This paper exploits the international transmission of business cycles to examine the prevalence of attribution error in economic voting in a large panel of countries from 1990-2009. We find that voters, on average, exhibit a strong tendency to oust incumbent governments during an economic...

This paper tests several leading hypotheses on determinants of government expenditure. The purpose is to avoid omitted variables bias by testing the prominent theories in a comprehensive specification, to identify persistent puzzles for the current set of theories, and to explore those puzzles...

Razin, Sadka, and Swagel (2002) unveil a puzzling fact: the welfare state appears to be shrinking even as the dependency ratio rises. While they formulate an elegant political economy model to explain the coexistence of an aging population and declining transfers, the resolution of the puzzle...

This event study uses economic forecasts and opinion polls to measure the response of expectations to election surprise. Use of forecast data complements older work on partisan cycles by allowing a tighter link between election and response thereby mitigating concerns of endogeneity and omitted...

This paper exploits the international transmission of business cycles to examine the prevalence of attribution error in economic voting in a large panel of countries from 1990-2009. We find that voters, on average, exhibit a strong tendency to oust incumbent governments during an economic...