We study theoretically and empirically whether natural resource windfalls affect political regimes. We document the following regularities. Natural resource windfalls have no effect on the political system when they occur in democracies. However, windfalls have significant political consequences...

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...

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 literature on electoral cycles has developed in two distinct phases. The first one considered the existence of non-rational (naive) voters whereas the second one considered fully rational voters. In our perspective, an intermediate approach is more interesting, i.e. one that considers...

In 2005, the Democratic National Committee adopted the 50-state strategy in lieu of the strategy of focusing solely on battleground states. The rationale given for this move is that campaign expenditures are durable outlays that impact both current and future campaigns. This paper investigates...

We show that a large electorate of ignorant voters can succeed in establishing high levels of electoral accountability. In our model an incumbent politician is confronted with a large number of voters who receive very noisy signals about her performance. We find that the accountability problem...

This paper considers the implications of an important cognitive bias in information processing, confirmation bias, in a political agency setting. In the baseline two-period case where only the politician’s actions are observable before the election, we show that when voters have this bias, it...

We present a model of political selection in which voters elect a president from a set of candidates. We assume that some of the candidates are benevolent and that all voters prefer a benevolent president, i.e. a president who serves the public interest. Yet, political selection may fail in our...

Using data from an experiment by Forsythe, Myerson, Rietz, and Weber (1993), designed for a different purpose, we test the "standard theory" that players have preferences only over their own mentary payoffs and that play will be in (evolutionary stable) equilibrium. In the experiment each...

The effect of ethnic violence on electoral results provides useful insights into voter behaviour in democratic societies. Religious riots have claimed more than 14,000 lives in India since 1950. We study the effect of Hindu-Muslim riots on election results in India. We combine data on riots,...