fighting with one hand tied behind the back political budget cycles in the west german states theories of political budget cycles have been contested because scholars find that incumbents can manipulate deficits in the pre election period only if fiscal transparency is low i argue that these findings do not generally rule out the possibility of fiscal electioneering governments may increase spending on highly visible policies the composition of the budget serves as a second best strategy it increases political support without straining the budget balance an empirical analysis of the west german states reveals alternative electoral budget strategies and ultimately point to the importance of analyzing how governments choose between alternative fiscal instruments

political cycles and economic performance in oecd countries empirical evidence from 1951 2006 this paper examines whether electoral motives and government ideology influence short term economic performance i employ data on annual gdp growth in 21 oecd countries over the 1951 2006 period and provide a battery of empirical tests in countries with two party systems gdp growth is boosted before elections and under leftwing governments in the first two years of a legislative period these findings indicate that political cycles are more prevalent in two party systems because voters can clearly punish or reward political parties for governmental performance my findings imply that we need more elaborate theories of how government ideology and electoral motives influence short term economic performance

observable and unobservable determinants of replacement of home appliances despite the dominant role of replacement purchases in many consumer durable categories the research in this area has not been extensive only in the last few years has the economic theory made progress towards a more rigorous analysis of the dynamic nature involved in replacement decisions as a consequence of this applied researchers have switched from conventional discrete choice models to new econometric techniques e g duration analysis that allow for richer relationships between socioeconomic variables characteristics of the durable good and the likelihood of its replacement over time our study focuses on two home appliances taken from the residential energy consumption survey recs based on a duration model that allows for unobserved heterogeneity across households we conclude that household demographics and product features both observable and unobservable in general have statistical power to explain replacement decisions over time

political cycles in oecd economies this paper studies whether the dynamic behaviour of gnp growth unemployment and inflation is systematically affected by the timing of elections and of changes of governments the sample include the last three decades in 18 oecd economies we explicitly test the implication of several models of political cycles both of the opportunistic and of the partisan type also we confront the implication of recent rational models with more traditional approaches our results can be summarized as follows a the political business cycle hypothesis as formulated in nordhaus 1975 on output and unemployment is generally rejected by the data b inflation tends to increase immediately after elections perhaps as a result of pre electoral expansionary monetary and fiscal policies c we find evidence of temporary partisan differences in output and unemployment and of long run partisan differences in the inflation rate as implied by the rational partisan theory by alesina 1987 d we find virtually no evidence of permanent partisan differences in output growth and unemployment

decisions to replace consumer durables goods an econometric application of wiener and renewal processes current sales of most consumer durable goods are accounted for by replacements however only in recent years has the economic literature provided a more rigorous analysis of replacement purchases by incorporating elements of dynamic programming and of the theory of stochastic processes this paper is an empirical study of household replacement decisions modeled as an optimal stopping rule using data from the residential energy consumption survey recs of the u s department of energy we conclude that demographic variables operation and replacement costs and equipment characteristics may affect ownership spells of appliances such as electric heaters and central air conditioners

international and domestic constraints on political business cycles in oecd economies a comment we attempt to assess the effect of monetary policy in a panel model for 16 member countries of the organization for economic cooperation and development oecd to answer the question of whether central banks actively create political business cycles we focus on the short term interest rate as a proxy for the use of monetary instruments our results indicate that central banks do not create political business cycles this conclusion holds whether or not central banks are independent and whether or not they are constrained by the exchange rate system in force

stationary equilibrium in a market for durable assets this paper presents a dynamic model of consumer trading on the primary secondary and scrap markets for a stochastically deteriorating durable good in a stationary economy with perfect information and no transaction costs we explicitly model the trading process by tracking each durable from its birth in the primary market through its sequence of owners in the secondary market until its death in the scrap market we prove that a stationary equilibrium exists characterize the distribution of consumer holdings of durables and show that equilibrium asset prices are shadow prices to a particular regenerative optimal stopping problem we show that each heterogeneous agent equilibrium is observationally equivalent to a homogeneous agent equilibrium we derive a differential equation for equilibrium rental rates and a functional equation which links rental rates to asset prices these equations show precisely how the structure of durable prices and rental rates embody the functional form and population distribution of preferences and the technological characteristics of durable goods this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

linking agricultural policies with obesity and noncommunicable diseases a new perspective for a globalising world abstract in light of the shift in policy paradigm in agriculture from state intervention to market liberalisation and globalisation this paper develops a series of hypotheses on the relationship between agricultural policies and consumer diets the first hypothesis is that the paradigm shift has led to greater specialisation of production so changing the ability and incentive for producers to supply certain foods relative to others second the shift has affected farmgate prices both up and down so creating opportunities for the industries which purchase farm commodities the food consuming industries fcis to substitute lower priced ingredients thereby influencing the nutritional quality and content of foods available in the marketplace third it has increased the ability of the fcis to add value through product innovation and marketing creating a market characterised by highly differentiated products targeted to individualised preferences thus increasing the acceptability of a wider variety and quantity of food products the changing agricultural policy paradigm has therefore altered the environment in which consumers make their food choices in the form of food availability affordability and acceptability nevertheless the paper finds no clear pattern when it comes to health the changes have affected both unhealthy and healthy foods and ingredients the key process of importance for health then is not whether the ingredients produced by agriculture are healthy or not but how they are substituted transformed distributed and marketed through the supply chain e g vegetable oils into transfats this leads to an important implication that policies to intervene directly in agricultural production to promote healthy eating are unlikely to be effective or efficient if they do not take into account how foods are processed distributed and marketed through the supply chain in practice this means that the potential for policy interventions in agriculture to improve diets is limited but nevertheless potentially important where it exists given the upstream nature of the change incentives could be created for the fcis to substitute healthier ingredients in their products and or to sell more of them in instances where these changes can be passed all the way to the consumer greater investment could also be made in fruit and vegetable production for local markets along with testing the hypotheses established in this paper the research priority should to identify the incentives that influence the products produced by the fcis with the objective of finding those most amenable to leveraging the supply chain towards healthier eating

macroeconomic policy in a two party system as a repeated game this paper considers the interaction of two parties with different objectives concerning inflation and unemployment and rational and forward looking wage setters if discretionary policies are followed an economic cycle related to the political cycle results in equilibrium this cycle is significantly different from the traditional political business cycle reputational mechanisms due to the repeated interaction of the two parties and the public or commitments to a common policy rule can improve upon the discretionary outcome by reducing or eliminating the magnitude of the economic fluctuations

nutrition agriculture and the global food system in low and middle income countries the entire food value chain and diet of low and middle income countries lmics are rapidly shifting many of the issues addressed by the nutrition community ignore some of the major underlying shifts in purchases of consumer packaged foods and beverages at the same time the drivers of the food system at the farm level might be changing there is a need for the agriculture and nutrition communities to understand these changes and focus on some of their implications for health this rapid growth of the retail sector will change the diets of the food insecure as much as that of the food secure across rural and urban lmic s this short commentary contents that current research programs and policies are ignoring these rapid dynamic shifts

modelling the consumer s decision to replace durable goods a hazard function approach this article analysis the consumer s durable good replacement decision using hazard models in contrast to the typical limited dependent variable model often used in durable good demand studies hazard models allow for much richer replacement to illustrate the technique a recursive system consisting of a regression equation and a hazard model is used to examine home heating system replacement decisions by residencial customers of a major southeasten us electric utility the results indicate that overall system replacement rates decline over time and that the probability of replacement for specific households depends negatively on the age of the head of household abd the availability of natural gas and positively on system age and higher than expected household energy use

default probabilities for mortgages abstract models now exist for valuing the default option embedded in a mortgage implicitly these models generate all the information necessary to determine the probability of default in any possible situation economists and policymakers may find such default probabilities considerably more interesting than the nonobservable dollar value of the default option this paper provides the analytical procedure necessary to calculate such probabilities and presents a wide range of results the decision to terminate a mortgage results in the loss of the options to default or prepay in the future because of this consideration the price of a house must fall below the point of zero equity before a rational borrower defaults we provide evidence that even in the absence of transaction costs this value of delay results in substantial levels of negative equity being observed without default occurring in fact by not accounting for the value of delay most of the current empirical literature cited in this article substantially overestimates the role of transaction costs in the decision to default

unemployment and inflation consequences of unexpected election results the empirical evidence toward rational partisan theory of business cycles is mixed and thus inconclusive this is due to the enormous heterogeneity of the existing empirical studies only a few of these test explicitly for the central theoretical innovation that post electoral blips in economic activity depend on the degree of the electoral surprise using polling data we present empirical evidence in favor of rational partisan theory for a panel of oecd countries

educational business cycles the political economy of teacher hiring across german states 1992 2004 strong institutional constraints and better informed voters may lead re election seeking incumbents to shift the use of political business cycle mechanisms away from monetary and fiscal policy towards other policy domains that are more easily manipulable targetable and timeable we investigate teacher employment patterns at the state level in germany and find strong evidence of cycling mechanisms in the form of electioneering and honeymooning against a backdrop of a continuously shrinking total teachers pool german state level incumbents accelerate the hiring of new teachers during election periods and partly reverse this during politically safer points in the electoral cycle cycles are mediated by issue salience heightened attention to german public schooling after the notorious pisa 2000 tests further strengthens the manipulation of new teacher hiring for electoral purposes

the bundesbank s path to independence evidence from the 1950s the german bundesbank is frequently called the world s most independent and conservative central bank taking account of the path dependency of this reputation both quantitative data and qualitative data on german central bank law and political conflicts are used to determine the factors that contributed to this reputation in the 1950s it is shown that quantitative analysis has its limits and that law might be a misleading indicator in this respect it is rather the analysis of policy conflicts between the bundesbank and the government that yields information on the bank s path to independence

opportunistic and partisan election cycles in brazil new evidence at the municipal level this article tests the hypothesis of opportunistic and partisan cycle models using a new large data set of brazilian municipalities over the 1989 2005 period the results show an increase in total and current expenditures and a decrease in municipal investments local tax revenues and budget surplus in election years they also show that partisan ideology exerts a relative influence on the performance of the local public accounts these results confirm that both opportunistic and partisan cycles have occurred in the management of the budgets of brazilian municipalities after the end of the military government

searching for political business cycles in germany one reslt of the revitalised literature on political business cycles is that there are signs in german data that elections and ideology have an impact however using monthly data for the period 1950 1989 and standard methods of time series analysis we reject both the nordhaus hypothesis of opportunistic cycles and the partisan approaches by hibbs ans alesina we show that some results are sensitive to the assumption of stationarity there are signs of policy cycles in m1 it is hard though to bring this in line with the rogoff hypothesis of rational opportunistic cycles because of the german institutional setting

political parties world demand and unemployment domestic and international sources of economic activity this article replicates and extends earlier work on the politics of macroeconomic policy by considering political effects on unemployment in 14 western industrial nations between 1960 and 1983 changes of party control of government display broadly the expected effects namely that unemployment falls under left wing governments and rises under right wing governments however the principal conclusions of this article are that partisan effects on unemployment in open economies that is economies heavily dependent on trade with other countries can only be satisfactorily estimated relative to the constraint imposed by the level of world economic activity and that in addition to politicians strategic incentives political institutions and economic regime constraints also determine whether partisan effects on unemployment will be sustained transitory or absent with respect to the latter on the whole no effects are found where no such effects were promised by the new government before taking office where one party or dominant partner coalitions form the effect on unemployment is transitory whereas where broad coalitions form it is sustained or absent finally ceteris paribus any partisan effects are more likely where governments secure parliamentary majorities

electoral cycles in active labor market policies we examine how electoral motives influence active labor market policies that promote short term job creation such policies reduce measures of unemployment using german state data for the period 1985 to 2004 we show that election motivated politicians pushed job promotion schemes before elections

economic freedom and government ideology across the german states potrafke n economic freedom and government ideology across the german states regional studies this paper examines whether government ideology influenced economic freedom across the german states the results show that in former west germany rightwing governments promoted economic freedom whereas leftwing governments confined it in the former east germany however rightwing governments were not associated with propagating economic freedom this finding appears to conflict with the common notion of policy convergence at the federal level in fact the observed variation in political preferences across states may indicate that politicians gratify the local electorate and in return offer moderate policies at the federal level potrafke n potrafke n la liberte economique et l ideologie du gou

equilibrium political budget cycles political business cycle theories generally rely on nominal rigidities and voter myopia this paper offers an equilibrium theory that preserves some basic insights from earlier models though with significant refinements the political budget cycle emphasized here is in fiscal policy rather than output and inflation it arises via a multidimensional signal process one can consider the welfare implications of proposals to mitigate the cycle and the effects of altering the electoral structure copyright 1990 by american economic association

political budget cycles the case of the western german lander this paper focuses on the issue of the electoral andideological cycles in state government budget for the elevenwestern german lander we verify this hypothesis over theperiod 1974 1994 for the following budgetary variables totalexpenditures surplus deficit administration health care education roads and social security benefits while overallour results seem to show that generally the party variabledoes not play a systematic role in spending decisions theyprovide some support to the opportunistic cycle theory showingthat the only relevant phenomenon is the effect of theupcoming election on the government spending inclinations

fiscal policy and reelection in brazilian municipalities this paper uses a new panel of more than 2 000 brazilian municipalities over 13 years to analyze the influence of public expenditures on the probability of mayors reelec tion we examine brazilian municipal elections from 1988 to 2000 using a logit fixed effects model the results suggest that mayors who spend more during their terms of office increase the probability of their own reelection or of a successor of the same political party in par ticular higher capital spending over the years preceding elections and current expenditures in election years are beneficial to brazilian incumbent mayors

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

political parties and the business cycle in the united states 1948 1984 this paper tests the existence and the extent of a politically induced business cycle in the u s in the post world war ii period the cycle described in this paper is different from the traditional political business cycle of nordhaus it is based on a systematic difference between the monetary policies of the two parties in a model with labor contracts from an explicit optimization problem we derive a system of equations for output and money growth then we successfully test the non linear restriction imposed by the theory on the parameters of the system of equations we cannot reject the hypothesis that money growth has been systematically different under the two types of administration and that this difference contributes to explain output fluctuations

rhetoric and action what are central banks doing before elections central bank rhetoric need not always be followed bycorresponding measures in a number of regressions coveringgermany japan and the u s we examine differences in rhetoricand actual behavior before elections using a standard pbcmodel our results indicate that these three central bankshave not been influenced by electoral consideration in thepolicies they implement but the case of the german bundesbankindicates that it may be helpful to distinguish betweenrhetoric and action

why do members of congress support agricultural protection it seems paradoxical that until recently developed countries have continued subsidizing agriculture even though their agricultural sectors had been declining in relative importance since the middle of the 20th century what drives support for agricultural protection the broad array of subsidies to farmers and taxes and quotas imposed on agricultural imports in developed countries we answer this question by testing three competing hypotheses about what drives support for agricultural protection in the us i legislator preferences ii electoral incentives or iii lobbying using data on the roll call votes of the members of the 106th through the 110th congresses 1999 2009 and the scores given to each legislator by the farm bureau our findings suggest that electoral incentives explain a great deal of the variation in support for agricultural protection but that legislator preferences and lobbying might play a role too moreover legislator preferences and electoral incentives appear to be substitutes for one another why does congress support agricultural protection because many members have electoral incentives to and because many of those who do not still have other personal or strategic interests at stake

federalism and central bank independence the politics of german monetary policy 1957 92 two channels of political control allow elected politicians to influence monetary policy first political threats to the status structure or very existence of the central bank may force central bankers to comply with politically motivated demands on monetary policy second politicians may use their powers of appointment to ensure that central bank appointees share their electoral and party political goals this paper derives the monetary policy outcomes obtained as a function of the degree of central bank independence zero partial or full and central bankers types partisans or technocrats based on a case study of the 1957 and 1992 institutional changes to the german central banking system and a regression analysis covering the period in between i argue that the formal independence of the system is protected by its embeddedness in the institutions of german federalism and by the federalist components of its decentralized organizational structure the behavioral independence of the german central bank fluctuates over time with the party control of federalist veto points the bundesbank is staffed with nonpartisan technocrats who are partially insulated from political pressures

is german domestic social policy politically controversial this paper investigates empirically the influence of government ideology on social policy using german data examining the funding and the benefits of social security and public healthcare policy my results suggest that policies implemented by governments dominated by left and rightwing parties were similar over the 1951 2007 period leftwing governments however spent more in the 1970s and rightwing governments did so after german reunification in 1990 since policy convergence encourages new parties to enter the political arena and party platforms on social policy matters are likely to undergo further changes in light of demographic change the observed pattern may thus be a transitory phenomenon

modelling multilateral negotiations an application to california water policy abstract in this paper we advance a new framework for noncooperative multilateral bargaining that can be used to conceptualize negotiation processes in the proposed game theoretic setting the outcome of the negotiation process depends crucially on the constitutional structure of the game the input each group has in the decision making process the coalitions of groups that can implement proposals the scope of the negotiations and the outcome if the parties fail to reach agreement computer simulations allow investigation of the likely outcome of negotiations under various constitutional regimes analysis of recent water policy negotiations in california illustrates the capacity of the model

are expectations on inflation and election outcomes connected an empirical analysis abstract in this paper we study whether inflation expectations react on variations of election outcome expectations using data from 6 countries we show that such a link in fact exists and thus provides empirical evidence supportive to rational partisan theory of business cycles

does government ideology matter in monetary policy a panel data analysis for oecd countries this paper examines whether government ideology has influenced monetary policy in oecd countries we use quarterly data in the 1980 1 2005 4 period and exclude emu countries our taylor rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time variant index of central bank independence with government ideology the results show that leftist governments have somewhat lower short term nominal interest rates than rightwing governments when central bank independence is low in contrast short term nominal interest rates are higher under leftist governments when central bank independence is high the effect is more pronounced when exchange rates are flexible our findings are compatible with the view that leftist governments in an attempt to deflect blame of their traditional constituencies have pushed market oriented policies by delegating monetary policy to conservative central bankers

waiting to invest investment and uncertainty the textbook analysis that accepts all projections with positive net present values as positive is quite generally wrong the ability to delay a project means that almost every project competes with itself postponed with uncertain interest rates even the simplest of projects has an option value the effect of interest rate uncertainty on the optimal delay of investment is sizable this implies that the rate of aggregate investment will depend on both the level of the real interest rate and the degree of interest rate uncertainty furthermore it is not necessarily true that investment rises with a fall in interest rates copyright 1992 by university of chicago press

how much priority is given to nutrition and health in the eu common agricultural policy agriculture in the european union eu is strongly influenced by the common agricultural policy cap there have been repeated calls for cap to address nutrition related health particularly obesity and non communicable disease ncd in the eu however aligning agricultural policy such as cap with nutrition is complex not least because the aims of agricultural policy are predominantly economic presenting a challenge for developing coherence between agricultural trade and health policy this research examined the political priority given to nutrition related health concerns within cap to date and the solutions suggested by agricultural trade and health policy makers and public health nutrition advocates via interviews of 20 high level participants from respective sectors the participants provided diverse perspectives often varying by sector and institution on the connections between agricultural policy and nutrition related health the extent to which nutrition concerns have been addressed via cap and whether cap is an appropriate and effective policy approach to improve nutrition related health in the eu in the future the key findings suggest the need for communication and agreement of clear high level nutrition guidelines clarity on the eu mandate to address nutrition related health concerns via policy and stronger engagement of civil society in the issues if cap is to address nutrition more than it is doing currently the difference in worldviews between agricultural trade representatives and those from public health also needs to be addressed

how do households choose quality and time to replacement for a rapidly improving durable good abstract many durable goods particularly in the high technology sector of the economy experience rapid quality improvement as a result replacement is typically due to obsolescence rather than breakdown and replacement cycles are relatively short when these goods are vertically differentiated consumers must make two important inter related choices upon making a purchase what quality level to buy and how long to wait between purchases in this paper we analyze how these two decisions relate to underlying preferences and to each other both theoretically and empirically we demonstrate how a single tenuous assumption in a commonly used theoretical model can drive the relationships we would predict when we take this model to the data this highlights the necessity of a more direct empirical analysis in our empirics we show that quality choice and replacement cycle length rcl are generally positively correlated we also find evidence of non monotonic relationships between quality choice and marginal utility of quality and rcl choice and marginal utility of money that is households who value quality more don t always buy higher quality pcs and households who value money less don t always buy more frequently ceteris paribus our results provide new insights into the nature of durable goods demand the proper characterization of markets and market segments and welfare measures

partisan political business cycles in the german labour market empirical tests in the light of the lucas critique this paper focuses on alternative specifications ofpartisan political business cycles partisan theory rational partisan theory and hysteresis augmentedrpt it elaborates on analogies of the natural ratehypothesis underlying all specifications and thecointegration concept accordingly problems of thespecification of hypotheses estimation and inferencein a cointegrating framework with politicalinterventions are treated super exogeneity tests areshown to be equivalent to tests of the lucas critiqueand the rpt therefore the concept ofsuper exogeneity is transferred to empirical tests ofpartisan cycles by this a new testing framework ofpartisan cycles is developed and applied to germanlabour market data

investment under uncertainty the case of replacement investment decisions we analyze the determinants of replacement investment decisions in a contingent claims model with maintenance and operation cost uncertainty we find that the optimal time between replacements is increasing in the volatility of cost the purchase price of a new asset and the corporate tax rate and is decreasing in the systematic risk of cost the salvage value of the asset and the investment tax credit the optimal time between replacements can either increase or decrease with an increase in the depreciation rate extensions of the model to examine the effects of technological and tax policy uncertainty on replacement investment decisions give intuitive but striking results uncertainty about the arrival of a technological innovation that would decrease maintenance and operation cost results in a significant decrease in replacement investment uncertainty in a tax law change that would encourage investment decreases current investment and uncertainty in a tax law change that would discourage investment increases current investment

structuring international institutions for the efficient provisioning of global security this paper analyzes the issue of security provision by an alliance against the threat of a rogue nation proactive security effort by an alliance member is assumed to be non rival and non excludable so the results of the effort jointly accrue to every other member this effort has both positive and negative effects as security measures mitigate the threat but also involve loss of commercial benefits collateral damages and infringement on human rights in this paper i suggest an institutional structure for the alliance which would lead to the achievement of the efficient level of world security through multilateral participation

politics and business cycles in industrial democracies politics alberto alesina influences from political competition on macroeconomic policy are often thought to be a source of economic fluctuations politicians are described as being driven by two not mutually exclusive main motivations they want to be reelected and they harbour political or ideological biases when such theories are confronted with actual cycles in a number of industrial countries the pattern of inflation unemployment output and budget deficits indicates that partisan policy making is a fairly widespread phenomenon with more limited evidence that electoral preoccupations result in major fluctuations the combination of partisanship and electoral cycles may easily result in socially undesirable outcomes in particular the degree of politico institutional stability and the independence of the central bank have a bearing on macroeconomic outcomes these observations raise a number of important questions about the design of political institutions

changing eu agricultural policy discourses the discourse analysis of commissioner s speeches 2000 2007 this paper is a combination of political economy and critical discourse analysis of public texts about the common agricultural policy cap by concerned agents and the eu s agricultural commissioner in the period of november 2004 until october 2007 the analysis reveals how concerned agents articulated three competing discourses neomercantilism multifunctionality and neoliberalism it also shows that elements of the discourse of neoliberalism in the commissioner s speeches despite her use of different discourses for different audiences are becoming more and more important in order to facilitate further reforms and liberalisation of the cap

political biases despite external expert participation an empirical analysis of tax revenue forecasts in germany this paper explores whether and how political biases arise in an institutional setting where revenue forecasting is delegated to a body that includes experts from institutions neither part of nor controlled by the government the empirical analysis focuses on the performance of german federal tax revenue forecasts in the preparation of which the advice of external experts has a long tradition as an institutional safeguard while on average revenue forecasts turn out to be unbiased the results show that the government exerts an influence in particular optimism pessimism in the government s gdp forecast helps to explain why the revenue forecast turns out too optimistic pessimistic in addition governmental estimates of the revenue effects of tax law changes are found to contribute to forecast errors

opportunistic political cycles test in a young democracy setting this paper tests the theory of opportunistic cycles in a decade old democracy russia finds strong evidence of cycles and provides an explanation for why previous literature often found weaker evidence using regional monthly panel data we find that 1 the budget cycle is sizable and short lived public spending shifts toward direct monetary transfers to voters 2 the magnitude of the cycle decreases with democracy government transparency media freedom voter awareness and over time and 3 preelectoral manipulation increases incumbents chances for reelection the short length of the cycle explains underestimation of its size by previous literature because of low frequency data used in previous studies