voter turnout and fiscal policy abstract in this paper we examine whether shocks in voting costs can impact elected representatives quality defined as the capacity to fund projects at the lowest cost using data on french municipalities and local variations in seasonal infections incidence as a shock on voting cost we estimate that higher incidence lowers voter turnout increases subsidies obtained by a municipality decreases harmful financial decisions and increases the municipality s investment in infrastructure we present a model where these predictions would hold in particular for municipalities with a high base level of turnout

employment based analysis an alternative methodology for project evaluation in developing regions with an application to agriculture in yucatan abstract governmental and non governmental organizations ngos in developing regions increasingly recognize the links between sustainable development and environmental protection for this reason environmental protection efforts in these regions increasingly include sustainable community development projects unlike most traditional large scale development projects the objective of such projects is to give local inhabitants sustainable economic alternatives to environmentally degrading activities rather than to maximize the flow of discounted net benefits the traditional method of project evaluation cost benefit analysis cba does not provide useful information regarding the meeting of such objectives the purpose of this paper is to introduce discuss and provide a brief example of employment based analysis eba as a means of project evaluation in developing countries in contrast to the cba approach of measuring a discounted flow of net benefits from economic options eba measures the number of jobs or population support provided by alternative activities using a given resource typically land over a given period of time eba better incorporates sustainability into project analysis by avoiding the use of discounting directly linking project success with environmental sustainability and penalizing economic activities that involve income inequality and income capital flight eba is particularly illuminating when applied to small scale sustainable development projects that are part of environmental conservation programs after a brief description of the methodology the motivation strengths and weaknesses of eba are discussed a simple application of eba and cba to alternative agricultural activities traditional farming improved farming and cattle ranching in yucatan mexico is then provided this analysis indicates that while cattle ranching has a higher benefit cost ratio both traditional and improved farming provide more population support and greater contributions to sustainability this example serves to highlight the potential benefits to using eba instead of or in conjunction with cba in developing regions along with highlighting some of the strengths and challenges of eba

the structure of citizen attitudes and the european political space a common concern regarding the viability of institutional reform of the eu is whether european citizens constitute a political community that facilitates democratic governance one important aspect of this concern is whether public perceptions are structured so as to ease or impede political discourse across europe to investigate this question the authors examine whether the eu mass public organizes its attitudes toward eu policy issues in systematic and meaningful ways specifically they examine whether eu citizens attitudes across a broad range of policies decided at the eu level are structured consistently with several prominent models of the eu policy space using eurobarometer data the authors show that citizens policy positions on eu issues are systematically organized along a single dimension that is different from domestic left right

imposing a turnout threshold in referendums we construct a model of a yes no referendum for which the outcome is valid only if the voter turnout rate is greater than a predetermined value with such a turnout threshold three types of equilibria exist in each of which the voters who favor the status quo either go to the polls abstain or use mixed strategies we show that abstaining is more likely to realize the status quo than going to the polls if the threshold is sufficiently high whereas one of the mixed strategy equilibria is least likely to realize the status quo for any level of threshold

do voters vote ideologically abstract in this paper we address the following question to what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically i e they always vote for the candidate who is ideologically closest to them testable or falsifiable we show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically is irrefutable regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election on the other hand using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically is potentially falsifiable and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested

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

media competition and electoral politics we build a framework linking competition in the media market to political participation media outlets report on the ability of candidates running for office and compete for audience through their choice of slant citizens consume news only if the expected utility of being informed about candidates ability is sufficiently large for their group collectively our results can reconcile seemingly contradictory empirical evidence showing that entry in the media market can either increase or decrease turnout while information pushes up independent turnout partisans adjust their turnout to the ability of their preferred candidate and on average they vote less when informed

smuggling illegal versus legal goods across the u s mexico border a structural equations model approach author affiliation andreas buehn faculty of business and economics technische universitaet dresden chair for economics esp monetary economics 01062 dresden germany e mail andreas buehn tu dresden de corresponding author stefan eichler faculty of business and economics technische universitaet dresden chair for economics esp monetary economics 01062 dresden germany e mail stefan eichler tu dresden de acknowledgment we thank gordon hanson for providing the data on mexican wages and u s border enforcement we are also grateful to alexander karmann sunshine moore the editor and two anonymous referees for their many useful comments and suggestions on this article we also benefited from comments of participants of the lunchtime seminar at technische universitaet dresden all remaining errors are the authors responsibility 1 introductionin this article we study smuggling across the u s mexico border from 1975 to 2004 we contribute to the literature in the following ways first we treat smuggling as an unobservable variable using a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic model we capture the latent nature of smuggling and identify its determinants and long run trends 1 secondly we argue that the analysis of smuggling has been incomplete so far existing studies merely analyze the causes of trade misinvoicing illegal trade or smuggling of legal goods which represent only a fraction of total illegal trade to improve the understanding of illegal trade we distinguish between smuggling illegal goods versus smuggling legal goods the types of smuggling differ with respect to the goods being smuggled the agents involved in smuggling the smuggling incentive and the intensity of law enforcement trade misinvoicing occurs when entrepreneurs misreport the value of legal exports or imports to evade tariffs and taxes and is commonly considered a peccadillo smugglers usually bribe officials or are fined a fee smuggling illegal freight such as illicit drugs and illegal immigrants however often involves dangerous criminals who commit serious offenses and who if caught face severe punishment as a result their incentive to smuggle is related to the intensity of law enforcement rather than tax or tariff evasion studying the u s mexican case is appropriate as most illegal drugs and immigrants enter the united states via the mexican border the large income disparity between the two nations may explain the high u s demand for illegal goods which relatively poor mexicans are willing to meet despite the risks involved we examine whether the clinton and bush administrations succeeded in reducing smuggling across the border through intensified border enforcement using a simple microeconomic framework we determine which microeconomic incentives affect the two types of smuggling the hypotheses are then tested in a mimic model that studies the impact of observed causes the microeconomic incentives to smuggle on the latent phenomenon smuggling as indicated by observable macroeconomic variables applying the benchmarking procedure promoted by dell anno and schneider 2006 and dell anno 2007 we calculate a time series for each type of smuggling we find that smuggling in illegal goods from mexico to the united states decreases when mexican labor market conditions improve and u s border enforcement is intensified the mexican recessions in 1982 1983 and 1995 led to large temporary increases in smuggling to 113 billion and 87 billion respectively smuggling in illegal goods decreased overall however from 116 billion in 1984 to 27 billion in 2004 this reduction can be attributed to stricter u s border enforcement and better mexican job prospects smuggling legal goods is driven by real exchange rates and tariff and tax evasion export misinvoicing fluctuated between underinvoicing values of 0

social incentives and voter turnout evidence from the swiss mail ballot system this paper uses a natural experiment to document the impact of social pressure on voting behavior the main hypothesis is that social pressure creates incentives to vote for the purpose of being seen at the voting act this incentive is particularly high in small and close knit communities empirically i analyze the effect of postal voting on voter participation in switzerland optional postal voting decreased the voting costs but simultaneously removed the social pressure to vote in spite of the large reduction in voting costs the effect on aggregate turnout was small however voter participation was more negatively affected in the smaller communities this lends support to the view that social incentives played a role for certain people s voting decisions jel h0 z13

the influence of the number of statewide legislative referendums on voter participation in the us this empirical study seeks to broaden the interpretation of the rational voter model so as to include the potential effects of the number of statewide legislative referendums this study tests the hypothesis that greater numbers of such referendums increase voter turnout because they elevate the expected gross benefits egb of voting by empowering voters while not significantly increasing the expected gross costs egc of voting using state level data for the 2006 general election in the us as well as the 2004 us presidential election and after allowing for a variety of economic and demographic factors this study finds compelling evidence that the number of statewide legislative referendums does significantly increase voter turnout

tax limits and local elections this paper exploits variation in tax limits across over 7000 italian municipalities during the 2000s to investigate their impact on voter turnout and local election outcomes the empirical analysis is based on a panel data estimator on about 14 000 municipal elections during the 2001 2010 decade and on a quasi experimental approach focusing on the fiscal limitation treatment of municipalities local income surcharge freeze in the years 2001 and 2006 where the trajectory of local turnout in the concurrent general elections is used as the counterfactual the evidence suggests that tax limits provoke a a modest fall in voter turnout in mayoral elections b a mild decrease in the number of mayoral candidates c a sizeable widening of elected mayors win margins and some improvement in mayors valence proxies the evidence is compatible with the hypothesis that the imposition of tax limits lowers the ideological stakes of local elections favors party line crossing and promotes vote convergence based on the valence of candidates

using country balance sheet data to predict debt rescheduling in this study we utilise data relating to the balance sheets of developing countries e g short term debt in a logit model of debt rescheduling we find that such variables are theoretically and empirically superior to those conventionally used such as debt export ratios the study is based upon an annual sample of 27 countries for 1977 1981 and a six monthly data set involving 59 countries from 1977 1985

low cost decisions as a challenge to public choice in the last 25 years we have seen a great deal of success in the scientific research programme called public choice one of the main aims of this programme is to develop positive theories of political processes like theories of voting behaviour of government behaviour of bureaucratic behaviour and of interest group behaviour just to mention the most important theory sets in this area 1 the methodological core of this research programme consists in the economic model of behaviour the homo oeconomicus or rational evaluating maximising man remm as he is sometimes called see e g brunner 1987 it is assumed that individuals subjectively evaluate different action possibilities according to the perceived costs and benefits and that they choose that action which promises the highest expected net benefit during recent decades this standard methodological approach in economics has in a kind of imperialism been applied to decisions largely outside the realm of traditional economics thus new sub disciplines have been created for example the economic analysis of law the economic analysis of the family or the economics of arts to name just a few public choice is the application of this approach to political public sector decisions and in this area it is a successful competitor of traditional political science which follows more or less a public interest approach i e assuming that political decision makers do not follow their own personal interests but have strong enough incentives to pursue the interests of society or at least of the social group to which they belong

who wants the euro and why economic explanations of public attitudes towards a single european currency the paper looks at whether public attitudes towards a single european currency held in the european union member states reflect a rational evaluation of the involved benefits and costs it finds that they do the looser monetary and fiscal policy was in the past and the more time a country spent in the ems the more citizens welcome the euro attitudes towards the euro do not seem consistent with attitudes towards a european central bank however upon closer scrutiny opponents of a single currency appear to be less consistent and less rational in their responses than proponents

multicandidate elections aggregate uncertainty in the laboratory 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 assumption the absence of aggregate uncertainty about the distribution of preferences in the electorate in this paper we propose direct empirical evidence of the effects of aggregate uncertainty in multicandidate elections adopting a theory based experimental approach we explore whether aggregate uncertainty indeed favors the emergence of non duverger s law equilibria in plurality elections our experimental results support the main theoretical predictions

concurrent elections and turnout causal estimates from a german quasi experiment conventional wisdom suggests that scheduling elections concurrently with other contests increases turnout however causal empirical evidence in favor of this claim is scarce at best moreover it is a priori unclear whether theory would predict a higher turnout if two low office elections are combined instead of a combination of a low office election and a major electoral race using a quasi experiment and a difference in differences estimation approach at the german municipality level i provide evidence that combining two low office elections significantly increases turnout

voting and turning out for monetary integration the case of the french referendum on the maastricht treaty this article analyses the voting and abstention patterns in french departments in the 1992 referendum on the maastricht treaty in light of the potential impact of monetary union we observe that departmental characteristics implying either greater benefits or lower costs from monetary union are significantly correlated with the approval rate this supports the view that the voting behaviour of individual agents depended on their self interest the impact of economic characteristics on the abstention rate is less clear indeed the variable that is most significantly correlated with abstention in the referendum is average abstention in other elections

voting for change calculation community and euro referendums referendum votes on adoption of the euro in denmark 2000 and sweden 2003 provide unprecedented natural experiments through which to study the political economy of money using exit polling data and multinomial logit statistical models that allow us to separate preferences for the euro from preferences for the european union eu we test economic calculation and political community as determinants of individual level preferences over adoption of the euro we find that calculation operates most clearly where as in sweden the choice of a fixed versus a floating exchange rate regime is at stake while community exerts strong effects across the two cases we would like to thank krister andersson jerry cohen robert fishman jennifer fitzgerald jeff frieden eric helleiner jacques hymans lars jonung kate mcnamara jennifer wolak and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and helga sverrisdottir for outstanding research assistance we are grateful to jens wagner of the danish data archive and torbja rn berglund of the swedish social science dataservice for providing the data used in this note neither these individuals nor their respective agencies are responsible for the interpretations contained herein

who wants political integration evidence from the swedish eu membership referendum abstract the regional voting pattern of the swedish european union eu membership referendum is analyzed to determine voters preferences over two fiscal regimes an autonomous sweden or sweden as part of the eu a major difference between these regimes is that autonomy gives greater national discretion to handle risk sharing and redistribution between regions i find that inhabitants of rich and stable regions with high levels of schooling small receipts of central government transfers and trade relations displaying comparative advantages towards the eu were relatively positive to membership a plausible interpretation is thus that voters in safe and rich regions voted in favor of dismantling the swedish transfer system

referendum design quorum rules and turnout in this article we focus on the consequences of quorum requirements for turnout in referendums we use a rational choice decision theoretic voting model to demonstrate that participation quorums change the incentives some electors face inducing those who oppose changes in the status quo and expect to be in the minority to abstain as a result paradoxically participation quorums decrease electoral participation we test our model s predictions using data for all referendums held in current european union countries from 1970 until 2007 and show that the existence of a participation quorums increases abstention by more than ten percentage points

when costly voting is beneficial abstract we present a costly voting model in which each voter has a private valuation for their preferred outcome of a vote when there is a zero cost to voting all voters vote and hence all values are counted equally regardless of how high they may be by having a cost to voting only those with high enough values would choose to incur this cost we show that by adding this cost welfare may be enhanced even when the cost of voting is wasteful such an effect occurs when there is both a large enough density of voters with low values and the expected value of voters is high enough

more dollars than sense refining our knowledge of development finance using aiddata summary in this introductory essay to the special issue we introduce a new dataset of foreign assistance aiddata that covers more bilateral and multilateral donors and more types of aid than existing datasets while also improving project level information about the purposes and activities funded by aid we utilize that data to provide a brief overview of important trends in foreign aid contributors to this special issue draw on aiddata as well as other sources to analyze aid transparency new donors not previously described or analyzed aid allocation and aid effectiveness our recurring theme in this introductory essay is that aiddata and these initial academic projects refine rather than revolutionize our understanding of aid the database has added significant numbers of new projects dollar amounts donors and details about those projects though there is much more yet to add we worry that aid debates have been driven by too little information and that many claims are based on limited or very poor evidence rectifying these problems will not be instantaneous refining knowledge takes a lot of time and hard work the common feature of the papers in this special issue is their careful attention to nuance and detail in spite of what some recent authors have claimed aid is neither a simple solution nor a sufficient cause of most problems in developing countries its motivations distribution and effects are complex and shifting capturing this complexity requires detailed data careful thought and sophisticated methods that allow scholars to make conditional causal and descriptive inferences 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

project analysis and the world bank the world bank has been the single most important international institution to promote the practice of professional project appraisal over the past five decades although at times conventional project lending has been a relatively small share of total lending by the world bank key members of the bank staff have continued to be active in improving the understanding of what creates success or failure in the performance of development projects their influence on governments and practitioners in this field has been significant and widespread this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

leadership and conflict we model the choice of leaders of groups within society where leaders influence both the mode of interaction between groups either peaceful compromise or costly conflict and the outcome of these interactions group members may choose leaders strategically instrumentally or they may choose leaders expressively we characterize the equilibria of the instrumental choice model and also argue that leadership elections may overemphasise the role of expressive considerations in the choice of leader and that this may result in increased conflict between groups

electoral motives and the subnational allocation of foreign aid in sub saharan africa abstract this paper examines how electoral motives shape the subnational allocation of foreign aid commitments by employing a newly constructed geocoded dataset for 14 sub saharan african countries over the period 2000 2012 our results provide strong evidence of a core voter strategy african leaders diverting chinese aid towards regions with a high concentration of political supporters however no evidence of such preferential treatment is found for world bank aid suggesting that aid from traditional donors is less vulnerable to political manipulation our results also reveal that checks and balances in recipient countries are an important mediating factor of aid misallocation while copartisan regions receive larger amounts of chinese aid in environments with weak checks and balances these effects disappear when stronger checks and balances are in place this paper also offers case study evidence from ghana exploiting the 2009 regime change in ghana and using a difference in differences framework we provide further support of copartisan targeting and confirm that chinese aid is more manipulable than world bank aid in this respect

a passion for voting we model expressive voting as a dynamic game with informed and ignorant voters a voter has selective memory for actions and he is aware of it we find a unique symmetric equilibrium with ignorant voting public signal in favor of one particular alternative creates the bandwagon and underdog effects when the signal is sufficiently strong the majority outcome is biased this is a possible reason for persistence of public policies

length of compulsory education and voter turnout evidence from a staged reform this study estimates the impact of education on voter turnout the identification relies on a reform which increased the length of compulsory schooling in norway from seven to nine years the impact is measured both at the individual and the municipality level both sets of analysis suggest that additional education has no effect on voter turnout the impact of education on various measures of civic outcomes is also estimated of these only the likelihood of signing a petition is found to be positively affected by education

voter participation and strategic uncertainty the paradox of not voting is examined in a model where voters have uncertainty about the preferences and costs of other voters in game theoretic models of voter participation under complete information equilibrium outcomes can have substantial turnout even when voting costs are relatively high in contrast when uncertainty about preferences and costs is present only voters with negligible or negative net voting costs participate when the electorate is large

law enforcement and political participation italy 1861 65 abstract does tougher law enforcement positively affect political participation this paper addresses this question which hinges upon the causal impact of formal institutions on informal ones by using a historical event from 19th century italy this event was the pica law which was introduced in 1863 to fight a surge of criminal violence in southern italy and to ensure a safer environment for wealthy people the only ones allowed to vote at that time our main finding obtained using a spatial regression discontinuity technique in a diff in diffs framework is that voter turnout greatly increased in those areas where the pica law was applied compared with bordering and otherwise similar areas this result is confirmed by a number of robustness checks and placebo exercises and turns out to be persistent over time

the advantage of tying one s hands ems discipline and central bank credibility abstract it is often argued that the ems is an effective disciplinary device for inflation prone countries in europe since it forces the respective policy makers to pursue more restrictive monetary policies than they would otherwise it is not clear however why these countries should submit themselves to such discipline this paper argues that to answer this question appropriately one must consider that ems membership brings potentially large credibility gains policy makers in inflation prone countries the reason is that not only it attaches an extra penalty to inflation in terms of real appreciation but makes the public aware that the policy maker is faced with such penalty and thus helps to overcome the inefficiency stemming from the public s mistrust of the authorities

abstention in elections with asymmetric information and diverse preferences we analyze a model of a two candidate election with costless voting in which voters have asymmetric information and diverse preferences we demonstrate that a strictly positive fraction of the electorate will abstain and that nevertheless elections effectively aggregate voters private information using examples we show that more informed voters are more likely to vote than their less informed counterparts increasing the fraction of the electorate that is informed however may lead to higher levels of abstention we conclude by showing that a biased distribution of information can lead to a biased voting population but does not lead to biased outcomes

the home grown presidency empirical evidence on localism in presidential voting 1972 2000 this builds upon the conceptual framework of lewis beck and rice american journal of political science 27 548 56 1983 in combination with the empirical design of kjar and laband public choice 112 143 50 2002 to investigate home grown ness in us presidential elections from 1972 2000 it found that ceteris paribus home state vote shares for us presidential election winners are 5 19 15 11 percentage points higher due to the home grown ness effect in the eight presidential elections analysed this study confirms two aspects of prior work first the estimate of a home grown ness effect in presidential elections of 5 19 percentage points on average supports the 4 percentage point average found by lewis beck and rice 1983 second that support for the winning president monotonically increases as moves are made away from the opponent s home territory confirms the cascading dummy variable series approach developed by kjar and laband 2002

the impact of closeness on electoral participation exploiting the italian double ballot system we investigate whether the degree of political competition affects electoral turnout by using italian municipal election data from 1993 to 2011 relying on elections held using a double ballot system we apply an instrumental variable technique exploiting the actual closeness between the two leading candidates in the first round as an instrument for closeness in the second round the use of this strategy to estimate the impact of closeness on turnout is new to the literature controlling for municipal fixed effects and candidates characteristics we find that expected closeness significantly increases turnout thus supporting the idea that the expected benefits of voting increase in tighter political races the estimated effect is much larger than that found when measuring closeness with ex post electoral results suggesting quite a relevant endogeneity bias in previous studies

a deeper look at the proportionality turnout nexus evidence that turnout is higher under proportional representation pr than in majoritarian elections is overwhelming yet previous research has largely failed to explain why one line of argument maintains that higher turnout under pr is a by product of larger party systems however a larger number of parties has been demonstrated to depress turnout alternatively it is argued that majoritarian electoral systems tend to produce safe seats and that voters have little incentive to turn out there thus uneven turnout over electoral districts due to variable intensities of local competition is made responsible for the lower overall turnout empirical evidence on this conjecture is scant this article scrutinizes the relationship between electoral rules competition and turnout with district level data from 31 national elections results from a heteroscedastic model indicate that lower net turnout in majoritarian systems is indeed a consequence of uneven turnout over districts due to variable levels of lo

a structural model of turnout and voting in multiple elections this paper develops a unified approach to study participation and voting in multiple elections the theoretical setting combines an uncertain voter model of turnout with a spatial model of voting behavior we apply our framework to the study of turnout and voting in u s presidential and congressional elections we structurally estimate the model using individual level data for the 2000 elections and quantify the relationships between observed individual characteristics and unobserved citizens ideological preferences information and civic duty we then use the estimated model which replicates the patterns of abstention selective abstention split ticket voting and straight ticket voting observed in the data to assess the effects of policies that may increase citizens information and sense of civic duty on their turnout and voting behavior

who supports the ecb evidence from eurobarometer survey data this paper contributes empirically to the long debated issue of the legitimacy of the european central bank ecb with regard to european polities using micro level data from the eurobarometer survey we shed light on the socio demographic determinants of public opinion support for the ecb we find that people with higher level of education and income and centre to right wing political orientation tend to support the ecb as well as people with optimistic expectations on the economic situation by contrast the unemployed tend to distrust the ecb the policy relevance of such results is important for ecb s communication strategy with the general public

modeling country default risk as a latent variable a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic approach we study the determinants of country default risk by applying a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic model this accounts for the fact that country default risk is an unobservable variable whereas existing regression based approaches typically use only one of several possible country default risk indicators as the dependent variable the mimic model enables us to consider several indicators at once the simultaneous consideration of sovereign yield spreads and standard and poor s p ratings may help to improve the identification of the latent country default risk our results confirm most of the literature s main findings regarding important determinants of country default risk refute others and provide new evidence to controversial questions

choosing not to choose on the link between information and abstention abstract we use a dataset that allows us to circumvent a number of estimation difficulties that have plagued previous studies of the relationship between information and abstention our results show that information is a major determinant of abstention

economic theories of voter turnout i the voting paradox why would the rational individual bother to spend time and resources to become well informed go to the polls on the election day and maybe even wait in a queue why would a rational voter vote downs 1957 ii the paradox of indeterminacy if they vote why do they care who they vote for kirchgassner 1992 kirchgassner and pommerehne 1993 iii the paradox of ignorance to the extent that information is costly the rational voter must be ignorant about relevant aspects of his decision making downs 1957

europeans and the european community the dynamics of public support for european integration europeans evaluate the european community ec according to its economic performance political salience and role in international relations during the last two decades their measured attitudes toward european integration warmed especially when inflation rates fell as the ec share of the country s trade expanded when ec elections and referenda increased attention to the community and to some extend during periods when east west relations were relaxed europeans did not vary their support according to their countries shares of the brussels budget thus notwithstanding denmark s 1992 rejection of the maastricht treaty and the end of the cold war recent ec reforms that increase monetary stability intra european trade and political attention are all likely to maintain or increase citizen support for the ec these findings result from a model that blends comparative political economy with international relations in one of the first applications of pooled cross sectional and time series analysis to the comparative study of public opinion

rational choice theory and the paradox of not voting at least since downs s 1957 seminal work an economic theory of democracy rational choice theorists have appreciated the paradox of not voting in a large election the probability that an individual vote might change the election outcome is vanishingly small if each person only votes for the purpose of influencing the election outcome then even a small cost to vote like a minor schedule conflict or mildly bad weather should dissuade anyone from voting yet it seems that many people will put up with long lines daunting registration requirements and even the threat of physical violence or arrest in order to vote given the central place of voting within political economy the lack of an adequate rational choice model of large elections with costly voting presents an obvious problem for the most part theorists have bypassed the turnout problem either by eliminating voters as strategic actors or by assuming that the decision to vote is independent of other strategic choices the problem with the first approach is that the empirical literature on voting behavior provides considerable evidence of apparently strategic behavior in primary elections there is evidence that voters condition their vote choice on the viability of candidates abramson aldrich paolino and rohde 1992 in a seminal and comprehensive study cox 1997 shows that voting patterns and election outcomes are broadly consistent with patterns of behavior predicted by strategic voting models for example under plurality rule in which the candidate with the most votes wins the election

an evolutionary analysis of turnout with conformist citizens abstract we propose an evolutionary analysis of a voting game where citizens have a preference for conformism that adds to the instrumental preference for the electoral outcome multiple equilibria arise and some generate high turnout simulations of best response dynamics show that high turnout is asymptotically stable if conformism matters but its likelihood depends on the reference group for conformism high turnout is more likely when voters care about their own group s choice as this better overrides the free rider problem of voting games comparative statics on the voting cost distribution and the groups composition are also done

savings investment and international capital flows abstract the high correlation between national savings and domestic investment rateshas been interpreted as evidence that capital is not internationally mobile this paper surveys the theory and evidence on the relationship between savings and investment in a sample of 23 oecd countries a positive correlation between savings and investment rates is found in both the short and long runs however a wide variety of models generate such co movements in savings and investment in response to exogenous disturbances even under conditions of complete financial markets thus the savings investment correlation provides little evidence on the question of international capital mobility

follow the leader theory and evidence on political participation using state by state voting data for u s presidential elections the authors observe that voter turnout is a positive function of predicted closeness to explain the strategic component of political participation they develop a follow the leader model political leaders expend effort according to their chance of being pivotal which depends on the expected closeness of the race at both state and national levels and how voters respond to their effort structural estimation supports this model for example a 1 percent increase in the predicted closeness at the state level stimulates leaders efforts which increases turnout by 0 34 percent

political and monetary institutions and public financial policies in the industrial countries institutions and policies vittorio grilli donato masciandaro and guido tabellini why do countries as similar as the industrialized oecd countries go through such different experience in terms of public deficits and debts or in terms of inflation the answer cannot come from macroeconomic policy responses to different disturbances nor from the principles of optimal taxation but rather from politics this article focuses on the role that particular institutions exert in providing constraints and incentives which shape the actions of policymakers the electoral process and political traditions affect the ability of governments to deal with deficits and mounting debts what seems to matter most it is found is the effect of the durability of governments governments with short horizons act myopically and never quite tackle the hard choices such governments typically exist in countries with an electoral system favouring many small political parties central bank independence promotes low inflation with no apparent costs in terms of real economic performance irrespective of the political institutions in fact there is no link between monetary and fiscal discipline these findings carry powerful implications for countries facing high indebtedness or stubborn inflation but also for the construction of the european economic and monetary union

de centralization and voter turnout theory and evidence from german municipalities a vast academic literature illustrates that voter turnout is affected by the institutional design of elections e g compulsory voting electoral system postal or sunday voting in this article we exploit a simple downsian theoretical framework to argue that the institutional framework of public good provision and in particular the distribution of political and administrative competences across government levels likewise affects voters turnout decisions by influencing the expected net benefit of voting empirically we exploit the institutional variation across german municipalities to test this proposition and find supportive evidence

the swing voter s curse the authors analyze two candidate elections in which some voters are uncertain about the realization of a state variable that affects the utility of all voters they demonstrate the existence of a swing voter s curse less informed indifferent voters strictly prefer to abstain rather than vote for either candidate even when voting is costless the swing voter s curse leads to the equilibrium result that a substantial fraction of the electorate will abstain even though all abstainers strictly prefer voting for one candidate over voting for another copyright 1996 by american economic association

political rents and voter information in search equilibrium abstract political parties committed to grab rents may run for election and even win if citizens are uninformed but how is the political equilibrium affected if citizens can mitigate this information problem through costly information search we propose a political equilibrium theory with endogenous information search and turnout we show that i the political equilibrium generates political uncertainty characterized by a distribution of rent policies i i the expectation of this rent distribution is inversely u shaped in the information search cost i i i turnout is lower and rents are higher the more proportional is the electoral system

identification and estimation of preference distributions when voters are ideological this article studies the non parametric identification and estimation of voters preferences when voters are ideological we establish that voter preference distributions and other parameters of interest can be identified from aggregate electoral data we also show that these objects can be consistently estimated and illustrate our analysis by performing an actual estimation using data from the 1999 european parliament elections

an options based approach to forecast competing bids evidence for canadian takeover battles during takeover battles a tender offer provides a call option right to the target s shareholders it guarantees the offered price but maintains the chance of a higher offer we present an options based approach to estimate the probability and expected value of higher competing takeover bids using target stock price data analysing canadian takeover battles in the period 1997 to 2007 we find that during the 5 trading days prior to the occurrence of an increased takeover bid the estimated probability of a higher bid exceeds 80 on average and the expected value of a potential competing bid almost matches the realized value

invested interests the politics of national economic policies in a world of global finance capital moves more rapidly across national borders now than it has in at least fifty years and perhaps in history this article examines the effects of capital mobility on different groups in national societies and on the politics of economic policymaking it begins by emphasizing that while financial markets are highly integrated within the developed world many investments are still quite specific with respect to firm sector or location it then argues that contemporary levels of international capital mobility have a differential impact on socioeconomic groups over the long run increased capital mobility tends to favor owners of capital over other groups in the shorter run owners and workers in specific sectors in capital exporting countries bear much of the burden of adjusting to increased capital mobility these patterns can be expected to lead to political divisions about whether or not to encourage or increase international capital market integration the article then demonstrates that capital mobility also affects the politics of other economic policies most centrally it shifts debate toward the exchange rate as an intermediate or ultimate policy instrument in this context it tends to pit groups that favor exchange rate stability against groups that are more concerned about national monetary policy autonomy and therefore less concerned about exchange rate stability similarly it tends to drive a wedge between groups that favor an appreciated exchange rate and groups that favor a depreciated one these divisions have important implications for such economic policies as european monetary and currency union the dollar yen exchange rate and international macroeconomic policy coordination