The higher turnout in Iraq’s recent parliamentary elections reflects advances over the past four years, notably in infrastructure development, security, and political stability. The election’s outcome and ensuing coalition-building dynamics underscore trends and challenges that will shape...

This paper investigates the causal effect of the term length of political executives on economic policy outcomes. To establish causality, we exploit the staggered adoption of four-year terms for governors across US states, using data for the period 1937-2008. We find that increasing governors'...

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 as...

We study the degree and nature of political budget cycles in public investments when two instruments are available: investments by core governments and, more indirectly, by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While fiscal pressure on core budgets may induce politicians to shift election-induced...

Using novel smartphone content data, we document that exposure to election-related content for the median American is arguably small. Moreover, exposure rarely comes from news apps and instead mostly occurs through non-traditional sources, such as social media and video apps. While the median...

This paper provides the first causal evaluation of the political impact of asylum seekers in the UK. Although dispersed across areas on a no-choice basis, political bargaining between central and local governments introduces potential endogeneity in their allocation. We address this with a novel...

We study the possible increase of partisan polarization in the Netherlands over the period 1998-2023, in particular its relationship with the degree of urbanization, the so-called urban-rural divide. Using national election results at the municipal level and municipal characteristics, we show...

The political future is inherently unpredictable, particularly in the run-up to elections. This article analyses whether such uncertainty matters. In this paper, we raise an interesting issue of the impact of political debate on the stock market of a developing country. Specifically, we...

In recent years, academic research and public debate have increasingly focused on the relationship between immigration and support for populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs). This study examines the 2022 Italian National Elections to assess whether the presence of immigrants at municipal...

This paper studies the long-run effects of non-strategic administrative failures on voter participation. I exploit a natural experiment from Berlin’s 2021 elections, in which hundreds of precincts experienced ballot shortages, multi-hour queues, and unlawful polling closures. Using...

We investigate how reducing information costs through forced experimentation with postal voting, while holding administrative rules fixed, affects subsequent voting behavior. Leveraging a natural experiment during Bavaria’s 2020 Mayoral Elections and drawing on municipality-level...

This is the first of four articles on the 2025 German federal elections, continuing our analysis of the 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021 elections. We begin with the 2023/24 electoral reform, which aimed to curb the uncontrolled growth of the Bundestag caused by political developments not envisaged in...

Elections in fragile democracies are not merely contests over policy but battles for control over state resources, including foreign aid. Aid provides local governments with substantial discretionary funds, creating strong incentives for rent-seeking political actors to capture political office....

This is the second out of four papers on the 2025 German federal elections continuing our analysis of the 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021 Bundestag elections. We estimate the policy representation ability of the 29 parties that participated in the 2025 elections and of the 2025 Bundestag. For this...

This is the third out four papers on the 2025 German Bundestag elections continuing our analysis of the 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021 elections. In particular, this paper contributes to the discussion of the imperfection of the German 2023/24 Electoral reform in [Tangian 2025a]. We show that policy...

This paper investigates how concurrent national and local elections affect the local political participation and competition. Leveraging a quasi-experimental framework provided by Italy's staggered electoral timing, the paper employs a difference-in-differences design. Estimates reveal that...

This paper examines how natural disasters shape electoral preferences by analyzing the impact of earthquakes in Italy between 1990 and 2019. Using a staggered Difference-in-Differences design, we estimate that affected municipalities are more likely to elect female, more educated, and older city...

We examine whether anti-establishment outsider movements can leverage education and youth mobilization to build long-run political power. We study the expansion of state-run religious secondary schools in 1970s Türkiye and show that access to these schools catalyzed the emergence of Islamist...

This paper examines the electoral cycle and the conduct of the central government’s fiscal policy. It uses a panel database with disaggregated spending and revenue series for 34 middle-income countries over 2000-2022. A dynamic panel approach was used to look at overall government spending and...

On 3 December 2024, the then-President of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Yoon Suk-yeol triggered the gravest political crisis in the country since its democratisation by declaring martial law in a televised address. Yoon justified martial law as a response to what he dubbed the "legislative...