This chapter uses happiness data to assess the quality of government. Our happiness data are drawn from the Gallup … generally over 1,500 national-level observations, we show that government delivery quality is significantly correlated with … national happiness, but democratic quality is not. We also analyze other quality of government indicators. Confidence in …

In a cross-section of countries, government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with social capital. We … document this correlation, and present a model explaining it. In the model, distrust creates public demand for regulation …, while regulation in turn discourages social capital accumulation, leading to multiple equilibria. A key implication of the …

expose different areas of the polity to controlled informational treatments about the valence and ideology of the incumbent … ideology. We find that both valence and ideological messages affect the first and second moments of the belief distribution …, but only campaigning on valence brings more votes to the incumbent. With respect to ideology, cross-learning occurs, as …

pairwise difference in ideology groups' connection patterns satisfy a condition known as the Chernoff-Hellinger divergence … categorize the ideological affiliations of the political committees, our estimates match the self reported ideology for 94.36% of …

confirms an economically significant demand for news slanted toward one's own political ideology. Firms respond strongly to …