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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Kim, Minseong |
| Abstract: | Allegations of fraud in South Korean elections have centered primarily on the in-precinct early-voting channel, which consistently produces higher democratic Party vote shares than same-day ballots. We assess these claims using a unified framework applied to four elections spanning 2020-2025: the 21st General Election (2020), the 22nd General Election (2024), the 20th Presidential Election (2022), and the 21st Presidential Election (2025). First, we apply several forensic statistical tests - including simulation-adjusted second-digit Benford's law, last-digit uniformity, mixture-model fingerprinting, and evaluation of the widely-cited 63:37 early-vote ratio claim - and find no systematic pattern indicative of large-scale vote manipulation, while flagging a candidate-specific last-digit anomaly in the 2022 presidential election that warrants ongoing scrutiny. Second, we regress Democratic vote share and early-vote share on principal components derived from census, employment, and housing data at the sub-district (dong) level, with province-interacted election fixed effects and population-weighted least squares. Across all elections, sociodemographic characteristics explain 73-94% of the geographic variation in vote shares, and the same predictors perform equally well for early votes and same-day votes. For the 2025 presidential election - a three-candidate contest - we instrument the third-party candidate's vote share using the 2017 conservative-reform candidate's support, recovering a causal estimate of vote diversion. Our findings suggest that geographic patterns in early voting are well-explained by who votes early, not by when ballots are counted. |
| Date: | 2026–03–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:5d94n_v1 |
| By: | Uberti, Luca (University of Milano Bicocca); Imami, Drini (Agricultural University of Tirana); Mendola, Mariapia (University of Milan Bicocca) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of an election campaign on the labor market outcomes of incumbent party supporters. Using unique data on voters’ political preferences during a pre-election period in Albania and a DiD design that compares the evolution of outcomes among close neighbours, we show that supporting the ruling party significantly increases individuals’ employment and earnings. This labor market premium is particularly large among individuals with low costs of campaign participation, while atronage jobs are concentrated in lower-tier public sector positions. Administrative data further reveal that the allocation of jobs to party supporters is strongly associated with a higher vote share for the incumbent. These findings suggest that parties strategically allocate public employment to reward grassroots supporters and mobilize votes, a practice that fosters corruption and weakens democratic institutions. |
| Keywords: | job patronage, political corruption, vote-buying, Albania, post-communist transition |
| JEL: | D72 D73 H83 J45 M59 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18510 |
| By: | Mathieu Martin; Linus Thierry Nana Noumi; Zéphirin Nganmeni; Ashley Piggins (CY Cergy Paris Université, THEMA) |
| Abstract: | A long-standing foundational problem in the spatial theory of politics is the generic emptiness of the majority core when there is more than one dimension in the policy space. This implies that, in general, we cannot predict where win-motivated candidates will locate in an electoral contest decided by majority rule. We assume that the candidates face some uncertainty: they observe each voter’s ideal point in the policy space but not their indifference surfaces. Given any proper spatial voting game, we first identify the set of imprudent positions in the space. If a candidate adopts an imprudent position, then there exists a position for their opponent that will defeat them for certain. We introduce a new concept, the prudent core, as the set of positionsthat are not imprudent in this sense. We show that the prudent core is always non-empty. With majority voting and an odd number of voters, the prudent core equals the dimension-by-dimension median. The prudent core equals the majority core whenever the latter is nonempty. |
| Keywords: | Spatial theory of politics, median voter theorem, prudent core, prudence |
| JEL: | D71 D72 D81 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2026-04 |
| By: | Mathieu Martin; Linus Thierry Nana Noumi; Zéphirin Nganmeni; Ashley Piggins (CY Cergy Paris Université, THEMA) |
| Abstract: | In spatial voting games, the valence is traditionally modeled as a non-ideological attribute that is uniformly assigned to a candidate by all voters, independent of their policy preferences. In its original for-mulation, additive valence is assumed to be entirely detached from the candidate policy considerations. In this paper, we explore an alterna-tive framework in which additive valence interacts with the candidates' policy platforms. Each candidate possesses an individual valence level, but voters choose to recognize this valence only if the candidate is perceived as competent in defending their proposed policy. This perceived competence is assumed to be common knowledge among voters. The core objective of this study is to determine the conditions under which Nash equilibria arise in the context of electoral competition with policy-dependent additive valence. |
| Keywords: | Spatial voting, Electoral competition, Dual valence, Equilibrium |
| JEL: | D70 D71 D72 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2026-03 |
| By: | Bottasso, Anna; Cerruti, Gianluca; Conti, Maurizio; Santagata, Marta |
| Abstract: | This study evaluates whether exposure of local areas to medieval Mediterranean trade with Africa and the Middle East still shapes Italian political attitudes. Such exchanges may have fostered cultural traits that eased interaction with people of different cultures, ethnicities, and religions. We show that individuals living near a medieval port are less likely to view migrants as a security threat or to report right-wing voting preferences; these areas also had fewer xenophobic attacks during the 2015 Syrian refugee surge. We also find that right-wing parties received fewer votes near medieval ports only when immigration was highly salient. Finally, we document a lower probability of Jewish deportations near medieval ports during the Nazi occupation, the only period when a minority group was explicitly targeted. This suggests that deep-rooted cultural traits can re-emerge when historical and political conditions make them relevant. |
| Keywords: | persistence studies; trade networks; political preferences; cultural persistence; immigration |
| JEL: | F22 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–06–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137817 |
| By: | Jamel Saadaoui; Vanessa Strauss-Kahn; Jerome Creel |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how geopolitical relationships shape Chinese exports, asking whether exporters systematically favor politically aligned countries - and whether that preference holds during periods of geopolitical turbulence. We leverage a unique high-frequency panel of over 17 million monthly firm-product-destination transactions from Chinese Customs (2000-2006), matched with the Political Relationship Index (𠑃𠑅ð ¼) developed by Tsinghua University, which captures monthly bilateral diplomatic relations from a Chinese perspective. Unlike most studies on geopolitics and trade, we move beyond the typical Western-centric lens of geopolitical risk and focus on export-side behavior. Our empirical strategy is robust: it combines rich fixed effects (firm-product, destination, time), sectorial tariff controls, and interactions with indicators of extreme positive and negative diplomatic events. Our results consistently show that stronger political alignment increases Chinese firms’ exports in both value and quantity. We also find evidence of non-linearity and asymmetric responses: exporters react more strongly to diplomatic improvements than to deteriorations. Using extreme geopolitical events, we show that positive events amplify the export response to political alignment, while negative events tend to dampen it. The patterns are strongest for foreign-invested firms and for differentiated products, suggesting that geopolitical alignment plays a critical role in global value chain dynamics. These findings contribute to understanding how firms incorporate political signals into trade decisions. In a world of growing political fragmentation, "friendtrading" is not just a policy discourse - it is reflected in the strategic behavior of exporters, even in the absence of formal sanctions. |
| Keywords: | international trade, firms' export, geopolitics, countries alignment |
| JEL: | F14 F13 F51 F23 D74 L25 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2026-22 |
| By: | Roberto Brunetti (LEMMA - Laboratoire d'économie mathématique et de microéconomie appliquée - Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas); Matthieu Pourieux (CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This study leverages an online behavioural experiment to analyse whether politicians' decisions align with citizens' preferences and with citizens' decisions within the same decision environment. We recruited 760 local politicians and 655 non‐politicians in France to participate as policymakers in a taxation‐redistribution game. In the game, two policymakers compete to choose a flat tax rate for a group of citizens selected from the French general population. We manipulate (i) the information provided to policymakers about citizens' preferred tax rates, and (ii) the incentives associated with applying citizens' preferred tax rate. We also measure policymakers' beliefs regarding citizens' preferences. We observe that policymakers react positively to information, but they often deviate from it, which can be mostly explained by their beliefs. Incentivizing responsiveness has no impact on these results. This suggests that politicians trade off their own preferences about the policy outcome with an intrinsic motivation to implement citizens' preferences. Finally, we find that politicians believe that citizens want lower tax rates and are more confident in their beliefs than non‐politicians. Once beliefs are accounted for, we observe minor differences between the two samples. Our findings highlight the importance of politicians' beliefs and non‐financial motivations as determinants of their decisions. |
| Keywords: | representation, taxation-redistribution, politicians' behaviour, online experiment |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05577465 |
| By: | Bjørnskov, Christian (Aarhus University, Denmark); Berggren, Niclas (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)) |
| Abstract: | Populists typically frame politics as a conflict between a corrupt elite and a virtuous people and are skeptical of institutional constraints, including those protecting freedom of expression, as they seek to control the public narrative. We ask to what extent de jure constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression constrain such actors and when speech can be de facto curtailed despite formal protections, with a particular focus on emergency derogation clauses. We explore these questions in panel data for 75 countries with multi-party systems between 1970 and 2020. Findings show that right-wing populist representation is associated with lower de facto freedom of expression, but mainly where the constitution offers an opt-out in emergencies or fails to impose clear non-emergency limits on restrictions of expression. These findings demonstrate that constitutional design and populist influence jointly determine the extent to which constitutional promises of free expression are honored in practice. |
| Keywords: | Freedom of expression; Constitutional constraints; Constitutional compliance; Populism; Media freedom |
| JEL: | K00 P16 P50 |
| Date: | 2026–04–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1557 |
| By: | Chun chee Kok (UC Louvain); Gedeon Lim (University of Hong Kong); Danial Shariat (UC Berkeley); Abu Siddique (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Shunsuke Tsuda (University of Essex) |
| Date: | 2026–04–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:26/21 |
| By: | Ryoga Doi; Kensei Nakamura |
| Abstract: | This paper studies a dominance relation among scoring rules with respect to avoiding the selection of the Condorcet loser. In a voting model with three or more alternatives, we say that a scoring rule $f$ Condorcet-loser-dominates (CL-dominates) another scoring rule $g$ if the set of profiles where $f$ selects a Condorcet loser is a proper subset of the set where $g$ does. We show that the Borda rule not only CL-dominates all other scoring rules, but also is the only scoring rule that CL-dominates some scoring rule. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.05916 |
| By: | Michel Le Breton (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - 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); Paul Castañeda Dower (Unknown); Gunes Gokmen (Unknown); Шломо Вебер (Unknown) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the lasting impact of Cold War alignment on African economic development. To determine alignment and reduce the number of potential outcomes under consideration, we introduce a non-cooperative game of social interactions where each country chooses its bloc based on its predetermined bilateral similarities with other members of the bloc. We are able to use the celebrated MaxCut method to exactly identify the equilibrium partition. The alignment predicts UN General Assembly voting patterns during the Cold War but not after. We find that the alignment produces two clusters of development outcomes today that reflect the Cold War's ideological divide. Western-aligned African countries have greater inequality coupled with deeper financial penetration, while there is no difference in the level of income per capita between the two groups of countries. |
| Keywords: | Cold War, Political Alliances, Africa, Blocs, Development Clusters, Strong, Guerre froide, Alliances politiques, Afrique, Blocs, Pôles de développement, ,Nash Equilibrium, Landscape Theory., Equilibre de Nash fort, Théorie du paysage. |
| Date: | 2026–03–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05573607 |