We examine whether compulsory voting influences habit-formation in voting. In Austria, some states temporarily introduced compulsory voting in national elections. We exploit border municipalities across two states that differ in compulsory voting legislation using a difference-in-differences and...

This paper discusses the fundamental hypothesis of policy uniformity under centralized decision making, which underlies Oates' famous decentralization theorem. The theorem has, in more recent times, come under pressure owing to the prediction that local public goods are provided to minimum...

One votes from self-interest or from a sense of duty. Voting from self-interest requires there to be some chance, however small, that one's vote swings the outcome of an election from one political party to another. This paper is a discussion of three models of what that chance might be: the...

Why do some people go to the polling station, sometimes up to several times a year, while others always prefer to stay at home? This question has launched a wide theoretical debate in both economics and political science, but convincing empirical support for the different models proposed is...

A duty to vote may be many things. It may be no more than an obligation to cast one's ballot as self-interestedly or as altruistically as one pleases. It may a requirement to vote for the political party most likely to yield the highest social welfare. It may be a requirement to choose between...

One of the most consistent findings in studies of electoral behaviour is that individuals with higher education have a greater propensity to vote. The nature of this relationship is much debated, with US studies generally finding evidence of a causal relationship, while European studies...

In this paper, I analyze the voting outcomes of two very similar Swiss referendum ballots concerning the federal governmentś competency to levy income, capital and turnover taxes to find out how the enfranchisement of women influences public support for government spending. The first ballot...

Does the enfranchisement of women lead to an increase in public support for government spending? By utilizing a natural experiment from Switzerland, I test this hypothesis empirically. I analyze the voting outcomes of two very similar referendum ballots concerning the federal government's...