In democracies, political parties promise to expand social benefits to attract voters in the lead-up to elections. However, we know relatively little whether such campaign promises effectively sway benefiting voters. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we estimate the causal effects of an...

Promises are prevalent in many competitive environments, but promise keeping is often difficult to observe. Do promises still offer an opportunity to honor future obligations, if promise keeping is unobservable? Focusing on campaign promises, we study the value of transparency. We show how...

Promises are prevalent in many economic environments. They offer the opportunity to honor future obligations when promise keeping is observable. This paper studies the value of transparency and asks whether promises still work if such transparency is missing. We focus on the context of campaign...

For about 45 years, vote and popularity functions have been estimated for many countries indi- cating that voting intentions as well as actual votes are influenced by economic development. The economy is, of course, not the only and probably not always the most important factor, but there is no...

For about 45 years, vote and popularity functions have been estimated for many countries indicating that voting intentions as well as actual votes are influenced by economic development. The economy is, of course, not the only and probably not always the most important factor, but there is no...