Kaum ein Thema im weiten Feld der Politischen Ökonomie ist so populär und zugleich so problembeladen wie das der politischen Konjunkturzyklen. Die theoretische Literatur sieht in der Wahlunsicherheit eine zentrale Einflussgröße. Vorhandene empirische Studien vernachlässigen diesen...

Men and women differ in political behaviour and leadership style. Does the gender of politicians affect the engagement in political budget cycles? We provide empirical evidence on gender differences in political budget cycles by exploiting mixed-gender races among mayoral candidates in Italian...

It is possible that the May 2022 Philippine national elections will need to be conducted under pandemic conditions, so the country must prepare at the earliest possible time. International experience suggests it is possible to hold successful elections even with the risks posed by COVID-19, and...

Political business cycle theories predict that the occurrence and outcome of elections affect the timing of business cycle turning points. Opportunistic political business cycle theory predicts that a contraction is more likely to end soon after an election than at other times. Rational partisan...

The purpose of this paper is to test for evidence of opportunistic "political business cycles" in a large sample of 18 OECD economies. Our results can be summarized as follows: 1) We find very little evidence of pre-electoral effects of economic outcomes, in particular, on GDP growth and...

Staggered difference-in-differences designs are pervasive in policy evaluations but little is known about the mechanisms of policy diffusion: How and why do such policies spread across jurisdictions? In this study, we highlight the role of elections in policy diffusion in settings where...