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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Taneesha Datta |
| Abstract: | The economic impact of electing members of minority groups into positions of political power is well-established. However, the impact of political representation on broader civil rights and liberties, and particularly access to justice, remains unexplored. This paper employs a close-election regression discontinuity design to explore whether female political representation can explain judicial outcomes in the Indian context, focusing on crimes against women. Despite politicians having no formal influence over the judiciary, I find that the election of a female politician generates a large and statistically significant increase in the likelihood of conviction for crimes against women, relative to the election of a male politician. I do not find similar differences in the likelihood of conviction for gender-neutral crimes, suggesting that female politicians shape judicial outcomes within issue areas that align with gendered spheres of influence and interest. Additional analysis - on whether female politicians cater to gendered preferences in public goods and whether the effect of female representation on the likelihood of conviction varies with local gender bias - points to two potentially important mechanisms. These include a policy channel, whereby female politicians actively attempt to act in women’s interests, and an exposure channel, whereby observing female representatives positively informs citizens’ views on women’s competencies. This study emphasises the importance of political representation in expanding vulnerable groups’ access to justice. |
| Keywords: | Political economy, law, political representation, gender, close elections, India |
| JEL: | D72 J16 O43 D78 H73 K4 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csa:wpaper:2025-11 |
| By: | Georgy Egorov; Sergei Guriev; Maxim Mironov; Ekaterina Zhuravskaya |
| Abstract: | Why do political campaigns so often yield unexpected results? We address this question by separately estimating the direct effect of a campaign on targeted voters and the indirect effect on others in the same social environment. Partnering with a local NGO during Argentina’s 2023 presidential election, we randomized the distribution of leaflets providing an expert assessment of the likely consequences of certain proposals by the outsider candidate Javier Milei. Exploiting Argentina’s unique sub-precinct election reporting system, we show that the campaign reduced Milei’s support among directly treated voters, as expected, but increased his support among untreated voters in treated precincts, producing a backfiring, net-positive effect for Milei. A pre-registered replication confirmed these opposite-signed effects. Using theory and a survey experiment, we show that the minority of voters who disbelieved the campaign were more motivated to discuss it with peers, convincing them to support Milei. This mobilization effect appears especially likely when campaigns criticize outsider candidates. Our results highlight how campaigns aimed at anti-elite candidates can unintentionally mobilize support for them. |
| JEL: | C93 D72 P00 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34430 |
| By: | Pavlina R. Tcherneva |
| Abstract: | On November 5, 2024, American voters sent Donald Trump back to the White House. In 2020, he lost his bid for reelection to Joe Biden, after winning in 2016 against Hillary Clinton (but only thanks to the electoral college). This time, however, Trump won the popular vote. All the new energy that surrounded the Harris-Walz campaign was outmatched by the turnout from Trump supporters. All polls—whatever one’s feelings about their reliability--kept pointing to the same defining issue in this (as in every other) election: the economy. Critical issues of democracy, abortion, and immigration filled the airwaves and political speeches, but the economy remained once again more powerful than any one of them. |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:levypn:24-3 |
| By: | Massimo Bordignon (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy); Davide Cipullo (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy); Gilberto Turati (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy) |
| Abstract: | We study the reaction of low vs. high-skilled politicians to a reform, approved in Italy in 2011, that introduces stringent individual financial and career sanctions to local administrators who are judged responsible for their municipality’s bankruptcy. To this aim, we leverage exogenous variation induced by close elections between a mayoral candidate who holds a college degree and a mayoral candidate who does not. After the introduction of sanctions, skilled politicians tend to declare bankruptcy with a higher probability than low-skilled politicians. The effect is concentrated in municipalities in which the financial state of distress was not advocating for a bankruptcy. Our findings document that individual sanctions against politicians may backfire if strategic considerations are not taken into account properly. |
| Keywords: | Soft Budget Constraint, Bankruptcy, Municipalities, Intergovernmental Relations, Mayors, Political Selection |
| JEL: | H63 H72 H74 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipu:wpaper:121 |
| By: | Teng, Xingan |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how left-wing political strength shapes the evolution of capitalist systems through the lens of income compositional inequality (IFC). Using LIS microdata for nearly 40 countries from 1978–2022, I construct an unbalanced panel of IFC and estimate two-way fixed-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, complemented by dynamic panel GMM and a fuzzy RDD around close elections. Results show that stronger left representation reduces IFC and pushes economies toward liberal capitalism; a 10-percentage-point increase in left strength lowers IFC by about 0.0079—roughly 7.5% of the sample mean. Political checks and balances attenuate this distributive effect, while rule-of-law and property-rights institutions amplify it. Channel analysis based on the pseudo-Gini of capital indicates that the main pathway operates via reductions in capital inequality. The findings highlight that “inclusive institutions” are internally heterogeneous and interact with partisan power, offering a more granular account of distributive dynamics within democracies. |
| Keywords: | Income composition inequality; Left-wing strength; Inclusive institutions; Capitalist systems |
| JEL: | D31 D33 D72 P16 P51 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:126506 |
| By: | Adam Wiechman; John M. Anderies; Margaret Garcia |
| Abstract: | Our infrastructure systems enable our well-being by allowing us to move, store, and transform materials and information given considerable social and environmental variation. Critically, this ability is shaped by the degree to which society invests in infrastructure, a fundamentally political question in large public systems. There, infrastructure providers are distinguished from users through political processes, such as elections, and there is considerable heterogeneity among users. Previous political economic models have not taken into account (i) dynamic infrastructures, (ii) dynamic user preferences, and (iii) alternatives to rational actor theory. Meanwhile, engineering often neglects politics. We address these gaps with a general dynamic model of shared infrastructure systems that incorporates theories from political economy, social-ecological systems, and political psychology. We use the model to develop propositions on how multiple characteristics of the political process impact the robustness of shared infrastructure systems to capacity shocks and unequal opportunity for private infrastructure investment. Under user fees, inequality decreases robustness, but taxing private infrastructure use can increase robustness if non-elites have equal political influence. Election cycle periods have a nonlinear effect where increasing them increases robustness up to a point but decreases robustness beyond that point. Further, there is a negative relationship between the ideological sensitivity of candidates and robustness. Overall, the biases of voters and candidates (whether they favor tax increases or decreases) mediate these political-economic effects on robustness because biases may or may not match the reality of system needs (whether system recovery requires tax increases). |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.22411 |
| By: | Atheendar Venkataramani; Rourke O'Brien; Elizabeth F. Bair; Christopher A. Lowenstein |
| Abstract: | We study the health consequences of redistributing political power through the 1975 extension of the Voting Rights Act, which eliminated barriers to voting for previously disenfranchised nonwhite populations. The intervention led to broad declines in under-five mortality but sharply contrasting effects in other age groups: mortality fell among non-white children, younger adults, and older women, yet rose among whites and older non-white men. These differences cannot be reconciled by changes in population composition or material conditions. Instead, we present evidence suggesting psychosocial stress and retaliatory responses arising from perceived status threat as key mechanisms. |
| JEL: | D72 I10 I14 I18 K38 P00 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34421 |
| By: | Olivera, Javier; Breunig, Christian; Broderstad, Troy; Dumont, PatricK; Sterba, Maj-Britt |
| Abstract: | This paper compares the “mental maps” of redistribution among politicians and citizens across seven parliaments, using original in-person surveys of sitting MPs and nationally representative citizen samples. Fairness beliefs and ideology are the strongest correlates of support for redistribution in both groups, while misperceptions of wealth concentration matter for citizens but much less for politicians. A central finding is that politicians hold markedly more polarized views on redistribution than citizens, including within the same party families. We also find systematic elite–voter gaps: left MPs are more supportive than their voters (notably on inheritance taxation), whereas right/liberal MPs are less supportive than theirs. These patterns point to a representation concern and a bargaining space among elites that is narrower than in the electorate. |
| Keywords: | preferences for redistribution; polarization; politicians; fairness beliefs; inequality perceptions; wealth taxes |
| JEL: | H24 D31 D63 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:130033 |
| By: | Felix Kersting |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the political consequences of introducing the welfare state targeted at blue-collar workers in 19th-century Germany. I conceptualize Bismarck’s reform as an accommodation strategy to combat the socialist party as an emerging challenger party. The result of a difference-in-differences design shows that the socialist party benefited in elections due to the reform. The mechanism analysis points to the socialists’ issue ownership by adopting a stronger reformist stance. The results are not driven by other political and economic channels related to the reform. |
| Keywords: | welfare state, socialism, issue ownership, Germany |
| JEL: | D74 H53 I38 N44 P16 |
| Date: | 2025–10–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0081 |
| By: | Désiré Avom (Yaoundé, Cameroon); Itchoko M. M. Mwa Ndjokou (Maroua, Cameroon); Pierre C. Tsopmo (Yaoundé, Cameroon); Cherif Abdramane (Yaoundé, Cameroon); Simplice A. Asongu (Johannesburg, South Africa) |
| Abstract: | This article examines the effect of leader longevity in power on world happiness. To make the assessment, a sample composed of 135 countries observed over the period 2006 to 2018 was constituted. The results obtained from OLS estimates show that longevity in power reduces individual happiness. Furthermore, the negative effect is more amplified in democratic countries. Quantile regression reveals variability in the effect over the different intervals. These results are robust to the use of alternative estimation techniques. We also identify the quality of institutions and public spending as two potential transmission channels through which longevity in power influences well-being. These results invite political authorities to respect constitutional limits or implement constitutional reforms with the aim of limiting the duration of the mandate of the executive in order to reduce the harmful effect of an extension of the latter on individuals' well-being. |
| Keywords: | Longevity in power, happiness, quality of institutions, public spending, quantile regression |
| JEL: | D72 H31 H52 I31 |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbm:wpaper:24/023 |
| By: | Johanna Arlinghaus; Théo Konc; Linus Mattauch; Stephan Sommer |
| Abstract: | Do citizens support policy instruments because they appreciate their effects or because they are convinced by their objectives? We administered a large-scale representative survey with randomised video treatments to test how different policy frames - time savings, health and environment - affect citizens' attitudes towards urban tolls in two large European metropolitan areas, Berlin-Brandenburg and Paris-Ile de France. Presenting urban tolls as a solution to air pollution increases support by up to 11.4 percentage points, presenting them as a climate change or congestion relief measure increases support by 7.1 and 6.5 percentage points, respectively. We demonstrate via a causal mediation analysis that the observed changes in policy support are mainly framing effects; changes in beliefs about policy effects play a secondary role. Thus, we uncover a new mechanism shaping public opinion on economic policies: the stated objectives of an identical policy design can shape citizens' views in distinct ways. |
| Keywords: | political |
| Date: | 2025–10–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0077 |
| By: | Mostafa Raeisi Sarkandiz |
| Abstract: | This article investigates the fundamental factors influencing the rate and manner of Electoral participation with an economic model-based approach. In this study, the structural parameters affecting people's decision making are divided into two categories. The first category includes general topics such as economic and livelihood status, cultural factors and, also, psychological variables. In this section, given that voters are analyzed within the context of consumer behavior theory, inflation and unemployment are considered as the most important economic factors. The second group of factors focuses more on the type of voting, with emphasis on government performance. Since the incumbent government and its supportive voters are in a game with two Nash equilibrium, and also because the voters in most cases are retrospect, the government seeks to keep its position by a deliberate change in economic factors, especially inflation and unemployment rates. Finally, to better understand the issue, a hypothetical example is presented and analyzed in a developing country in the form of a state-owned populist employment plan. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.24344 |
| By: | Assaf Razin |
| Abstract: | Using a comparative framework, the study examines how variations in political regimes across Israel and Europe shape patterns of international migration. In both contexts, episodes of democratic backsliding serve as quasi-exogenous shocks that reveal the causal link between institutional erosion and outward mobility. In Israel, the origin of democratic backsliding lies in a corruption shock—the criminal indictment of the prime minister—which escalated into an executive–judicial shock as the government launched an anti-democratic judicial overhaul. This confrontation between the executive and judiciary provides a natural experiment for identifying how institutional breakdowns shape migration decisions. In Europe, the origin of democratic backsliding stems from a “Syrian shock”—a massive refugee inflow that strained administrative capacity, polarized politics, and weakened liberal institutions. The resulting governance erosion triggered emigration responses structurally like those observed in Israel. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) estimation, the study identifies causal effects of democratic erosion on migration flows. Across both settings, out-migration emerges as a market-minded response to illiberal regime change—a behavioral signal of sensitivity to policies that features nationalizing industries, restrict free speech, and undermine the rule of law. Together, the Israeli and European experiences demonstrate that illiberal governance functions as a systemic push factor for emigration, beyond standard economic explanations. |
| JEL: | F0 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34432 |