This paper studies the effect of preregistration laws on government spending in the U.S. Preregistration allows young citizens to register before being eligible to vote and has been introduced in different states in different years. Employing a difference-in-differences regression design, we...

Did the Prussian three-class franchise, which politically over-represented the economic elite, affect policy-making? Combining MP-level political orientation, derived from all roll call votes in the Prussian parliament (1867-1903), with constituency characteristics, we analyze how local vote...

Political tenure (experience) is a double-edged sward: expediting government performance, while increasing political power with potentially harmful (corruption) ramifications. Within a voters-politician interaction framework, we unravel these two effects of political tenure on voters' welfare...

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...

Institutions are common predictors of voter turnout. Most research in this field focuses on cross-country comparisons of voting systems, like the impact of compulsory voting or registration systems. Fewer efforts have been devoted to understand the role of local institutions and their impact on...

We examine how political participation and political competition are shaped by two class-based extensions of the franchise in 20th-century India. Creating a new dataset of district level political outcomes between 1921 and 1957, we find that the partial franchise extension of 1935 resulted in...

Did the Prussian three-class franchise, which politically over-represented the economic elite, affect policy-making? Combining MP-level political orientation, derived from all roll call votes in the Prussian parliament (1867-1903), with constituency characteristics, we analyze how local vote...

The role of women in Western societies changed dramatically in the 20th century. We study how political empowerment affected women's emancipation as reflected in their life choices like marital decisions and labor market participation. The staggered introduction of female suffrage in Swiss...

Electoral reforms in 1918 nearly tripled the number of people eligible to vote in Ireland. Following the reforms - the largest franchise extensions in UK history - the previously obscure Sinn Féin party secured 73 of Ireland's 105 seats, an outcome that presaged a guerrilla war and ultimately...

We examine whether compulsory voting influences political participation as measured by voter turnout, invalid voting, political interest, confidence in parliament, and party membership. In Austria, some states temporarily introduced compulsory voting in national elections. We investigate border...