Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über den Themenkomplex "wirtschaftspolitische Governance". Dieser Begriff dient in Volkswirtschaftslehre und benachbarten Sozialwissenschaften als Ober-/Sammelbegriff unter dem üblicherweise alle Aktivitäten subsumiert werden, die wirtschaftspolitische...

Previous studies used general government data to examine whether national governments' electoral motives and ideology influenced budget composition in OECD countries. General government data includes, however, the state and local level. Using new data for general and central government over the...

Why do politicians sometimes pursue policies with uncertain outcomes? We present a model in which politicians are unable to pre-commit to a status quo policy, and where investors and voters face a conflict over the division of output. Politicians may deviate from the status quo and pursue risky...

Previous studies used general government data to examine whether national governments' electoral motives and ideology influenced budget composition in OECD countries. General government data includes, however, the state and local level. Using new data for general and central government over the...

We examine whether voters rewarded conservative politicians who were voting in favor of same-sex marriage. Data is based on a roll-call vote in the German national parliament (Bundestag) in June 2017. This roll-call vote drastically influenced the public discourse about the social political...

How does competition affect the entry and selection of politicians? I use data on U.S. Congressional primary and general elections for the years 1998-2014 to study this question. I measure quality using previous legislative experience and the novel "identity match" quantifying how well...

Can direct democracy provisions improve welfare over pure representative democracy? This paper studies how such provisions affect politicians' incentives and selection. While direct democracy allows citizens to correct politicians' mistakes, it also reduces the incentives of elected...

This paper formulates a simple mathematical framework for the selection of an optimum "relative unanimity” collective decision rule. The approach is first to identify the benefits of moving from a rule of simple majority towards a rule of full unanimity. Then, the costs of moving from simple...

We analyze political selection in a closed list proportional system where parties have strong gate-keeping power, which they use as an instrument to pursue votes. Parties face a trade-off between selecting loyal candidates or experts, who are highly valued by the voters and thus increase the...