Partisan Asymmetries in Online Political Activity

We examine partisan differences in the behavior, communication patterns and social interactions of more than 18,000 politically-active Twitter users to produce evidence that points to changing levels of partisan engagement with the American online political landscape. Analysis of a network defined by the communication activity of these users in proximity to the 2010 midterm congressional elections reveals a highly segregated, well clustered partisan community structure. Using cluster membership as a high-fidelity (87% accuracy) proxy for political affiliation, we characterize a wide range of differences in the behavior, communication and social connectivity of left- and right-leaning Twitter users. We find that in contrast to the online political dynamics of the 2008 campaign, right-leaning Twitter users exhibit greater levels of political activity, a more tightly interconnected social structure, and a communication network topology that facilitates the rapid and broad dissemination of political information.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 6 table

Selling off the family silver: the politics of privatization in the OECD 1990-2000

The 1990s have witnessed unprecedented attempts at privatizing state owned enterprises in virtually all OECD democracies. This contribution analyzes the differences in the privatization proceeds raised by EU- and OECD-countries between 1990 and 2000. It turns out that privatizations are part of a process of economic liberalization in previously highly regulated economies as well as a reaction to the fiscal policy challenges imposed by European integration and the globalization of financial markets. In addition, institutional pluralism and union militancy yield significant and negative effects on pri-vatization proceeds. Partisan differences only emerge if economic problems are moderate, while intense economic, particularly fiscal problems foreclose differing partisan strategies. --

Partisan cycles and pre-electoral uncertainty

Rational partisan theory of political business cycles suggests differences in inflation under left-wing and right-wing governments. It also suggests temporary post-electoral booms after election of left-wing governments and temporary recessions after election of right-wing ones. However, the core hypothesis that post-electoral booms and recessions depend upon the degree of pre-electoral uncertainty has rarely been tested. Using pre-electoral polling data, we provide empirical evidence in favor of the hypothesis of the existence of rational partisan cycles. We also show that - in line with most previous empirical studies - there is little evidence for partisan cycles under adaptive expectations. --partisan theory,political business cycles

The Effect of Electoral Institutions on Tort Awards

Politicians are not neutral maximizers of the public good, they respond to incentives just like other individuals. We apply the same reasoning to those politicians in robes called judges. We argue that elected judges, particularly partisan elected judges, have an incentive to redistribute wealth from out-of-state defendants (non-voters) to instate plaintiffs (voters). The partisan electoral hypothesis is tested first using data on 75,000 tort awards from across the states. We control for differences in injuries, state incomes, poverty levels, selection effects and other factors that may cause awards to differ across the states. One difference which appears difficult to control for is that each state has its own body of tort law. We take advantage of a peculiar aspect of American Federalism to make this distinction. In cases involving citizens of different states, aptly called diversity of citizenship cases, Federal judges apply state law to decide disputes. Diversity of citizenship cases allow us to test whether differences in awards are caused by differences in electoral systems or differences in state law. The evidence from the cross-state regressions and from the diversity of citizenship cases, strongly supports the partisan election hypothesis. In cases involving out-of-state defendants and in-state plaintiffs the average award (conditional on winning) is 42% higher in partisan than in non-partisan states; approximately 2/3 rds of the larger award is due to a bias against out-of-state defendants and the remainder due to generally higher awards against businesses in partisan states.

The effects of partisan alignment on the allocation of intergovernmental transfers. Differences-in-differences estimates for Spain

In this paper we test the hypothesis that municipalities aligned with upper-tier grantor governments (i.e., controlled by the same party) will receive more grants than those that are unaligned. We use a rich Spanish database, which provides information on grants received by nearly 900 municipalities during the period 1993-2003 from three different upper-tier governments (i.e., Central, Regional and Upper-local). Since three elections were held at each tier during this period, we have enough within-municipality variation in partisan alignment to provide differences-in-differences estimates of the effects of alignment on the amount of grants coming from each source. Moreover, the fact that a municipality may simultaneously receive grants from aligned and unaligned grantors allows us to use a triple-differences estimator, which consists of estimating the effects of changing alignment status on the change in grants coming from the aligned grantors relative to the change in grants coming from the unaligned ones. The results suggest that partisan alignment has a sizeable positive effect on the amount of grants received by municipalities. Length: 33 pagesgrant allocation, alignment, electoral competition

Record Optimism About Personal Finances Among NH Residents But Deep Partisan Differences Remain 8/27/18

The percentage of New Hampshire adults who say they are better off financially than a year ago and anticipate being better off in a year are at or near all-time highs. More than two-thirds foresee good times in the next 12 months in the state economy. However, deep partisan differences remain: Republicans and Independents are much more optimistic than Democrats, who are more pessimistic about the long-term national outlook than during the Great Recession

Public Ignorance and Estate Tax Repeal: The Effect of Partisan Differences and Survey Incentives

We re-examine whether the broad support for repeal of the estate tax is a result of citizen ignorance. We find that increasing information about the estate tax or politics in general has very different effects on Republicans and Democrats. While high and low-information Republicans support estate tax repeal, Democratic support is higher among those who know less. However, most highly-informed people in both parties support repeal. We also show that standard surveys overestimate the extent of misinformation about the estate tax. Therefore, “ignorance” is not a compelling explanation of why so many people support estate tax repeal.estate tax; voter competence; survey research; experimental economics; public policy

Selling off the family silver: the politics of privatization in the OECD 1990-2000

The 1990s have witnessed unprecedented attempts at privatizing state owned enterprises in virtually all OECD democracies. This contribution analyzes the differences in the privatization proceeds raised by EU- and OECD-countries between 1990 and 2000. It turns out that privatizations are part of a process of economic liberalization in previously highly regulated economies as well as a reaction to the fiscal policy challenges imposed by European integration and the globalization of financial markets. In addition, institutional pluralism and union militancy yield significant and negative effects on pri-vatization proceeds. Partisan differences only emerge if economic problems are moderate, while intense economic, particularly fiscal problems foreclose differing partisan strategies

Do Political Parties Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities

We examine whether partisan political differences have important effects on policy outcomes at the local level using a new panel data set of mayoral elections in the United States. Applying a regression discontinuity design to deal with the endogeneity of the mayor's party, we find that party labels do not affect the size of government, the allocation of spending or crime rates, even though there is a large political advantage to incumbency in terms of the probability of winning the next election. The absence of a strong partisan impact on policy in American cities, which is in stark contrast to results at the state and federal levels of government, appears due to certain features of the urban environment associated with Tiebout sorting. In particular, there is a relatively high degree of household homogeneity at the local level that appears to provide the proper incentives for local politicians to be able to credibly commit to moderation and discourages strategic extremism.

Partisan cycles and pre-electoral uncertainty

Rational partisan theory of political business cycles suggests differences in inflation under left-wing and right-wing governments. It also suggests temporary post-electoral booms after election of left-wing governments and temporary recessions after election of right-wing ones. However, the core hypothesis that post-electoral booms and recessions depend upon the degree of pre-electoral uncertainty has rarely been tested. Using pre-electoral polling data, we provide empirical evidence in favor of the hypothesis of the existence of rational partisan cycles. We also show that - in line with most previous empirical studies - there is little evidence for partisan cycles under adaptive expectations