Theoretical models of government formation in political science usually assume that the head of state is non-strategic. In this paper, we analyse the power of an agenda setter who chooses the order in which players are recognised to form coalitions in simple games. We characterise those sets of...

A country's form of government has important economic and political consequences, but the determinants that lead countries to choose either parliamentary or presidential systems are largely unexplored. This paper studies this choice by analyzing the factors that make countries switch from...

On the 1st of July, Germany will take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. Normally, holding the chair of the council is not something that is considered to be a power position, especially since the Prime Minister of the given country is not chairing the European...

Populism at the country level is at an all-time high, with more than 25% of nations currently governed by populists. How do economies perform under populist leaders? We build a new cross-country database identifying 50 populist presidents and prime ministers 1900-2018. We find that the economic...

Henrik Enderlein, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, befürchtet, dass die Erwartungen, die mit der Wahl Barack Obamas zum neuen US-Präsidenten verknüpft sind, zu hoch seien. Obama erbe mit seinem Amtsantritt eine kaum zu bewältigende ökonomische Herausforderung, so dass die...

Santa-Clara and Valkanov (2003) document that excess returns on the stock market are puzzlingly higher under Democratic presidential administrations. We examine whether differences in economic fundamentals can account for this presidential puzzle. We find that the role for fundamentals crucially...

Even after four decades of research it remains unclear, whether presidential popularity depends on the state of the economy. While about half of all studies for the United States find a significant effect of unemployment and inflation on presidential popularity, the others do not. Additional...

This paper develops a model of the relationship between the age of a dictator and economic growth. In the model a dictator must spread the resources of the economy over his reign but faces mortality and political risk. The model shows that if the time horizon of the dictator decreases, either...