The dismal decade of 2010-19 recorded the slowest productivity growth of any decade in U.S. history, only 1.1 percent per year in the business sector. Yet the pandemic appears to have created a resurgence in productivity growth with a 4.1 percent rate achieved in the four quarters of 2020. This...

A key tenet of representative democracy is that politicians' discourse and policies should follow voters' preferences. In the median voter theorem, this outcome emerges as candidates strategically adjust their platform to get closer to their opponent. Despite its importance in political economy,...

We ask how childhood environment shapes political behavior. We measure young voters' participation and party affiliation in nationally comprehensive voter files and reconstruct their childhood location histories based on their parents' addresses. We compare outcomes of individuals who moved...

Recent social movements stand out by their spontaneous nature and lack of stable leadership, raising doubts on their ability to generate political change. This article provides systematic evidence on the effects of protests on public opinion and political attitudes. Drawing on a database...

In recent years, voter ID laws and convenience voting have generated heated partisan debates. To shed light on these policy issues, we survey the recent evidence on the institutional determinants and effects of voter turnout and broaden the perspective beyond the most debated rules. We begin by...