Aggarwal et al. (2023) analyze the effects of an 8-month-long advertising program on voter turnout in the 2020 US presidential election. Therein, 2 million voters were exposed to pro-Biden and anti-Trump advertisements on social media in five battleground states. The study finds no average...

Das ZEW Mannheim hat in Kooperation mit der Süddeutschen Zeitung die finanziellen Auswirkungen von Reformvorschlägen der Parteien zur Bundestagswahl 2025 untersucht. Diese betreffen die Einkommensteuer und den Solidaritätszuschlag, die Vermögensteuer, das Bürgergeld, den Mindestlohn und...

Das Gebot innerparteilicher Demokratie will die Grundlage für einen freien und gleichen Wettbewerb in den politischen Parteien schaffen. Mithilfe rechtsökonomischer Methoden und einer eigenen empirischen Studie untersucht Jacob Ulrich, ob das Parteienrecht und die Satzungen der Parteien den...

Intra-party contests, such as the US primaries, are often used to select a candidate for a subsequent cross-party election. A more accurate selection may improve the quality of the candidate but detract more resources from the subsequent campaign. We model this trade-off as a problem of contest...

Intra-party contests, such as the US primaries, are often used to select a candidate for a subsequent cross-party election. A more accurate selection may improve the quality of the candidate but detract more resources from the subsequent campaign. We model this trade-off as a problem of contest...

Lee (2022) evaluates whether elected officials update their policy positions based on expert evidence. His cross-subject and within-subject designs run in the American local and state policy-making context both confirm the capacity for politicians to update their beliefs in response to expert...

Moya Chin's (2023) paper argues that politicians in two-round majoritarian systems have to appeal more broadly than those in single-round elections. The author uses data for mayoral elections in Brazil. The key findings of the paper conclude that of two-round systems (1) fostering inclusiveness,...

Die Alterung der deutschen Bevölkerung führt in der umlagefinanzierten Gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung zu höheren Beiträgen bei sinkendem Sicherungsniveau. Dies ließe sich bremsen, wenn mit steigender Regelaltersgrenze der Renteneintritt später erfolgte. Jedoch bevorzugt die Bevölkerung...

U.S. congressional roll-call voting records show that as polarization of the two parties along the economic dimension changes, polarization along the social/cultural dimension tends to change in the opposite direction. A model of party competition within a two-dimensional ideology space is...

We develop a model of elections in which parties choose their ideological position and the ideology of their candidates. Tighter candidate selection reduces policy uncertainty for voters. We show that weak institutional constraints, as in a Presidential regime, induce parties to allow their...

Die NSDAP kopierte nicht nur von Anfang an den Stil der Arbeiterbewegung, sondernverlagerte auch den Schwerpunkt ihrer Propaganda ab 1928 von nationalistischer Außenpolitikauf innenpolitische und soziale Fragen. Bis 1932 wurde diese Ausrichtung jedoch durchkein wirtschaftspolitisches Programm...

We study the effects of social media political advertising by randomizing subsets of 36,906 Facebook users and 25,925 Instagram users to have political ads removed from their news feeds for six weeks before the 2020 US presidential election. We show that most presidential ads were targeted...

Innerparteiliche Demokratie ist innerparteiliche Wettbewerbsdemokratie. Die grundgesetzliche Demokratie kann als System wettbewerblicher Interessenaggregation beschrieben werden. Art. 21 Abs. 1 S. 3 GG überführt diese wettbewerbliche Demokratiekonzeption in die Parteien; sie prägt deren...

In most national elections, voters face a key choice between continuity and change. Electoral turnovers occur when the incumbent candidate or party fails to win reelection. To understand how turnovers affect national outcomes, we study the universe of presidential and parliamentary elections...

The role of citizens' initiatives figures prominently in contemporary debates on constitutional change. A basic question is why are initiatives necessary in a representative democracy where candidates must already compete for the right to control policy? This paper offers one answer to this...

Individual members of Congress can have different policy preferences from the party leadership or special interest groups (SIGs), and the latter two may pressure members to shift their positions. To study this tension, we develop and estimate a multi-stage election model that incorporates party...

Wirtschaftspolitik in einer sozialen Marktwirtschaft möchte Wohlstand schaffen und verteilen. Dies zeigt sich in den Wahl- und Regierungsprogrammen auf Bundesebene seit 2002, allerdings mit sehr unterschiedlichen Akzenten. Zur Analyse wird deshalb die relative Häufigkeit der Begriffe...

Democratic representation is constrained by the alternatives available to voters. In this paper, we develop a methodology to gauge the extent to which the "supply side" of politics hinders voter welfare. Using rich data on thousands of candidates in three Brazilian legislative elections, we...

How important are political parties in motivating and disciplining elected officials? Using a difference-in-discontinuity design, we study how shocks to incumbents're-election probabilities affect legislative behavior in a setting where parties fully control candidate selection. We find that...

We develop a model of elections in which parties choose their ideological position and the ideology of their candidates. Tighter candidate selection reduces policy uncertainty for voters. We show that weak institutional con- straints, as in a Presidential regime, induce parties to allow their...

We review an empirical literature that studies how political polarization affects financial decisions. We first discuss the degree of partisan segregation in finance and corporate America, the mechanisms through which partisanship may influence financial decisions, and available data sources to...

The Federal Reserve Act was the outcome of compromises among competing economic and political interests. Numerous studies examine how the act came together but largely take the makeup of Congress and the Administration as given rather than considering the unique circumstances that led to that...

I analyze the link between partisan alignment of local politicians and the incidence of political corruption, using novel hand-collected data on local political corruption in Ghana. In line with political ambition theory, I hypothesize that local politicians aligned with the national government...

Vier Parteien - Die Linke, SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen und FDP - haben bis Ende April 2021 den Entwurf ihres Programms zur Bundestagswahl am 26. September veröffentlicht. Wie klar und überzeugend vermitteln Bundestagsparteien ihre Vorstellungen? Die digital- und medienpolitischen Aussagen der...

Diese Studie untersucht die Programme zur Bundestagswahl 2021 im Hinblick auf Maßnahmen, die die Rolle von privatem Eigentum in unserer Gesellschaft tangieren. Untersuchungsgegenstand sind die Wahlprogramme aller gegenwärtig im deutschen Bundestag vertretenen Parteien.

Der Mittelstand bildet mit nahezu 3,5 Millionen Unternehmen die Basis der deutschen Wirt-schaftsstärke. Unternehmensgründungen sind für die ständige Erneuerung der mittelständi-schen Unternehmenslandschaft unerlässlich; innovative Start-ups bringen wichtige Innovatio-nen auf den Markt, die...

Ever since the spectacular boom and bust cycle of the Spanish real estate industry, endemic corruption at the local level has become a widely recognized problem in the national public discourse. In an effort to expose an under-explored political determinant, this paper investigates the effect of...

Die Einkommensteuerpolitik spielt in den Wahlprogrammen eine relevante Rolle. Darin unterscheidet sich der Bundestagswahlkampf 2021 nicht von vergangenen Wahlkämpfen. Allerdings ist es in den vergangenen 15 Jahren trotz Ankündigungen zu keiner grundlegenden Reform der Einkommensteuer gekommen....

Die Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) wird in Deutschland als entscheidende Schlüsseltechnologie gesehen (BMWi, 2019). Bereits 2018 erklärte Bundeskanzlerin Merkel in ihrem Video-Podcast, dass Deutschland bei KI führend sein muss, „wenn wir Wachstum und damit auch neue Arbeitsplätze und...