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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Łukasz Baszczak (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences); Ewa Weychert (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between political outcomes and fertility behavior by linking electoral results with individual-level fertility outcomes in the United Kingdom. Drawing and the narrative decision-making framework (Vignoli et al., 2020; Johnson, Bilovich, & Tuckett, 2023) and the role of political polarization in fertility outcomes (Dahl et al. 2022) it considers how alignment between one’s political preferences and the actual party in power shapes fertility behaviour. Specifically, the study tests whether this alignment increases the probability of a first birth using longitudinal data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) over the period 1991–2020. We derive the month of conception from respondents’ birth histories and combine this information with measures of their political preferences (extrapolated to account for every month in the studied period). The results of a complementary log-log model indicate that the probability of conception is higher when an individual’s preferred party is in government. |
| Keywords: | fertility, uncertainty, narrative decision theory, voting behavior, United Kingdom |
| JEL: | J13 D72 P16 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-17 |
| By: | Folke, Olle (Stockholm School of Economics); Rickne, Johanna (Swedish Institute for Social Research) |
| Abstract: | First-generation immigrants face a seniority ceiling that limits their political incorporation as candidates and officeholders. Career ladders that require qualification time in lower positions create structural barriers for this group. We use linked data from Swedish electoral ballots and administrative records to examine this idea. A novel identification strategy isolates the effect of seniority-based promotion structures from immigrant-specific disadvantages by comparing immigrants’ incorporation patterns to those of internal movers—native-born Swedes who relocate between municipalities. The seniority ceiling explains about half of the immigrant-native gap in holding political positions and almost the entire gradient of worsening incorporation at higher levels. We find strong selection effects at both the individual and group level. The seniority ceiling restricts incorporation at higher career steps for those with fewer opportunities to accumulate qualification time: those who arrived more recently or at older ages. |
| Keywords: | immigration, political representation, political candidacy, political careers |
| JEL: | D02 H10 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18638 |
| By: | Veda Narasimhan; Jeffrey Weaver |
| Abstract: | Political inclusion is widely believed to improve governance, motivating the creation of elected representatives for highly localized constituencies. This paper studies 1.2 million "hyperlocal" representatives across 150, 000 local governments in rural India. Exploiting discontinuities that determine the number and identity of these representatives, we assess how expanded representation affects governance outcomes. We find precisely estimated null effects on core functions, including public project management, intermediation in access to benefit programs, alignment of policy with citizen preferences, equity of benefit allocation, and oversight of public finances. These findings highlight the limits of expanding political representation if representative capacity is weak. |
| JEL: | D72 H41 H75 O12 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35217 |
| By: | Aidt, T. S.; De Freitas, L. A. |
| Abstract: | This paper documents and explains the evolution of spatial variation in the municipal voting franchise in England and Wales between 1835 and 1897. Using newly assembled data on voters across Municipal Corporations, we examine how a uniform legal framework produced divergent local democratic outcomes. Applying concepts of β- and σ-convergence from the growth literature, we show strong β-convergence: initially less democratic municipalities expanded their franchise more rapidly than highly democratic ones. However, σ-convergence is weak overall, reflecting the off-setting effects of major national reforms and other shocks. Our findings reveal how de jure uniformity translates into persistent de facto democratic heterogeneity. |
| Keywords: | Democracy, Franchise Extension, Local Government, England, 19th Century |
| Date: | 2026–04–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2637 |
| By: | Shunyao Yan; Klaus M. Miller |
| Abstract: | Content that drives engagement need not be the same content that drives willingness to pay. We study how polarizing content affects engagement (time on site) and commitment (subscriptions and retention) on a major news platform. We measure article-level polarization with deep-learning classifiers and large language models tailored to a multiparty system, and identify causal effects with two complementary instrumental variables: a Bartik instrument exploiting supply-side editorial variation, and an election instrument exploiting demand-side political salience. We find that supply-driven increases in polarizing content raise engagement but not subscriptions. During the high-salience election window, the same content reduces subscriptions and accelerates churn, with affective polarization driving the sharpest divergence. On the mechanism, we find evidence inconsistent with confirmation bias: three pre-determined ideology proxies do not moderate the engagement or subscription effects. By contrast, on ideological dimensions where the publisher covers both sides, exogenous shifts in the publisher's supply of content opposite readers' baseline ideology raise their consumption of that content, consistent with balanced consumption. These results document an asymmetric engagement-commitment trade-off for digital publishers: polarizing content reliably captures attention but does not convert to subscriptions, and actively damages commitment when political salience is elevated |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.18357 |
| By: | Luna Bellani; Anselm Hager; Stephan Maurer |
| Abstract: | Did Southern elites' economic losses from abolition translate into diminished political influence? Using novel census-linked data on state lawmakers across four slave owning and two Northern states (1850-1880), we document a striking paradox: despite the massive wealth shock of emancipation, the political influence of former slave owners increased during Reconstruction and its aftermath. We show that former slave owners won office at similar rates as in the antebellum period and secured more committee assignments. Comparable patterns are not visible among wealthy legislators in Northern comparison states. This suggests that Southern elites responded to economic loss by tightening their grip on formal political institutions. Our findings point to formal political institutions as one channel through which defeated economic elites preserved influence during Reconstruction and its aftermath. |
| Keywords: | wealth inequality, elites and development, US South, slavery, political power, reconstruction |
| Date: | 2026–05–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2180 |
| By: | Philipp Heimberger (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Anna Matzner (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses how fiscal consolidation shocks affect political instability in advanced economies. Using data on fiscal tightening in 17 OECD countries from 1980 to 2020, we estimate dynamic effects in a local projection framework employing a narrative-based instrumental variable approach that isolates exogenous fiscal changes motivated by deficit reduction. Fiscal consolidation carries substantial short-term political costs it lowers government approval and increases the likelihood of protests and major government crises. These effects are temporary and dissipate over time. The decline in government approval is largely accounted for by the deterioration in macroeconomic conditions following fiscal adjustment. Consistent with this mechanism, consolidations implemented during economic downturns lead to markedly larger declines in approval and a higher probability of government crises, while effects are muted in stronger economic conditions. Turning to the tax-spending composition, we find that approval declines more sharply when adjustments only rely on spending cuts. Overall, our findings provide new evidence on the political costs of fiscal tightening and point to the importance of economic conditions and policy design. |
| Keywords: | Fiscal consolidation, austerity, government approval, strikes, demonstrations, political instability |
| JEL: | D72 E62 H53 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:274 |
| By: | Nicholas Teh |
| Abstract: | We study proportional representation in the temporal voting model, where collective decisions are made repeatedly over time over a fixed horizon. Prior work has extensively investigated how proportional representation axioms from multiwinner voting (e.g., justified representation (JR) and its variants) can be adapted, satisfied, and verified in this setting. However, much less is understood about their interaction with social welfare. In this work, we quantify the efficiency cost of enforcing proportionality. We formalize the welfare-proportionality tension via the worst-case ratio between the maximum achievable utilitarian welfare and the maximum welfare attainable subject to a proportionality axiom. We show that imposing proportional representation in the temporal setting can incur a growing, yet sublinear, welfare loss as the number of voters or rounds increases. We further identify a clean separation among axioms: for JR, the welfare loss diminishes as the time horizon grows and vanishes asymptotically, whereas for stronger axioms this conflict persists even with many rounds. Moreover, we prove that welfare maximization under each axiom is NP-complete and APX-hard, even under static preferences and bounded-degree approvals, and provide fixed-parameter algorithms under several natural structural parameters. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.11157 |
| By: | Catia Batista; Lara Bohnet; Jules Gazeaud; Julia Seither |
| Abstract: | International migration can promote development in both origin and destination countries. We hypothesize that migrant integration in destination countries is an important constraint on these gains. Using a randomized controlled trial, we study the effects of a low-cost, scalable digital intervention designed to reduce information frictions among Cape Verdean immigrants in Portugal. Access to the intervention improves migrants’ labor market outcomes, legal status, social integration with native-born individuals, and aspirations. These integration gains generate international spillovers, increasing political participation and leading to more egalitarian gender norms in the migrants’ origin-country. Leveraging variation in official destination country electoral data, we show that political participation transmits through increased exposure of better-integrated migrants to prevalent local norms at destination. These international turnout spillovers are weaker in localities with higher far-right support, consistent with a less migrant welcoming political climate attenuating norm diffusion. |
| Keywords: | International migration, Migrant integration, Randomized field experiment, Employment, Immigrant regularization, Remittances, Voting, Gender norms |
| JEL: | F22 J61 O15 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unl:novafr:wp2503 |
| By: | Bradley, Jake (University of Nottingham); Albornoz, Facundo (University of Nottingham); Sonderegger, Silvia (University of Nottingham); Rodríguez, Jesús (University of Nottingham); Rustagi, Devesh (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | There are concerns over the rise in populism and hate crimes targeting minorities in democracies. We examine whether national information shocks triggered by political events play a role. Focusing on two UK events that revealed nationwide anti-immigrant sentiment, we document counterintuitive results: large persistent surges in hate crimes in the post-event periods in areas with pro-immigrant, rather than anti-immigrant, attitudes. We show that the xenophobic minority residing in pro-immigrant areas experience stronger belief shocks from these events, inducing them to update their beliefs about social acceptability of hate. Our findings highlight how heterogeneous priors interact with national events to amplify xenophobic behavior. |
| Keywords: | Information shocks, attitudes towards immigrants, hate crimes, United Kingdom JEL Classification: C72, D80, P0 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:802 |