Despite extensive research on voting, there is little evidence connecting turnout to tangible outcomes. Would election results and public policy be different if everyone voted? The adoption of compulsory voting in Australia provides a rare opportunity to address this question. First, I collect...

Social capital and community activity are thought to increase voter turnout, but reverse causation and omitted variables may bias the results of previous studies. We exploit saint’s day fiestas in Mexico as a natural experiment to test this causal relationship. Saint’s day fiestas provide...