and Generalized Method of Moments estimation. |
| Keywords: | external debt, political institutions, economic growth |
| Date: | 2021–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agd:wpaper:21/017&r=all |
| By: | Ingela Alger (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Jean-François Laslier (CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Why do voters incur costs to participate in large elections? This paper proposes an exploratory analysis of the implications of evolutionary Kantian morality for this classical problem in the economic theory of voting: the costly participation problem. |
| Keywords: | Homo moralis,Ethical voter,Voting,Voter turnout,Kantian morality |
| Date: | 2021–03–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03163438&r=all |
| By: | Carmen Durrer de la Sota (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab); Amory Gethin (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | This paper documents how democratization in South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since the 1980s has led to the materialization of growing political cleavages. Political integration, manifested by attitudes towards North Korea in South Korea, and towards mainland China in Hong Kong and Taiwan, have been a key issue structuring party competition and electoral behaviors in the three territories. In Hong Kong and South Korea, this issue has sharply divided old and new generations, albeit in a somewhat different way. In Hong Kong, younger cohorts are substantially more likely to vote for parties supporting lower political integration. In South Korea, older generations show significantly higher support for unification, but they are also much more likely to vote for conservatives, who firmly oppose any attempt to engage with the North Korean regime, a phenomenon rooted in decades of tensions and fiercely anticommunist regimes. In Taiwan, such a strong generational divide is absent, but the independence/unification cleavage has interacted with ethnicity: immigrants from mainland China and their descendants have been more supportive of the pro-unification Kuomintang than natives. This is also the case in Hong Kong, where sustained immigration from the mainland has come with the emergence of a strong anti-immigration cleavage. We argue that the strength of these cleavages and the lack of political mobilization of the working class for historical reasons have played a key role in explaining the near absence of class cleavages in all three territories. While economic concerns do play a role in nurturing mass mobilizations, cultural and political identities, rather than material concerns, seem to continue shaping party systems in East Asia. |
| Date: | 2021–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-03165716&r=all |
| By: | Gerald Carlino; Thorsten Drautzburg; Robert P. Inman; Nicholas Zarra |
| Abstract: | Partisanship of state level politicians affect the impact of federal fiscal policy in the U.S. Using data from close gubernatorial elections, we find partisan differences in the marginal propensity to spend federal transfers since the early 1980's: Republican governors spend less. A New Keynesian model of partisan states in a monetary union implies sizable aggregate income effects from these partisan differences. First, the transfer multiplier would rise by 0.60 if Republican governors were to spend as much from federal aid as do Democratic governors. Second, the observed changes in the share of Republican governors imply variation in the fiscal multiplier of 0.40. Local projection regressions support this prediction. |
| JEL: | C24 E62 F45 H72 H74 H77 |
| Date: | 2021–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28425&r=all |
| By: | Julieta Peveri (Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France.) |
| Abstract: | There is strong evidence that national leaders matter for the performance of their nations, but little is known about what drives the direction of their effects. I assess how national leaders' quality of governance, measured by five indicators, varies with their career and education. Using text analysis and a sample of one thousand national leaders between 1932 and 2010, I identify five types of rulers: military leaders, academics, high-level politicians, low-level politicians and lawyers. Military leaders tend to be associated with a decrease in the quality of governance, whereas politicians who have held visible offices before taking power perform better. National leaders with a law background, as well as academics, can have negative effects depending on the political regime they run and on the choice of performance indicator. This highlights the heterogeneity behind the positive effect of holding a university degree, often used as a proxy for politicians' quality. |
| Keywords: | national leaders, politicians' quality, leaders' characteristics |
| JEL: | H70 N10 J45 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2120&r=all |