Violence in conflict settings is seldom random, making its effects indistinguishable from the intentions of the perpetrator. We leverage on the quasi-randomness of accidental landmine explosions to study how violence shapes electoral outcomes in Colombia. We combine the geolocation of landmine...

In this paper, we analyse the policy feedback on the minimum wage in Germany. We find a negative effect on the electorate’s preference for ruling parties in regions with lower median wages. Especially workers directly affected by the minimum wage give a negative policy feedback in the year...

It is well known that being the proposer or agenda setter is advantagenous in many collective decision making situations. In the canonical model of distributive bargaining (Baron and Ferejon, 1989), proposers are certain of being part of the coalition that forms, and, conditional on being in the...

This paper studies the effects of talk radio, specifically the Rush Limbaugh Show, on electoral outcomes and attitude polarization in the U.S. We propose a novel identification strategy that considers the radio space in each county as a market where multiple stations are competing for listeners'...

We argue that standard models that solve the paradox of voting do a bad job explaining the frequency of very close elections. We instead model head-to-head elections as a competition between incentive schemes to turn out voters. We show that elections are either heavily contested, and decided by...

The process of election administration in many new democracies continues to generate a lot of controversy; particularly with regards to the level of independence of Election Management Bodies (EMB’s), their professionalism and the acceptability of the elections they conduct. In Nigeria -...

We introduce a name market into an overlapping generations model to address politician selection and political accountability when officeholders need not stand for re-election. We show that the name market could mitigate both issues. On the one hand, acquiring a good name screens good...

We introduce a name market into an overlapping generations model to address politician selection and political accountability when officeholders need not stand for re-election. We show that the name market could mitigate both issues. On the one hand, acquiring a good name screens good...

Do female candidates give up running for office more easily than their male counterparts? Do males and females react in the same way to an electoral setback? If not, what explains that differences? A large body of literature in political science has shown that males are more likely to run for...

We study the causal effects of austerity measures in the form of local fiscal rules on political participation and party preferences. We exploit an Italian reform - namely, the 2013 imposition of deficit targets in municipalities with fewer than 5,000 residents - to show that local fiscal rules...