In this paper, we unveil targeted repression against journalists as an elaborate strategy used by modern autocrats to mitigate the risk of mass protests during autocratic elections-a common threat to their rule. Repression is deployed to discipline the media before elections to secure favorable...

Müller (2023) presents evidence for electoral cycles in macroprudential policy in a sample of 58 countries from 2000 through 2014. Consistent with theoretical arguments, the pattern of looser regulation is larger when election outcomes are uncertain and institutions are weak. In this...

Geographic disparities in mortality rates in the US are pronounced and growing. The Black-White mortality gap is volatile but persistent, while the Rich-Poor mortality gap is increasing dramatically. While the causes of these inequalities are not understood, recent attention has focused on the...

In this paper, we unveil targeted repression against journalists as an elaborate strategy used by modern autocrats to mitigate the risk of mass protests during autocratic elections—a common threat to their rule. Repression is deployed to discipline the media before elections to secure...

This dissertation is a collection of four articles focused on the seeking of rents, which are rewards and prizes not earned or not consistent with competitive market returns. Each article explores a different aspect of the topic, focusing on the consequences, determinants or measurement of...

This study examines the effect of regulatory independence of the central bank in shaping the impact of electoral cycles on bank lending behaviour in Africa. It employs the dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) Two-Step estimator for a panel dataset of 54 African countries over the...

Pakistan's political economy has been characterized by some interesting and arguably unique features in recent decades. The combination of two stands out, in particular: (1) lifetime uncertainty for elected governments, and (2) a high degree of certainty that, due to reasons that are largely...

The Trump Administration enacted deficit-financed tax cuts, and the Trump campaign has proposed doubling down on that approach. The Biden-Harris Administration added less to national debt and shows more commitment to fiscal responsibility The Trump Administration consistently enacted tax...

We estimate the causal effect of partisan media on voter behavior by exploiting a natural experiment in which Sky News Australia - a conservative 24-hour news channel - became freely available to 8 million people. Using comprehensive national polling-station-level electoral data and broadcast...

In this paper, we study whether local spending of intergovernmental grants is influenced by mayoral elections in the grant receiving municipality. We exploit the implementation of the German federal government’s second economic stimulus package of 2009 (K2) in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg...

We investigate whether European banks adjust their loan prices and volumes of new lending in the months running up to major national elections. Using a unique dataset that draws on data covering some 250 banksin 19 Eurozone countries from 2010 to 2020 at monthly frequency, and that includes...

Political budget cycles (PBCs) in western democracies have been extensively examined. Yet, few studies have explored whether there exists a local political budget cycle under authoritarian regimes. This research attempt to address this important question by investigating local cases in China....

We investigate whether the presence of fiscal rules might limit the insurgence of a Political Budget Cycle (PBC) in investment spending at municipal level. Data based on the balance sheets of Italian municipalities are explored for the period 1999-2012. In line with some existing studies, we...

This paper documents that surprise election outcomes – measured as deviations between realised vote shares and expected vote shares based on a newly constructed dataset of opinion polls and party and candidate vote shares close to election day – are causing non-negligible short-term...

How do recession episodes experienced by central bankers in their impressionable years influence their monetary policy decision making during election periods? Using a large data of central bankers (from developed and developing countries) over the period 2000M1 to 2017M12, we find that central...

We analyze media repression in Putin’s Russia (2004–2019), a smart dictatorship that mimics democratic institutions, notably relatively free elections, and a relatively free press. Drawing on a unique granular dataset on journalist harassment and the pre-determined, staggered timing of local...

This paper uses the event-study methodology to investigate the effect of the Presidential Turkish elections in 2023 on Borsa Istanbul returns. The data used in this study cover the period from 13 June 2022, through 7 June 2023. We employ a market model to study the effect of two election rounds...

We re-analyze the major explanations of redistribution including the Meltzer-Richard (MR) model, power resources theory (PRT), the Iversen-Soskice political institutions explanation, Lupu and Ponstusson's wage inequality skew, along with works suggesting other causes, such as immigration. The...

Despite the growing public debate on fiscal surprise during election periods in jurisdictions where the democratic dispensation is young, comprehensive empirical works to this effect in the case of Africa are hard to find. This study, therefore, sought to contribute to the debate on two counts....

The widening of fiscal deficits during democratic elections is well established. We examine a broader set of fiscal outcomes around elections for a large set of emerging and developing economies (EMDEs), probe for differences between democracies and non-democracies, and estimate the degree to...

Gibbard and Satterthwaite have shown that the only single-valued social choice functions (SCFs) that satisfy nonimposition (i.e., the function's range coincides with its codomain) and strategyproofness (i.e., voters are never better off by misrepresenting their preferences) are dictatorships. In...

In dieser Dissertation wird die Wechselwirkung zwischen der Wirtschaft und den Wahlen, Politikern und Politik untersucht. Um die Wähler über die Folgen ihrer Wahlentscheidung zu informieren, ist das Verständnis der Dreiecksbeziehung zwischen der Wirtschaft, den politischen Akteuren und den...

This paper examines the evolution of public policies before the scheduled political elections based on the government responses to the Covid pandemic. The results of an event study in a sample of countries that experienced political elections during the first year of the pandemic suggest that...

Staggered difference-in-differences designs are pervasive in policy evaluations but little is known about the mechanisms of policy diffusion: How and why do such policies spread across jurisdictions? In this study, we highlight the role of elections in policy diffusion in settings where...