Using data from a unique survey of members of parliaments in France, Germany and Italy in 2018, we estimate the effects of three dimensions on EU and euro area fiscal reform preferences: nationality, political ideology, and populism. We predict and confirm that a German populist party on the...

We assess the influence of moneyed interests on legislative decisions. Our theory predicts that the vote outcome distribution and donation flows in a legislature feature a discontinuity at the approval threshold of bills if special interest groups are involved in vote buying. Testing the...

The standard assumption of exogenous policy preferences implies that parties set their positions according to their voters' preferences. We investigate the reverse effect: Are the electorates' policy preferences responsive to party positions? In a representative German survey, we inform...

While scholars and pundits alike have been pointing to a trend of increasing partisan affect in the US, there has been very little analysis as to how partisan affect impacts the decisions of voters. We hypothesize that affective polarization may effect voting both through an expressive channel,...

Uncertainty in election outcomes generates politically induced regulatory risk. For monopoly regulation, political parties' risk attitudes towards such risk depend on a fluctuation effect that hurts both parties and an output-expansion effect that benefits at least one party. Irrespective of the...

We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty program the Uruguayan PANES on political support for the government that implemented it. The program mainly consisted of a monthly cash transfer for a period of roughly two and half years. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a...

This paper provides the first in-depth investigation into the evolution of the wealth gap between CCP and non-CCP households in urban China from 1995 to 2017. We apply unconditional quantile regression (UQR) to analyze the variations in the premiums of party membership across the wealth...