Der Artikel untersucht die Forschungspraxis im wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Experimentallabor. Durch die Praxis der Forscher und die materielle Ausstattung des Labors wird im Experiment eine spezifische Umwelt geschaffen, die es Verhaltensökonomen erlaubt, ihr wissenschaftliches Objekt zu...

We develop a dynamic two-party political economy framework, in which parties seek to maximize vote share and face the trade-off between catering to their respective core constituencies on the one hand and ?middle of the road? voters with no partisan affiliation on the other hand. In contrast to...

We address the problem of how to investigate whether economics, or politics, or both, matter in the explanation of public policy. The problem is first posed in a particular context by uncovering a political business cycle (using Canadian data for 130 years) and by taking up the challenge to make...

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between certain characteristics of incumbent central bank governors and their interest-rate-setting behavior. We focus on (i) occupational backgrounds, (ii) party affiliation, and (iii) experience in office and estimate augmented Taylor rules for 20...

How can we evaluate the redistributive effect of welfare states? Do tax and transfer systems reduce the level of inequality generated in the market? In order to answer these questions, we need to be equipped with adequate measures of redistribution. Current measures employed in the sociology and...

This paper uses joint scaling methods and similar items from three large-scale surveys to place voters, parties and politicians from different Latin American countries on a common ideological space. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the findings reveal that the "median" voter in Latin America...

The standard assumption of exogenous policy preferences implies that parties set their positions according to their voters' preferences. We investigate the reverse effect: Are the electorates' policy preferences responsive to party positions? In a representative German survey, we inform...