Economic models of democratic decision-making tend to assume that voters have preferences and politicians adjust their platforms to conform to voter preferences. However, the direction of causation (mostly) goes the other way. Political elites offer policy platforms and voters adopt the policy...

We investigate how an explicit blank vote option “None of the above” (NOTA) on the ballot paper affects voting behavior and election results in political elections where non-establishment candidates are on the ballot. We report evidence from two online field experiments conducted in the...

We study the opportunistic political budget cycle in the London Metropolitan Boroughs between 1902 and 1937 under two different suffrage regimes: taxpayer suffrage (1902-1914) and universal suffrage (1921-1937). We argue and find supporting evidence that the political budget cycle operates...