We consider the long-lived slant towards Berlusconi in political information on Italian television (TV). We exploit a shock to the slanted exposure of viewers: idiosyncratic deadlines to switch to digital TV from 2008 to 2012, which increased the number of free view channels tenfold. The switch...

Can biased information persuade in the long run? Political information on Italian TV has been biased towards Berlusconi's party since 1994. We exploit a shock to viewers' exposure to Berlusconi bias: idiosyncratic deadlines to switch to digital TV from 2008 to 2012. Digital TV increased the...

In this paper, we empirically assess how economic sanctions imposed by the UN and the US affect the target states’ GDP growth. Our sample includes 68 countries and covers the period 1976–2012. We find, first, that sanctions imposed by the UN have a statistically and economically significant...

In response to the recent sovereign debt crisis, the member states of the European Union agreed to enact balanced budget rules in their national legislation. However, little is known about the public’s opinion of balanced budget rules. To fill this gap, we conducted a survey among 2,000...

Employing data from a representative survey conducted in Germany, this paper examines public preferences for the size and composition of government expenditure. We focus on public attitudes toward taxes, public debt incurrence, and public spending in six different policy areas. Our findings...

This paper investigates whether the socioeconomic status of the head of government helps explain fiscal performance. Applying sociological research that attributes differences in people's ways of thinking and acting to their relative standing within society, we test whether the social status of...

We examine determinants of the composition of public expenditure in the German Laender (states) over the period 1993–2008, as the Laender exhibit a high degree of institutional and political homogeneity and are endowed with extensive fiscal competences. Our prime contribution is an...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2013. The survey addresses important topics in fiscal policy, including: 1) public preferences on the...

The poor state of public finances in many countries has led to calls for fiscal consolidation. In practice, implementing concrete consolidation measures appears to meet with public resistance, suggesting that the success of consolidation efforts strongly depends on the popularity of the chosen...

In this paper, we empirically assess how economic sanctions imposed by the UN and the US affect the target states' GDP growth. Our sample includes 68 countries and covers the period 1976-2012. We find that sanctions imposed by the UN have a statistically and economically significant influence on...