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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Daron Acemoglu; Nicolas Ajzenman; Guillermo Cruces; Martin Fiszbein; Gaston Garcia Zavaleta; Carlos Molina |
| Abstract: | Support for populist and authoritarian regimes is rising worldwide, despite evidence that they tend to underperform economically. We examine the role of (mis)perceptions of regime performance as drivers of political attitudes, leveraging two survey experiments with 11, 377 respondents during Argentina’s 2023 presidential elections. Optimistic beliefs about the performance of populist and non-democratic regimes were widespread, and displayed a strong correlation with support for these regimes. When exposed to randomly assigned informational treatments challenging optimistic views about these political regimes, individuals significantly adjusted their beliefs, and reduced their support for candidates they associate with populist and authoritarian leanings. Exploring the impact of different information sources, we find that academic sources and newspapers were more influential than social media. Although individuals adjusted their beliefs and attitudes in response to information on regime performance, contradicting their prior beliefs reduced their demand for additional information, consistent with an important role for motivated reasoning. |
| JEL: | D72 D83 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35644 |
| By: | Battaglini, Marco; Leone Sciabolazza, Valerio; Lin, Mengwei; Patacchini, Eleonora |
| Abstract: | It has long been noted that there is little money in U.S. politics relative to the stakes. But what if political contributions are not fully observable or are non-monetary and thus difficult to quantify? We study this question using new data on top donors in U.S. congressional races. To identify their influence, we exploit exogenous shocks to candidate–donor relationships generated by donor deaths. We show that the death of a top donor reduces a candidate's probability of election in subsequent elections. The loss of a donor also affects legislative behavior: elected candidates become more aligned with their party and concentrate their legislative activity in fewer policy areas. These effects are not explained by the size of donors' direct contributions. Instead, they are stronger for prominent donors and appear to operate through their impact on broader fundraising and social networks. Our findings suggest that observable campaign donations capture only a small share of the political influence exercised by major donors. |
| Keywords: | Political contributions; Political influence |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19195 |
| By: | Carlos Fernando Avenancio-León; Daniel B. Jones; Ying Shi |
| Abstract: | Electoral maps translate residential geography into political representation, yet they have never been systematically measured for thousands of local governments across the country. We reconstruct 3, 712 city council and county commission maps across 18, 521 districts using nationwide voter-file and Census data. Enacted maps overrepresent White voters and underrepresent Black and Hispanic voters, with gaps predicting the racial composition of officeholders. We juxtapose these with simulated, race-blind maps satisfying common districting constraints. Simulated maps reproduce much of this disparity, showing that geography skews representation before any boundary-drawing. Enacted maps substantially improve on the race-blind baseline only in jurisdictions subject to oversight from the Voting Rights Act or districting litigation. As courts curtail race-conscious districting, local governments may revert to a baseline that is formally neutral but substantively unequal. |
| JEL: | D72 H70 J15 K16 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35623 |
| By: | Uwe Jirjahn; Jens Mohrenweiser; Stephen C. Smith |
| Abstract: | Works councils have been often thought to contribute to workplace democracy. However, workplace democracy not only requires that works councils have the power to influence management decisions but also that this institution of establishment-level codetermination itself is based on democratic principles and processes. The most basic procedure of workplace democracy is the participation of workers in works council elections. Against this background, our study provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the factors that are associated with voter turnout in the elections. The study shows that the election procedure, establishment size, atypical employment, learning, type of establishment owner, economic circumstance, and union support have an influence on the turnout rate. We also find evidence that the role of a series of determinants of voter turnout depends on whether or not an establishment is covered by industry-level collective bargaining. |
| Keywords: | Works Council Elections, Voting, Election Procedure, Collective Bargaining, Establishment Size, Atypical Employment, Learning, Ownership, Economic Situation |
| JEL: | D72 J50 J51 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trr:wpaper:202610 |
| By: | Julien Labonne; Pablo Querubín; Martín Rossi; Sebastian M. Saiegh; Ivan San Miguel; Shanker Satyanath |
| Abstract: | Elites maintain disproportionate political power even in formally inclusive political systems, yet the institutions through which they coordinate and reproduce this advantage remain poorly understood. We study membership in the Buenos Aires Jockey Club—Argentina's most prominent elite social club—exploiting staggered variation in family entry. Using difference-in-differences techniques, we find that Jockey Club membership increased the probability of holding legislative office by approximately four percentage points—more than twice the control-group mean. Consistent with a network-based mechanism, membership also increased families' centrality in elite marriage networks—a resource that can facilitate political success through access to party nominations and voter mobilization. This electoral advantage declines substantially after the 1912 Sáenz Peña democratizing reforms, suggesting that the political returns to club membership are conditional on institutional contexts that make elite network connections valuable. Our findings shed light on how elite social institutions reproduce political inequality where personal connections are essential for accessing political office. |
| JEL: | D70 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35611 |
| By: | Daiki Kishishita |
| Abstract: | This paper studies an electoral competition model in which parties maximize legislative power rather than vote shares. Voters are uniformly distributed on the unit interval and vote for the party proposing the closest policy platform. After the election, parties form coalitions through a communication network arising from ideological proximity: two parties are directly linked if their policy distance is at most $d$. A party's objective is its Myerson value in the resulting graph-restricted voting game. I characterize symmetric pure-strategy equilibria in two-, three-, and four-party systems. The two-party case yields convergence to the median. The three-party case admits a continuum of symmetric equilibria in which the two extreme parties are directly linked. In the four-party case, the unique symmetric equilibrium places two parties at $(1-d)/2$ and two parties at $(1+d)/2$. In both three- and four-party systems, more restrictive coalition communication, represented by a smaller $d$, generates a centripetal force, and the median voter theorem holds in the limit despite the multiparty setting. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.27996 |
| By: | Fetzer, Thiemo; Edenhofer, Jacob; Garg, Prashant |
| Abstract: | Support for right-wing populist parties is characterised by considerable regional heterogeneity and especially concentrated in regions that have experienced economic decline. It remains unclear, however, whether the spatial externalities of local decline, including homelessness and crime, boost support for populist parties, even among those not directly affected by such decline. In this paper, we contribute to filling this gap in two ways. First, we gather novel data on a particularly visible form of local decline, high-street vacancies, that comprise 83, 000 premises in England and Wales. Second, we investigate the influence of local decline on support for the right-wing populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) between 2009 and 2019. We find a significant positive association between high-street vacancy rates and UKIP support. These results enhance our understanding of how changes in the lived environment shape political preferences and behaviour, particularly in relation to right-wing populism. |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19330 |
| By: | Massa, Massimo; Zhang, Lei |
| Abstract: | We study how political pressure influences asset managers to adapt to the changing political landscape in the US Congress. We expect that larger institutions tend to engage in politically motivated “stewardship theatre†because they are more likely to face public scrutiny and regulatory attention from lawmakers. We find strong evidence that the proxy voting behavior of large asset management companies on environmental and social proposals aligns with the prevailing political preferences in the US Congress and changes accordingly as political dominance shifts. The inclination to cater to political power supersedes recommendations from proxy advisors and asset managers' own political beliefs. |
| JEL: | G12 G3 G32 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19392 |
| By: | Raffaele Giammetti (University of Cassino and Southern Lazio); Giuseppe Spataro (Marche Polytechnic University); Davide Ticchi (Department of Economics and Social Sciences - Marche Polytechnic University, Italy) |
| Abstract: | Does the political response to globalisation depend on how regions are integrated into global production networks? We combine regional input-output measures of global valuechain exposure with lower-house election outcomes for 249 NUTS-2 regions in 24 European countries over 2000–2010. We distinguish seller-side exposure to foreign final demand (FPEX) from buyer-side exposure to foreign production (FPEM), and measure regions' average position relative to final demand. In two-way fixed-effects specifications, FPEX is positively associated with populist vote shares: a one-within-region-standarddeviation increase in FPEX (about 1.1 percentage points) is associated with an increase of roughly 3.5 percentage points in the populist vote share. When FPEX and FPEM are included jointly, FPEX remains positive and statistically significant, the buyer-side estimate is small and statistically not significant, and a formal test rejects equality of the two coefficients. The FPEX association is weaker in regions with higher average upstreamness and higher service-employment shares. The FPEX point estimate is larger in Central and Eastern Europe; a pooled interaction confirms a positive difference, although it is significant only at the 10 percent level under wild-cluster-bootstrap inference. Results are qualitatively similar under an alternative, narrower authoritarian-populist classification and are not reproduced for green-party voting. The findings highlight a politically relevant distinction within the architecture of international integration: dependence on foreign final demand is more consistently associated with populist voting than total buyer-side dependence on foreign production. |
| Keywords: | Global value chains, populism, political backlash, structural dependence, input-output analysis, regional economics. |
| JEL: | F14 F60 D72 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anc:wpaper:509 |
| By: | Kansikas, Carolina; Bagues, Manuel |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether term limits can help historically underrepresented groups, such as women, gain faster access to positions of political power. We exploit evidence from Italian local elections where, in a context of rapidly increasing women's presence in politics, mayoral term limits were extended from two to three five-year terms in municipalities with less than 3, 000 inhabitants in 2014 and in those with a population between 3, 000 and 5, 000 in 2022. Using as control group slightly larger municipalities, we find that longer term limits delay younger cohorts' access to mayoral roles, significantly slowing the increase in female representation. The magnitude of the effect is substantial; the share of female mayors would be 4-10 percentage points higher if term limits had not been extended. The impact is stronger in municipalities with a larger presence of women at lower political levels and where gender quotas are in place, suggesting a complementarity between these policies. Our findings suggest that term limits help bridge the representational gap between entry and top-level political positions, especially in times of rapid societal change. |
| Keywords: | Term limits |
| JEL: | J16 J18 J48 D72 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19306 |
| By: | Berticeroni, Carlotta; Piemontese, Lavinia; Prarolo, Giovanni; Schiavone, Antonio |
| Abstract: | This study explores the crucial role of local immigration history in shaping the relationship between the arrival of refugees and support for anti-immigration parties. Using unique georeferenced individual-level survey data, we show that opening refugee hosting facilities close to voters polarises support for anti-immigration parties: in neighbourhoods with established immigrant communities such support reduces, while it increases in areas with fewer long-term immigrants. These findings are consistent when using official electoral outcomes. We extend the analysis beyond the direct effect of exposure to immigrants by examining the role of voters’ demographics. Our results are mainly driven by male, childless, and low-skilled working-age voters. Moreover, facilities that highlight the presence of short-term immigrants amplify the main effects. These findings underscore the importance of considering both the composition of the immigrant population and individual demographics to fully understand how contact influences voter behaviour. Crucially, by examining the interplay between long- and short-term immigrant presence, our study provides a unifying framework that explains the polarised voter responses to refugee shocks, reconciling contrasting outcomes observed in different contexts. |
| Keywords: | Immigration; Voting behaviour |
| JEL: | D72 F22 J15 R23 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19236 |
| By: | Brañas, Pablo; Cabrales, Antonio; Espinosa, María Paz; García-Muñoz, Teresa |
| Abstract: | In this paper we explore how individual social preferences correlate with political support for redistribution. We ran an incentivized experiment with a large representative sample of the Spanish population. Our participants took six decisions that elicited their social preferences. Their choices could result in a different total surplus and different distributions of the surplus between the subject and an anonymous counterpart. In our sample, social preferences are unrelated to political support for distributive policies. The main correlates for support of redistribution are the beliefs concerning the importance of effort versus luck for success (fairness), the trust in government institutions (effectiveness) and the perceived importance of the poverty problem (need). |
| JEL: | C93 D31 D72 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19274 |
| By: | Brey, Bjorn; Facchini, Giovanni |
| Abstract: | What are the political consequences of de-globalization? We address this question in the context of Weimar Germany, which experienced a 67\% decline in exports between 1928-1932. During this period, the Nazi party vote share increased from 3\% to 37\%. Using newly digitized data, we show that this surge was not driven by the direct effects of the export decline in manufacturing areas. At the same time, trade shock-induced declines in food prices spread economic hardship to rural hinterlands. We document that this indirect effect and the pro-agriculture policies put forward by the Nazis are instead key to explain their electoral success. |
| Keywords: | Trade; Extremism; Germany |
| JEL: | F14 F44 N14 N44 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19383 |
| By: | Alicia Adsera; Andreu Arenas; Carles Boix |
| Abstract: | We examine how individuals value fundamental political and economic goods and institutions through a global conjoint experiment fielded in eight countries (Argentina, urban China, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, and the United States). Respondents choose between societies that randomly vary in economic outcomes (personal income, country income, income inequality, social mobility), safety, and political outcomes (public healthcare, free elections). We estimate the marginal effects of and willingness to pay for these outcomes at the country and respondent levels. Average valuations of personal and country incomes and personal safety are roughly similar across countries. By contrast, the average value of democracy, defined as free elections, varies substantially. Whereas the average Chinese respondent is willing to give up democracy for an increase in individual income equivalent to one quarter of average country income, the average American is willing to do so only for twice the U.S. average country income. Unlike income and safety, for which most individual-level variation is explained by respondents' personal characteristics, variation in respondents' taste for free elections is substantially explained by their country. Our findings contribute to research on the structure of human preferences, demand for democratic institutions, and estimation of policy and redistributive preferences. |
| Keywords: | democracy, safety, willingness to pay, conjoint experiment |
| JEL: | H11 H51 I13 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26204 |
| By: | Nunnari, Salvatore; Proto, Eugenio; Rustichini, Aldo |
| Abstract: | Rational choice theories assume that voters accurately assess the outcomes of policies. However, many important policies—such as regulating prices and introducing Pigouvian taxation—yield outcomes through indirect or equilibrium effects that may differ from their direct effects. Citizens may underestimate these effects, leading to a demand for bad policy, that is, opposition to reforms that would increase welfare or support for reforms that would decrease it. This appreciation might be linked to cognitive functions, raising important research questions: Do cognitive abilities influence how individuals form preferences regarding policies, especially untried reforms? If so, what is the underlying mechanism? We use a simple theoretical framework and an experiment to show that enhanced cognitive abilities may lead to better policy choices. Moreover, we emphasize the crucial role of beliefs about other citizens' cognitive abilities. These findings have important policy implications as they suggest that educational programs developing cognitive skills or interventions increasing trust in others' understanding could improve the quality of democratic decision-making in our societies. |
| Keywords: | Voting; Cognition; Experiment |
| JEL: | C90 D72 D91 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19217 |
| By: | Aaron Chatterji; Jorge Guzman; Joyce Ma; Ryan C. McDevitt |
| Abstract: | Firms shape public policy not only from the outside through lobbying and campaign contributions, but also from the inside when business owners hold public office. We study this channel using a novel dataset that links state legislators’ personal financial disclosures to bill sponsorship records across 26 U.S. states from 2009 to 2023. The disclosures allow us to observe business ownership during legislative service and to distinguish entrepreneurs, defined as legislators who both own and actively manage a firm, from passive shareholders and employees. Applying a large language model to bill text, we classify legislation as pro-business and identify a subset of pro-entry bills that reduce barriers facing new firms. Entrepreneurs are a substantial presence in state legislatures, accounting for over 40 percent of legislators, and their representation varies primarily across states rather than within states over time. Although entrepreneurs do not sponsor more bills overall, they initiate a greater share of bills as first or sole primary sponsor. They also do not appear to be generic advocates for business. Relative to legislators with other business ties, entrepreneurs are no more likely to sponsor pro-business bills or bills endorsed by state Chambers of Commerce. Instead, they selectively advance pro-entry legislation, especially bills related to deregulation and innovation rather than antitrust or access to capital. These findings document an important channel through which entrepreneurs shape the policy environment for entrepreneurship from within political institutions. |
| JEL: | D72 H7 L26 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35637 |
| By: | Alberto Chong (Department of Economics, Georgia State University and Department of Economics, Universidad del Pacifico); Mark Gradstein (Department of Economics, Ben Gurion University, CEPR, CESifo, and IZA) |
| Abstract: | Why do democratic and autocratic regimes fail under different political conditions? Using V-Dem data for 202 countries over 1900-2024, we construct regime spells and estimate duration models with lagged covariates. The apparent unconditional durability advantage of autocracy is largely driven by regimes already in place when observation begins in 1900. Among spells observed from entry, and in models controlling for observable characteristics and historical environment, autocratic spells exhibit higher exit hazards. Political polarization strongly predicts democratic termination but is weakly associated with greater autocratic persistence. It rises before democratic breakdown and declines before and after democratization, although the latter pattern lies outside the baseline model. Autocratic survival is associated non-monotonically with repression, while democratic regional environments are strongly associated with autocratic exit. A parsimonious framework explains the central asymmetry: polarization raises the costs of democratic policy competition, whereas concentrated authority creates vulnerabilities through extraction and coercive overreach. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper2625 |
| By: | Tim Sargent |
| Abstract: | This paper looks at the regional economic and political structure of the UK and Canada, and how these have evolved over time. We look at the regional distribution of industries in both countries, noting both differences and similarities across the two countries, and look at each country’s experience with regional economic development policy and political decentralization over the last fifty years or so. We outline the current structure of economic development programming in Canada, at both the federal and provincial level, as well as programmes by the federal government that target specific sectors. We then look at the outcomes of regional economic development in Canada, which we find to be mixed at best. Finally, we draw out lessons for UK policymakers from the Canadian experience. These include the perceived need for an enduring central government role in regional development, however much political devolution takes place, the importance of political representation for economic development institutions, the tendency to uniformity despite political decentralization, and the existence of some innovative Canadian economic development programmes that bear watching. |
| Keywords: | regional economic policy, UK, Canada, regional development, decentralization, productivity, political economy |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:2501 |
| By: | Harsha Dutta; Pulak Ghosh; Arkodipta Sarkar; Nishant Vats |
| Abstract: | We examine the effect of political power-sharing on local economic activity. This effect depends on the relative importance of the risks associated with unchecked power and the potential efficiency gains or losses arising from checks and balances. Our research design exploits a geographic discontinuity design due to the haphazard overlap of electoral and administrative boundaries that generates quasi-random variation in the number of politicians governing adjacent regions. We supplement this design using an episode of electoral delimitation that allows us to exploit within-region variation in the number of politicians. We find increasing the number of politicians governing an area can lead to new firm creation, lower unemployment, and greater real economic activity. Our results suggest that non-aligned multiple politicians enhance state efficiency by imposing checks and balances on each other, leading to lower regulatory obstacles, less cronyism, and improved provision of public infrastructure, creating an economically favorable environment for firm creation. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.08934 |
| By: | Giuliano, Paola; Spilimbergo, Antonio |
| Abstract: | A growing body of work has shown that aggregate shocks affect the formation of preferences and beliefs. This article reviews evidence from sociology, social psychology, and economics to assess the relevance of aggregate shocks, whether the period in which they are experienced matters, and whether they alter preferences and beliefs permanently. We review the literature on recessions, inflation experiences, trade shocks, and aggregate non-economic shocks including migrations, wars, terrorist attacks, pandemics, and natural disasters. For each aggregate shock, we discuss the main empirical methodologies, their limitations, and their comparability across studies, outlining possible mechanisms whenever available. A few conclusions emerge consistently across the reviewed papers. First, aggregate shocks impact many preferences and beliefs, including political preferences, risk attitudes, and trust in institutions. Second, the effect of shocks experienced during young adulthood is stronger and longer lasting. Third, negative aggregate economic shocks generally move preferences and beliefs to the right of the political spectrum, while the effects of non-economic adverse shocks are more heterogeneous and depend on the context. |
| Keywords: | Aggregate shocks; beliefs |
| JEL: | E00 P00 Z1 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19218 |
| By: | Albers, Thilo N.H.; Bischof, Daniel (Aarhus University); Kersting, Felix; Kosse, Fabian (University of Würzburg) |
| Abstract: | Why do materially secure citizens embrace populist attitudes? Research on the populist right has focused primarily on economically vulnerable voters and left-behind places, leaving unclear why support extends to citizens who are objectively well off. We argue that a belief-based source of grievance helps explain this puzzle: citizens may underestimate their relative economic standing and feel deprived despite material security. Using a survey module embedded in the Innovation Sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel, we show that pessimistic income-rank misperceptions predict stronger populist attitudes conditional on actual rank. Instrumental-variable and within-household analyses strengthen a causal interpretation. A preregistered survey experiment randomly provides personalized information about respondents' actual income percentile. The control arm replicates the observational pattern; the treatment corrects beliefs and shifts income satisfaction, but does not reduce populist attitudes. Economic grievance can therefore travel upward through perceived status, while becoming politically resistant once organized by populist narratives. |
| Date: | 2026–08–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:2s7mc_v1 |
| By: | Ba, Bocar A.; Ndiaye, Abdoulaye; Rivera, Roman G.; Whitefield, Alexander |
| Abstract: | We study how negative sentiment around an industry impacts beliefs and behaviors, focusing on demands for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd and the salience of the ``defund the police" movement. We assess stakeholder beliefs on the impact of protests on the stock prices of police-affiliated firms. In our survey experiment, laypeople and finance professionals predicted more negative stock price outcomes when they lacked details on the products supplied by such firms. Exposure to narratives about the context of the protests further reduced the prediction accuracy of these groups. In contrast, product information improved the prediction accuracy of respondents. Turning to real-life behavior, we find that mutual funds exposed to protests were 20% less likely to hold police stocks, after the protests, than funds in areas without protests. Political support for maintaining police funding, though in the majority, declined by 4.3 percentage points in protest areas. The salience of the ``defund the police" narrative led to significant overreactions in both financial predictions and real-life behavior. |
| Keywords: | Narratives; Reasoning; Surveys |
| JEL: | D72 D74 D83 G41 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19308 |
| By: | James J. Feigenbaum; Andrew B. Hall; Daniel M. Thompson; Jesse Yoder |
| Abstract: | We trace the family origins of Members of Congress (MC) born between 1830 and 1950, linking each MC, their parents, and their brothers to the complete-count censuses. Future MCs have always been economic outliers. By 1940, close to 60 percent of MCs aged 18--40 held a college degree, against under 5 percent of comparable young men outside Congress. In the 19th-century censuses, MCs as adults held roughly three times the wealth of demographically matched controls. They also come from economically elite families: their fathers earn more, attain more education, and hold more wealth. The brothers of future MCs sit between the population and the MCs themselves. Across the socioeconomic measures we compare, we calculate that roughly half of an MC's adult premium is shared with his brother and the other half is his own. Even as the American economy and political system have changed, the family background gap has widened over the last century and a half. Wealth, household servants, and four separate occupation-based scores all show the gap holding or growing across cohorts. We study four Progressive-Era reforms in a triple-difference design---women's suffrage, the secret ballot, direct primaries, and the direct election of senators---and none produce detectable shifts in who reaches Congress. Our results document a Congress drawn from the most fortunate families in American society in every cohort we observe. |
| JEL: | H10 H70 N31 N32 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35569 |
| By: | Bailey Flanigan; Ismar Volic |
| Abstract: | This article surveys emerging directions in the mathematics of democracy. It uses three case studies --- voting theory, participatory budgeting, and deliberative democracy --- to highlight how contemporary challenges motivate rigorous mathematical research that incorporates real-world data, institutional constraints, and implementation feasibility. Within each case, we highlight active and promising research frontiers, evidence of real-world impact, practical applications, and opportunities for getting involved. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.16869 |
| By: | Wesley H. Holliday |
| Abstract: | A common problem in social choice is to determine whether there is a social choice procedure, such as a voting method, satisfying some desired criteria. Computer-aided methods such as SAT solving can sometimes answer these questions. However, under typical encodings, a SAT solver may only synthesize a voting method on a finite domain, while we may want one on an infinite domain, such as the domain of all preference profiles for a fixed number of candidates but any finite number of voters. In this paper, we use an approach based on reasoning with constrained Horn clauses and computation with polyhedra to synthesize a voting method on an infinite domain. We then use SMT and Lean to verify its properties. Our main result is a possibility theorem about four well-known criteria from voting theory: the Condorcet winner and loser criteria, positive involvement, and resolvability. Previous work has shown that for five or more candidates, there is no voting method satisfying these axioms, and that for four candidates, there is no method satisfying these core axioms plus one more invariance axiom. Here we show that for four candidates, there does exist a method satisfying the core axioms and more. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.08897 |
| By: | Bayer, Péter; Mágó, Mánuel László |
| Abstract: | We introduce participation uncertainty to the theory of cooperative TUgames. Under participation uncertainty, each coalition’s effective value is an expected value taken over the (full) value of its subsets. We identify ‘constant-marginal’ participation as a key property for various economic problems to be well-behaved. This class of uncertainty environments is closed for mixing and composition. Under this property, solution concepts are easily calculate, two-sided markets clear and are insurable, and voting power under uncertain participation can be characterized and efficiently computed. |
| Keywords: | cooperative games, participation uncertainty, matching markets, voting power, overselling |
| JEL: | C71 C72 D51 D72 D81 |
| Date: | 2026–08–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cvh:coecwp:2026/02 |
| By: | Jonathan Pardo; Sulin Sardoschau |
| Abstract: | Do migrants become more anti-immigration over time? How do incumbents react to new arrivals? We link large-scale survey data to local immigration flows across 138 European regions from 2002 to 2024, identifying effects via a leave-out shift-share instrument within a triple-difference design. Immigrants arrive strongly pro-immigration, but support erodes over time, halving the native-immigrant gap within two decades. Exposure to new inflows contributes to this convergence: a rising local immigrant share reduces pro-immigration attitudes for both groups, with substantially larger effects for first-generation immigrants. Low-skilled incumbents respond more to inflow size, high-skilled to newcomers' skill composition. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, backlash, attitudes, newcomers |
| JEL: | D74 J15 D83 Z10 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26182 |
| By: | Chinoy, Sahil; Nunn, Nathan; Sequeira, Sandra; Stantcheva, Stefanie |
| Abstract: | We investigate the origins and implications of zero-sum thinking – the belief that gains for one individual or group tend to come at the cost of others. Using a new survey of a representative sample of 20, 400 US residents, we measure zero-sum thinking, political preferences, policy views, and a rich array of ancestral information spanning four generations. We find that a more zero-sum mindset is strongly associated with more support for government redistribution, race- and gender-based affirmative action, and more restrictive immigration policies. Furthermore, zero-sum thinking can be traced back to the experiences of both the individual and their ancestors, encompassing factors such as the degree of intergenerational upward mobility they experienced, whether they immigrated to the United States or lived in a location with more immigrants, and whether they were enslaved or lived in a location with more enslavement. |
| JEL: | N10 Q54 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19297 |
| By: | Felix Montag |
| Abstract: | Current enforcement practice does not consider how mergers alter the merging parties' incentives to petition for trade protection. I document mergers between domestic producers across jurisdictions that are followed by tariff petitions. I develop a model to characterize the trade-policy channel of mergers. Theoretically, a domestic merger raises the profitability of tariffs when offshoring is unavailable; once offshoring is possible, the effect becomes ambiguous. I apply this framework to a merger between domestic producers in the U.S. appliance industry. Empirically, I find that when import competition is weak, the merging parties prefer to lower their own costs through offshoring; when import competition is strong, the merger makes it more profitable for them to raise their foreign rivals' costs through tariffs. The resulting consumer harm is comparable in magnitude to the direct market-power effect. A hypothetical cross-border merger reduces the profitability of tariffs in this market. |
| Keywords: | competition, lobbying, tariffs, protectionism, mergers |
| JEL: | F13 L13 L41 D72 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12880 |
| By: | Vigild, Daniel Juhász (ROCKWOOL Foundation); Bjerre-Nielsen, Andreas (University of Copenhagen); Mortensen, Laust Hvas; Sekara, Vedran |
| Abstract: | Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in government, changing the ways in which citizens relate to public institutions. One important aspect, the impact of AI on trust in public institutions, has been the subject of substantial efforts that document an "AI penalty" on trust in public institutions when they use AI. However, little is known about why or how such a penalty arises. In two preregistered survey experiments (N=6 084) we measure the effect of AI on trust across four real-life use cases of governmental AI. First, we find large differences across the four domains—disclosing AI usage in social services and health care settings decreases trust, while trust is unaffected for policing and unemployment use cases. Second, we experimentally test a specific mechanism (algorithmic nimbyism) that considers personal exposure to the decision-making outcomes as a driver of the negative impact of AI on trust. Despite not finding any causal evidence for the notion of algorithmic nimbyism, we used rich administrative data on survey participants’ medical history and labour force participation to explore heterogeneous treatment effects that revealed descriptive and suggestive evidence of algorithmic nimbyism. Future work could consider further exploring the combination of experimental and observational data to empirically examine explanations of the impact AI has on relations between citizens and public institutions. |
| Date: | 2026–08–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:xrejw_v1 |
| By: | Soler-Lopez, Jorge (Bocconi University) |
| Abstract: | Does bringing a marginalized group into the state raise its members' trust in democratic institutions? Uruguay's 2013 Ley 19.122, reserving eight percent of public-sector hires for Afro-descendant citizens, offers a rare test on the dimension representation theory names. Using the Uruguayan household survey and eight waves of the Latinobarómetro, we document a genuine but small first stage, Afro-Uruguayan public employment rose about 1.3 percentage points, a composition shift rather than a net gain, against a target the state met only fractionally. In addition, as second stage delivered a precise attitudinal null, with equivalence tests rejecting effects larger than roughly 0.15–0.20 standard deviations. The result establishes a scope condition rather than a refutation: at this level of exposure, bureaucratic inclusion produces no measurable attitudinal return. How much inclusion is required before the representation mechanism fires remains an open and newly quantifiable question. |
| Date: | 2026–08–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:9dphe_v1 |