Since a key function of competitive elections is to allow voters to express their policy preferences, one might take it for granted that when leadership changes, policy change follows. Using a dataset we created on the composition of central government expenditures in a panel of 71 democracies...

Whereas a political budget cycle was once thought to be a phenomenon of less-developed economies, some recent studies find such a cycle in a large cross-section of both developed and developing countries. We find that this result is driven by the experience of ‘new democracies’, where fiscal...

When democracy is new, it is often fragile and not fully consolidated. We investigate how the danger of a collapse of democracy may affect fiscal policy in new democracies in comparison to countries where democracy is older and often more established. We argue that the attitude of the citizenry...

We test whether good economic conditions and expansionary fiscal policy help incumbents get reelected in a large panel of democracies. We find no evidence that deficits help reelection in any group of countries independent of income level, level of democracy, or government or electoral system....

This paper explores the emergence of a world economy since 1950 and its implications for the world's labor force. There are four main sets of conclusions. First, although the integration of national economies since 1950 has been considerable, the world economy is still in its adolescence. Rapid...