In an RDD study of the incumbency effect, observations somewhat away from the threshold separating winners and losers in an election are necessarily employed. We consider how incorporating the vote volatility of elections into a preferred index of electoral competitiveness or closeness, in...

We quantify micro and macro effects of changes in the potential benefit duration (PBD) in unemployment insurance. In Poland, the PBD is 12 months for newly unemployed if the previous year's county unemployment rate is more than 150% of the national average, and 6 months otherwise. We exploit...