Economic Policy Voting and Incumbency: Unemployment in Western Europe

The economic voting literature has been dominated by the incumbency-oriented hypothesis, where voters reward or punish government at the ballot box according to economic performance. The alternative, policy-oriented hypothesis, where voters favor parties closest to their issue position, has been neglected in this literature. We explore policy voting with respect to an archetypal economic policy issue – unemployment. Voters who favor lower unemployment should tend to vote for left parties, since they “own” the issue. Examining a large time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) pool of Western European nations, we find some evidence for economic policy voting. However, it exists in a form conditioned by incumbency. According to varied tests, left incumbents actually experience a net electoral cost, if the unemployment rate climbs under their regime. Incumbency, then, serves to break any natural economic policy advantage that might accrue to the left due to the unemployment issue.

Macroeconomics, economic crisis and electoral outcomes: A national European pool

An abundance of comparative survey research argues the presence of economic voting as an individual force in European elections, thereby refuting a possible ecological fallacy. But the hypothesis of economic voting at the aggregate level, with macroeconomics influencing overall electoral outcomes, seems less sure. Indeed, there might be a micrological fallacy at work, with the supposed individual economic vote effect not adding up to a national electoral effect after all. Certainly that would account for the spotty evidence linking macroeconomics and national election outcomes. We examine the possibility of a micrological fallacy through rigorous analysis of a large time-series cross-sectional dataset of European nations. From these results, it becomes clear that the macroeconomy strongly moves national election outcomes, with hard times punishing governing parties, and good times rewarding them. Further, this economy-election connection appears asymmetric, altering under economic crisis. Indeed, we show that economic crisis, defined as negative growth, has much greater electoral effects than positive economic growth. Hard times clearly make governments more accountable to their electorates.

"A joy for ever"; (and its price in the market): being the substance (with additions) of two lectures on the political economy of art, delivered at Manchester, July 10th and 13th, 1857.

Includes index.

Notes on political economy (1826)

Mode of access: Internet.

The U.S. role in a changing world political economy : major issues for the 96th Congress : a compendium of papers /

Mode of access: Internet.

The political economy of war,

pt. 1. Policy and economics of war.--pt. 2. On war debts.--pt. 3. On the great war of 1914-15.

Political economy /

Prologue.--book I. Production and consumption.--book II. Exchange.--book III. Distribution.--book IV. Public finance.--Epilogue: pt. I Scope and method of economic science. pt. II. History of economic science.--Appendix.--Index.

The true theory of rent in opposition to Mr. Ricardo and others : being an exposition of fallacies on rent, tithes, &c., in the form of a review of Mr. Mill's Elements of political economy /

Preface signed: T. Perronet Thompson.

Principles of political economy,

Bibliographical footnotes.

The true political economy of Ireland, or, Rack-rent the one great cause of all her evils : with its remedy, being a speech delivered at a meeting of the farming and laboring classes, at Inch, in the Queen's County /

Goldsmiths'-Kress library of economic literature, no. 28981.

No more free beer tomorrow? Economic policy and outcomes in Australia and New Zealand since 1984

There are no controlled experiments in macroeconomic policy, nor in systematic programs of microeconomic reform, but a comparison between New Zealand and Australia over the period since 1984 provides as close an approach to such an experiment as is ever likely to be possible. From quite similar starting points the two countries pursued liberal reform programs that differed sharply, mainly as a result of exogenous differences in constitutional structures and the personal styles of the central actors. Australia followed a more cautious, piecemeal, consensus-based approach, whereas New Zealand, in contrast, adopted a radical, rapid, 'purist' platform. The NZ reform package was generally seen by contemporary commentators as representing a 'textbook' model for best practice reform. However, Australia since 1984 has performed much better than New Zealand, whose per capita GDP growth indeed ranked at or near the bottom of the OECD. In this paper, we assess a variety of explanations for the divergences in policies and outcomes.

The political economy of Poland's transition:New Firms and Reform Governments, J. Jackson, J. Klich, K. Poznanska. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2005), (xvi+277 pp., £45/$80, ISBN 0-521-83895-9)

Book review

A gazdaságpolitikai döntéshozatal nemzetek fölötti centralizációja és a közösségi gazdaságtan. Az adóverseny elméletének néhány tanulsága (Supranational centralization of economic policy-making and community economics: some lessons from the theory of tax competition)

Mennyiben képes jelenleg a közösségi gazdaságtan az adópolitikák nemzetek fölötti centralizációjára vonatkozó politikai döntések megalapozására? Válaszunk röviden az lesz, hogy a közösségi gazdaságtan főárama - noha számos releváns gazdasági és politikai tényező hatását sikeresen elemzi - jelenleg nem kínál kielégítőnek tekinthető döntési kritériumokat a döntéshozók számára. Ennek oka, hogy központi szerepet játszik benne egy, a modellek szempontjából exogén és a közgazdasági elmélettől idegen tényező: a kormányzatok jóindulatára, pontosabban annak mértékére vonatkozó premissza. Tanulmányunk az adóverseny fiskális föderalista elméletét vizsgálja, és megpróbál általánosabb szinten is a közszektor gazdaságelméletének jelenlegi állapotára, valamint továbbfejlesztésére vonatkozó tanulságokat levonni. A kiutat az elméleti zsákutcából a kormányzati működés és döntéshozatal, valamint a kívánatos gazdaságpolitikai döntések elméletének összekapcsolása jelentheti. Erre megtörténtek az első kísérletek, de a szisztematikus és átfogó elemzés egyelőre várat magára. / === / How far can community economics provide a basis for political decision-making on supranational centralization of taxation policies? The short answer here will be that although the mainstream of community economics succeeds in analysing many relevant economic and political factors, it fails at present to provide satisfactory criteria for decisionmakers. This is because a central role is played in it by a factor exogenous to the models and alien to economic theory: the premise of the measure of goodwill from governments. The study examines the fiscal federalist theory of tax competition. It tries to draw conclusions, on a more general level, about the present state of the economic theory of the public sector and future development of it. The way out of the theoretical blind alley could be to link the theories of government operation and decision-making and of desirable economic-policy decision-making. The first attempts to do so have been made, but a systematic and comprehensive analysis is still awaited.

A magyar gazdaságpolitika dilemmái = Dilemmas of the Hungarian economic policy

A cikk a magyar gazdaságpolitika dilemmáit helyezi szélesebb közgazdasági perspektívába, a stabilizációs programcsomag intézkedéseiből kiindulva. Elemzi azokat az összefüggéseket, amelyek a posztszocialista átmenet három súlyosan nyomasztó feladata: a külső egyensúly és belső pénzügyi egyensúly javítása, valamint a tartós növekedés feltételeinek megteremtése között állnak fenn. A jelen pillanatban a külső egyensúly jól érzékelhető javítása a legsürgősebb; a rövid távú intézkedéseknek elsősorban ennek a feladatnak a szolgálatában kell állniuk. Sajnálatos, hogy az azonnali intézkedések csomagja mindeddig nem ágyazódott be egy meggyőző közép­ és hosszú távú reformtervbe. A cikk végül a gazdasági stabilizáció politikai feltételeit elemzi, és a társadalmi összefogás és önmérséklet jelentőségét hangsúlyozza. / === / The article examines the dilemmas of the Hungarian economic policy, placing it into a wider economic perspective and setting out from the measures prescribed stabilization program. The author analyses the interrelations among the three gravely distressing tasks of the post­socialist transition: improvement of the external balances and domestic financial equilibrium, and creation of the conditions of sustainable growth. For the moment, a well perceptible improvement of the external equilibrium is the most urgent task; the short­term measures have to serve first of all this purpose. Unfortunately, the package of short­term measures has not yet been embedded into a convincing medium and long­term reform program. Finally, the article analyses the political conditions of economic stabilization and emphasesizes the importance of joining the social forces and of self restraint.