This paper develops a model where rational economic agents face uncertainty regarding the timing of elections and which party will emerge victorious should an election occur. This electoral uncertainty affects the macroeconomy, where the size and direction of the impacts are dependent on the...

Environmental outcomes can be shaped by underlying politics, we test whether pre-determined election timings affect these outcomes. To conduct our analysis, we combined elections data with remote sensing data on crop burning, forest fires, slash and burn activity, and tree cover for the period...

Political economists debate the existence of a political business cycle (PBCs), in which politicians stimulate the economy to improve their re-election chances, only to cause a post-election slowdown. For developing countries, scholars have found evidence of election-year policy tinkering. Yet...

This paper documents that surprise election outcomes - measured as deviations between realised vote shares and expected vote shares based on a newly constructed dataset of opinion polls and party and candidate vote shares close to election day - are causing non-negligible short-term contractions...

The future looked bright for Argentina in the early twentieth century. It had already achieved high levels of income per capita and was moving away from authoritarian government towards a more open democracy. Unfortunately, Argentina never finished the transition. The turning point occurred in...

The Impact of population mobility on provincial turnout rates in the 2011 Turkish parliamentary election is studied, controlling for the effects of other socio-economic, demographic, political and institutional factors. Consequences of migration both at destinations and origins are considered....

This paper explores the role of mass media in people’s perceptions of charismatic leaders, focusing on the case of Junichiro Koizumi, Prime Minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006. Using survey data collected immediately after Koizumi’s 2005 landslide electoral victory, this study empirically...

Framing effects and bounded rationality imply that election campaigns may be an important determinant of election outcomes. This paper uses a two-party setting and simple game theoretic models to analyse the strategic interaction between the parties' campaign decisions. Alternations of power...

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the 2014 General Elections in India and emerged as a single party with absolute majority, a result not witnessed since 1984. Not only did it win a majority of seats, it also managed to increase its vote share in almost all states between 2009 and 2014....

We review the efficacy of three approaches to forecasting elections: econometric models that project outcomes on the basis of the state of the economy; public opinion polls; and election betting (prediction markets). We assess the efficacy of each in light of the 2004 Australian election. This...