In this document, I forecast the results of the Italian general election using aggregated polling data. According to this forecast, there is an extremely high probability of the centre-left winning an overall majority in the lower chamber (p ≈ 100%); the probability of the centre-left winning...

In Westminster systems characterised by cohesive national parties, is there any room for meaningful dyadic representation, whereby the ideological outlook and legislative behaviour of individual Members of Parliament reflects the political preferences of their constituents? Research on this...

Given past and continued liberalization of the economy, interest has grown in politicians’ efforts to re-regulate previously liberalized sectors through creation independent regulatory agencies (IRAs). One key theoretical interest is the degree of independence of these IRAs. In this article,...

The announcement of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine success on 9 November 2020 led to a global stock market surge. But how did the general public respond to such good news? We report results of a nation-wide natural experiment in the US and the UK on how the vaccine news influenced...

Do crises make people more prosocial? And what role does communication play in promoting such attitudes and behavior? These answers matter for post-crisis economic recovery as social capital has been linked to growth. We leverage the incidence of COVID-19 --a multifaceted global crisis-- and...

Recent studies have found considerable partisan polarization of both reality and policy preferences in the US. Furthermore, this polarization is so entrenched that it is immune to the provision of factual information. Has the COVID-19 pandemic, which affects citizens unequally, reproduced or...

This paper investigates a widespread yet understudied trend in EU politics: the de facto shift of legislative decision-making from public inclusive to informal secluded arenas, and the subsequent adoption of legislation at first reading. Since its formal introduction in 1999, “fast-track...