This paper examines the evolution of public policies before the scheduled political elections based on the government responses to the Covid pandemic. The results of an event study in a sample of countries that experienced political elections during the first year of the pandemic suggest that...

We investigate a case of political favoritism. Some members of the Bavarian parliament hired relatives as office employees who were paid using taxpayers' money. The family scandal was a hot issue in the German media because of the upcoming state and federal elections. We examine whether being...

This paper analyzes the impact of economic performance on voter turnout. We estimate an economic turnout model in which local economic variables are included in quadratic form, so that non-linear effects can be taken into account. We use panel datasets covering municipalities, from 1979 to 2005,...

This paper analyses the impact of economic conditions on Portuguese municipal electoral outcomes. We use two extensive datasets to estimate an economic voting model which accounts for the possibility that different levels of government have different levels of responsibility for economic...

This paper analyses the impact of economic conditions on Portuguese local electoral outcomes. We use two extensive datasets to estimate an economic voting model which accounts for the possibility that different levels of government have different levels of responsibility for economic outcomes...

Politicians regularly underperform in their job duties due to the obscurity of their actions to constituents. In this study, we investigate the effects of a local NGO's initiative to improve the transparency of politicians' performance in a multi-year field experiment involving 408 politicians...

Using thirty years of municipal elections in France, we show that election results affect the share of immigrants across municipalities. In municipalities where a left- instead of right-wing mayor has been elected, the share of immigrants in the population grows faster by 1.5 p.p. within six...

Using thirty years of municipal elections in France, we show that election results affect the share of immigrants across municipalities. In municipalities where a left- instead of right-wing mayor has been elected, the share of immigrants in the population grows faster by 1.5 p.p. within six...