This paper investigates social preferences towards unemployment and inflation in the United States. Estimating a popularity function with monthly data for the recent Obama administration, we find that U.S. voters react strongly to both unemployment and inflation. However, reducing unemployment...

Even after four decades of research it remains unclear, whether presidential popularity depends on the state of the economy. While about half of all studies for the United States find a significant effect of unemployment and inflation on presidential popularity, the others do not. Additional...

This paper investigates social preferences towards unemployment and ination in the United States. Estimating a popularity function with monthly data for the recent Obama administration, we find that U.S. voters react strongly to both unemployment and inflation. However, reducing unemployment is...