We analyze the effect of constituents’ preferences on legislators’ decisions within a quasi-experimental setting: In the Swiss referendum process, constituents and legislators vote on policy proposals and thus reveal their preferences. We match roll call votes of all legislators on 118...

We match individual senators’ voting behavior on legislative proposals with 24 real referendum decisions on exactly the same issues with identical wording. This setting allows us to evaluate the median voter model’s quality with revealed constituents’ preferences. Results indicate a...

Various political institutions designed to control the government have been analyzed in the academic literature. However, an important institution has been neglected so far: independent auditing institutions with an extended mandate to audit the budget draft and individual policy proposals. We...

This book makes a rational and eloquent case for the closer integration of ethics and economics. It expands upon themes concerned with esteem, self-esteem, emotional bonding between agents, expressive concerns, and moral requirements.

This major Handbook addresses fiscal relations between different levels of government under the general rubric of ‘fiscal federalism’, providing a review of the latest literature as well as an invaluable guide for practitioners and policy makers seeking informed policy options. The...

Do politicians with a military background decide differently on military affairs? We investigate the informative institutional setting of the Swiss conscription army. Politicians who served in the military have a higher probability of accepting pro-military legislative proposals, even when...

We analyze political representation of preferences of different income groups by matching referendum outcomes for low, middle, and high-income voters with individual legislators' decisions on identical policy proposals. Results indicate that legislators more closely represent preferences of rich...

type="main" xml:id="ecpo12039-abs-0001" <p>Does the gender of political representatives affect the extent to which they adhere to the voter majority's preferences? By matching individual male and female representatives' votes on legislative proposals with real referendum outcomes on the same...</p>

This paper considers the European countries' output of eminent economists, i.e. the 160 most often cited academics in the period 1993-96. The influence of the size of the population and GNP is analyzed, and a ranking of the top-20 scholars is provided. The United Kingdom outperforms: it is...

Who is the best formula 1 driver? Until today it was impossible to answer this question because the observable performance of a driver depends both on his talent and the quality of his cars. In this paper we for the first time separate driver talent from car quality by econometrically analyzing...