This Flash Eurobarometer provides an overview of European citizens' attitudes towards social media. It examines attitudes towards key themes, such as: (1) information habits and sources for social and political current affairs; (2) social media usage patterns and preferences for information on...

Members of Congress (politicians) are allowed to trade stocks. There is evidence in the literature showing that politicians made informed trades until at least the passage of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012. In this paper, we examine the drivers of congressional...

Pursuit of honest and truthful decision-making is crucial for governance and accountability in democracies. However, people sometimes take different perspectives of what it means to be honest and how to pursue truthfulness. Here we explore a continuum of perspectives from evidence-based...

Purpose - This paper aims to scrutinize some determinants that affect the functions and roles of contemporary parliaments. In particular, such parliaments attempt to involve in new areas that were not represented in parliamentary study and to play new roles in the areas of development,...

Purpose - This study aims to deal with the evaluation of institutional development and effectiveness of regional parliaments; it provides a scientific contribution to the development of the field of parliamentary studies by developing a set of indicators to present a parameter for evaluating...

Gagliarducci and Paserman (2022) study gender differences in cooperative behavior among politicians using information from the U.S. House of Representatives between 1988 and 2010 on (i) the number of co-sponsors on bills and (ii) the share of co-sponsors from the rival party. Through different...

The beauty premium in politics shows that attractive politicians are more likely to get elected to office than less attractive politicians, but little is known about whether beauty also shapes the behavior of members of parliament (MPs) once in office. We use newly collected data on the...

In this paper, we propose a new approach to the estimation of social networks and we apply it to the estimation of productivity spillovers in the U.S. Congress. Social networks such as the social connections among lawmakers are not generally directly observed, they can be recovered only using...

We examine the stock trading behavior and returns of U.S. senators from 2012-March 2020. Stocks purchased by senators on average slightly underperform stocks in the same industry and size (market cap) categories by 11 basis points, 28 basis points and 17 basis points at the 1, 3, and 6-month...

We study the extent to which personal connections among legislators influence abstentions in the U.S. Congress. Our analysis is conducted by observing representatives' abstention for the universe of roll call votes held on bills in the 109th-113th Congresses. Our results show that a legislator's...

Es gibt in Deutschland bisher wenige Erhebungen dazu, wie Politiker:innen wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse für ihre Arbeit nutzen. Um diese Kenntnislücke zu füllen, hat die Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina eine Erhebung beauftragt, die sich an die Mitglieder des Deutschen...

This paper presents the first empirical analysis of the impact of Parliamentary immunity on the behavior and performance of politicians. Leveraging a Constitutional Amendment, the adoption of which lifted the immunity of 132 of the 550 members of the Turkish Parliament, we find that losing...

Using data from a unique survey of members of parliaments in France, Germany and Italy in 2018, we estimate the effects of three dimensions on EU and euro area fiscal reform preferences: nationality, political ideology, and populism. We predict and confirm that a German populist party on the...

In most countries Parliamentary immunity protects lawmakers from civil or criminal charges while in office, and it shields them from prosecution for their political speech or political actions. This paper presents the first empirical analysis in the literature of the impact of Parliamentary...

Using data from a unique survey of members of parliaments in France, Germany and Italy in 2018, we estimate the effects of three dimensions on EU and euro area fiscal reform preferences: nationality, political ideology, and populism. We predict and confirm that a German populist party on the...

We link future members of Congress to the de-anonymized 1940 census to offer a uniquely detailed analysis of how economically unrepresentative American politicians were in the 20th century, and why. Future members under the age of 18 in 1940 grew up in households with parents who earned more...

The last three decades have witnessed a sharp increase in the number of states with spilt Senate delegations, featuring two senators of different parties. In addition, there is evidence that senators of different parties do not cluster in the middle: they are genuinely polarized. We propose a...

In 2002, an amendment to UK parliamentary regulations removed restrictions on the participation of members of parliament (MPs) in parliamentary proceedings related to their corporate interests. Using this amendment as a quasi-natural experiment, we demonstrate higher equity returns for FTSE 350...

We study the extent to which personal connections among legislators influence abstentions in the U.S. Congress. Our analysis is conducted by observing representatives' abstention for the universe of roll call votes held on bills in the 109th-113th Congresses. Our results show that a legislator's...

In this paper, we propose a new approach to the estimation of social networks and we apply it to the estimation of productivity spillovers in the U.S. Congress. Social networks such as the social connections among lawmakers are not generally directly observed, they can be recovered only using...

We examine the stock trading behavior and returns of U.S. senators from 2012-March 2020. Stocks purchased by senators on average slightly underperform stocks in the same industry and size (market cap) categories by 11 basis points, 28 basis points and 17 basis points at the 1, 3, and 6-month...