Die Partei „Alternative für Deutschland“ (AfD) hätte bei einer Bundestagswahl im Dezember 2016 mehr Stimmen bekommen als alle anderen Oppositionsparteien in Deutschland. Die Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V. weist in ihrem Politbarometer für Dezember 2016 eine Zustimmung zur AfD von 12 Prozent...

Donald Trump is now the 45th president of the USA. Behavioral economics can explain why he was successful even though his positions are somewhat controversial. Furthermore, his success raises critical implications for Europe’s next elections. Some of the main reasons for the success of...

Voting is an important form of civic participation in democratic societies but a fundamental right that many citizens do not exercise. This study investigates the effects of welfare reform in the U.S. in the 1990s on voting of low income women. Using the November Current Population Surveys with...

Die vorliegende Dissertation verwendet empirische Methoden zur Untersuchung von Problemen in den Bereichen Makroökonomie, internationaler Handel, Politische Ökonomie und Verhaltensökonomie. Kapitel 1 besteht aus einer Zusammenfassung der Literatur zur Frage, welche Faktoren die...

Mit zunehmender Flüchtlingsmigration nach Deutschland haben SPD-Chef Sigmar Gabriel und andere Politiker mögliche Verteilungskonflikte thematisiert. Besonders die sozial Schwachen würden vernachlässigt und in die Arme rechter Parteien getrieben. Zwischen Sorgen über die Zuwanderung auf der...

Public investment, for instance in infrastructure, has been constantly decreasing for four decades. New research by RWI for 13 OECD-countries shows: this development significantly correlates with population aging. Senior citizens do not value future payoffs of infrastructure projects and other...

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.

This paper investigates the differential response of male and female voters to competitive persuasion in political campaigns. We implemented a survey experiment during the (mixed gender) electoral race for mayor in Milan (2011), and a field experiment during the (same gender) electoral race for...

This paper investigates the differential response of male and female voters to competitive persuasion in political campaigns. We implemented a survey experiment during the (mixed gender) electoral race for mayor in Milan (2011), and a field experiment during the (same gender) electoral race for...

We test the theory of expressive voting in relation to political ideology in a laboratory experiment. After deriving our hypotheses from a decision theoretic model, we examine voting decisions in an experiment in which we use the size of the electorate as the treatment variable. Using a Heckman...

This volume was prepared by Markus Reischmann while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in June 2015 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in November 2015. It includes five self-contained chapters in the fields of public...

Partisan conflict and policy uncertainty are frequently invoked as factors contributing to slow post-crisis recoveries. Recent events in Europe provide ample evidence that the political aftershocks of financial crises can be severe. In this paper we study the political fall-out from systemic...

The rational-voter model is often criticized on the grounds that two of its central predictions (the paradox of voting and Duverger's Law) are at odds with reality. Recent theoretical advances suggest that these empirically unsound predictions might be an artifact of an (arguably unrealistic)...

We empirically analyze the impact of immigration to the U.S. on the share of votes to the Republicans and Democrats between 1994 and 2012. Our analysis is based on variation across states and years – using data from the Current Population Survey merged with election data – and addresses the...