What are the political consequences of the diffusion of broadband internet? We address this question by studying the 2008 US presidential election, the first political campaign where the internet played a key role. Drawing on data from the FEC and the FCC, we provide robust evidence that...

Asymmetric information between voters and legislative representatives poses a major challenge to the functioning of representative democracy. We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to...

This paper examines the effects of campaign spending limits on political competition and incumbency advantage. We study a reform in Brazil that imposed limits on campaign spending for mayoral elections. These limits were implemented with a discontinuous kink which we exploit for causal...

This thesis comprises four empirical research papers in the area of political economics. While the first two chapters deal with questions related to direct democracy, chapters three and four are about topics linked to representative democracy.

We propose a forensic approach to investigate the politico-economic forces that influence narrow vote outcomes in legislative assemblies. Applying nonparametric estimation techniques to a data set covering all roll call votes between 1990 and 2014, we can identify the existence of precise...

"Political activities, the running of party organisations, branches and headquarters, and especially election campaigns, are becoming increasingly costly, and no party can survive without money. Political power provides access to funding from public and private sources. Political parties have...

La 4e de couverture indique : "Depuis les années 1970, on assiste à une tentative de moralisation de la vie politique. Par des biais parfois très différents, certains pays ont cherché à clarifier les modes de financement de la vie politique afin de lutter contre la corruption et...

"This isn't your America. No matter who the president is. We're told that when we vote, when we elect representatives, we're gaining a voice in government and the policies it implements. But if that's true, why don't American politics actually translate our preferences into higher-living...

We develop a model of policymaking in which a politician decides how much expertise to acquire or how informed to become about issues before interest groups engage in monetary lobbying. For a range of issues, the policymaker prefers to remain clueless about the merits of reform, even when...

"Let's be honest, we've all expressed opinions about difficult hot-button issues without always thinking them through. With so much media spin, political polarization, and mistrust of institutions, it's hard to know how to think about these tough challenges, much less what to do about them. One...