Broadening democracy by lowering the voting age is on the political agenda in many democratic societies. Previous suffrage extensions suggest that there are systematic differences between what parliaments decide and what voters want with respect to enfranchisement of new groups. This paper...

Universal suffrage is a core element for the functioning of democracy. However, with growing international mobility, an increasing share of the resident population has no suffrage. This paper analyzes the conditions under which domestic citizens are willing to extend suffrage to foreign...

Today's world is characterized by globalization and international mobility, yet most democratic participation rights are still tied to traditional forms of citizenship. As a consequence, non-citizen are the largest group without franchise. We examine how citizens evaluate and react to the...

The importance of culture for human behavior is well established in the economic literature. So far, most authors have emphasized the long persistence of cultural traits. In contrast, this paper deals with an important case of a rapid update of culturally rooted beliefs and behavior. Using a...

We analyze political representation of preferences of different income groups by matching referendum outcomes for low, middle, and high-income voters with individual legislators decisions on identical policy proposals. Results indicate that legislators more closely represent preferences of rich...

When moving from a plurality rule to a proportional system, members of national parliament have more incentives to diverge from the median voter's preferences. We match voting behavior concerning legislative proposals of Swiss members of parliament with real referenda outcomes on the same issues...

Public debts capitalize into property prices. This so far neglected fact has important consequences for the tax vs. debt choice. Property owners suffer more from the debt burden and, thus, have a stronger preference for tax financing of government spending than tenants. As a consequence of the...

Exploiting a natural voting experiment we identify female preferences for real policy issues in the electorate. We then analyze whether female or male politicians in parliament more closely correspond to female preferences. Holding constant revealed constituent preferences, there is generally no...

The role of electoral incentives vs. selection is ideally analyzed in a setting where the same legislators are selected to decide on policies under different electoral rules and where voter preferences on policies can be precisely measured. This is the first paper to look at such a situation....

A pandemic is not only a biological event and a public health disaster, but it also generates impacts that are worth understanding from a societal, historical, and cultural perspective.In this contribution, we argue that as the disease spreads, we are able to harness a valuable key resource,...