Does information about rampant political corruption increase electoral participation and the support for challenger … parties? Democratic theory assumes that offering more information to voters will enhance electoral accountability. However, if … increased support for challengers and higher political participation. We provide experimental evidence that information about …

year preceding their re-election date. Moreover, disputes filed by the U.S. tend to target industries that are important to … swing states in the presidential election. To explain these regularities, we develop a theoretical model in which an … during the re-election campaign provides an advantage over the challenger, who cannot commit to file the dispute if elected …

The election mechanism has difficulties in selecting the most able candidates and deselecting less able ones. In a … simple model we show that the power of elections as a selection and incentive device can be improved by requiring higher vote …

voters. To do so, it proposes a model of elections where political ability is ex-ante unknown and investment in reforms is … unobservable. On the one hand, elections improve accountability and allow to keep well-performing incumbents. On the other …

This paper contrasts direct election with political appointment of regulators. When regulators are appointed … interests. Direct election of regulators strengthens the power of voters by ensuring the saliency of regulatory issues. Using …

sustainability. We show that the dual democratic mechanism – rejection/support rewards (RSRs) for politicians and elections – can …

certain issues. If their leaders cannot fully explain the issues, they can convey some information by endorsing one political …

’t around the 1998 and 2002 elections. This suggests contributions help shape policy on a firm-specific basis. Using a firm … contributing firms substantially increased their bank financing relative to a control group after each election, indicating that … this rent seeking over the two election cycles to be at least 0.2% of GDP per annum. …

', that is, expansionary monetary policy in election years. Third, we observe indications of `political budget cycles', or … `loose' fiscal policy prior to elections. Fourth, inflation exhibits a post-electoral jump, which could be explained by …

group. The group has non-verifiable insider information on the candidates' valence and, on the basis of this information … contributes to a candidate only if the insider information about that candidate is positive; (2) Although voters are fully …