investigated by scholars, empirical findings are mixed at best. This is partly because of the non-random nature of election timing … exploiting a natural experiment in Japan, where the timing of both executive and legislative elections in municipalities is fixed …

economic decision-making – is important in politics. We show that politicians ‘gamble for re-election’ in the context of a … on MPs’ individual decisions in a de facto vote for the 2021 leadership election of Germany’s centre-right parties. MPs … are more likely to vote for a riskier candidate when faced with tougher re-election races in their constituency …

The literature on the rational PBC suggests that politicians systematically manipulate economic and fiscal conditions … before elections to increase their chances of eelection. Most tests of this theory look for evidence of pre-election …

When does an incentive exist for an incumbent to experiment with a risky reform policy in the presence of future … stops experimentation prematurely because an imminent election increases the potential to lose power if he undertakes risky …

conditions can voters benefits from improvements in the human capital of their politicians? We address this question in a model … requires the provision of electoral incentives. Third, the reward to politicians from the pursuit of alternative activities to …

politicians' types (model uncertainty) as well as each individual politician's type. Such model uncertainty allows political trust … uncertainty substantially increases the probability of politicians choosing the bad policy. Furthermore, it generates self …

When politicians have lower discount factors than voters, democratic elections cannot sufficiently motivate politicians … to undertake long-term socially beneficial projects. When politicians can offer incentive contracts which become … politicians’ time preferences. In the non-commitment case, incentive contracts may need to include a golden parachute clause …

We model an election in which parties nominate candidates with observable policy preferences prior to a campaign that …