Campaign expenditures are not effective in increasing candidates’ vote shares if voters do not respond to the advertisement when they believe that campaign expenditures are financed with “tainted money.” In this situation, limiting contributions may reduce the number of policy favors that...

Considerable concern has been expressed in recent years about declines in voter participation rates in the United States and in several other major democratic countries. Some feel low participation rates introduce a “class bias” into the political process and thereby worsen the outcomes from...

This paper examines the long run education and labor market effects from early-life exposure to the Greek 1941-42 famine. Given the short duration of the famine, we can separately identify the famine effects for cohorts exposed in utero, during infancy and at one year of age. We find that...

States have soft budget constraints when they can expect a bailout by the federal government in the event of a financial crisis. This gives rise to incentives for unsound state fiscal policy. We test whether states with softer budget constraints have higher debt and deficits, receive more...

Substantial academic interest and public policy debate centers on campaign finance reform. Campaign resources can provide benefits to constituencies if candidates use them to fund the distribution of useful information. On the other hand, voters can potentially be harmed if candidates trade...

This paper examines the importance of electoral rules for legislators’ behavior. The German electoral system includes a mechanism which assigns whether legislators are elected under the “first-past-the-post” (FPTP), or the proportional representation (PR) electoral rule. Using this...

Substantial public policy debate centers on campaign finance reform. Campaign resources can provide benefits to constituencies when used to fund the distribution of information, but voters can be harmed if candidates trade policy favors to special interests in exchange for contributions....

We document the effectiveness of robo calls for increasing voter participation despite most published research finding little or no effect of automated calls. We establish this finding in a large field experiment in a targeted, partisan get-out-the-vote campaign. Our experimental design includes...

Several theories have been offered to explain the recent declines in violent crime rates in the United States. We hypothesize that technological innovations, which improved information transmission and shortened the response time between an aggravated assault incident and treatment, reduced the...

We analyze the choice politicians face when seeking votes from groups that lobby for sales tax rate decreases or from groups that lobby for certain tax exemptions, given the constraint that politician wants to raise a certain amount of revenue. Using the application of sales taxes and sales tax...