•Survey on partisan politics for more than 100 OECD panel studies.•More than 100 panel data studies.•Elaborating on the research designs, the measurement of government ideology, and ...identification.•Leftwing and rightwing governments pursued different economic policies until the 1990s.•The size and scope of government was larger when leftwing governments were in power.•Partisan politics have not disappeared since the 1990s, but have certainly become less pronounced.
This paper describes the empirical evidence on partisan politics in OECD panel studies. I elaborate on the research designs, the measurement of government ideology and why the empirical studies did not derive causal effects. Discussing about 100 panel data studies, the results indicate that leftwing and rightwing governments pursued different economic policies until the 1990s: the size and scope of government was larger when leftwing governments were in power. Partisan politics have not disappeared since the 1990s, but have certainly become less pronounced. In particular, government ideology still seems to influence policies such as privatization and market deregulation. I discuss the consequences of declining electoral cohesion and what future research needs to explore.
I use new data on central and general governments for 23 OECD countries over the period 1960–2015 (unbalanced panel) to examine fiscal performance under minority governments. The results do not ...suggest that minority governments had higher fiscal deficits and public expenditure than majority governments—corroborating many previous studies. An innovation of my study is to examine fiscal policies of minority governments that enjoy organized support of opposition parties. The results do not show that minority governments that enjoy organized support of opposition parties increased public expenditure to a larger extent than majority governments. If anything, fiscal deficits were somewhat higher under single-party minority governments with organized support of opposition parties than under majority governments especially. Minority and majority governments had quite similar fiscal performance in OECD countries.
▶ Incumbents behaved opportunistically and increased the growth of public health expenditures before elections in OECD countries. ▶ Government ideology did not influence the growth of public health ...expenditures. ▶ Policy changed slightly in the aftermath of the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990.
This paper empirically evaluates whether government ideology and electoral motives influenced the growth of public health expenditures in 18 OECD countries over the 1971–2004 period. The results suggest that incumbents behaved opportunistically and increased the growth of public health expenditures in election years. Government ideology did not have an influence. These findings indicate (1) the importance of public health in policy debates before elections and (2) the political pressure towards re-organizing public health policy platforms especially in times of demographic change.
It is known that the US economy has grown faster during Democrat presidencies, but the Democrat-Republican presidential GDP growth gap cannot be attributed fully to policy differences, nor did ...Democrat presidents happen to benefit systematically from more favorable external shocks. The question why thus remains open. We postulate that, if the effect is real, a Democratic Party performance advantage should be present with respect to measures of political control other than just the presidency. We investigate partisan control of US state governments and show that national GDP grew faster when more states had Democrat governors and Democrat-majority state legislatures: a one-standard-deviation increase in the share of governorships controlled by the Democratic Party (unified Democrat state governments) is associated with a 0.57-percentage-point (0.77-percentage-point) increase in the real US national GDP growth rate. The effect appears to occur
on top of
the presidential D-R growth gap, suggesting that the Democrat growth advantage may be a more generalized phenomenon. To investigate whether the effects are explained by state-level policy differences, we adopt an encompassing measure of a state’s policy priorities—state policy liberalism (in the modern, popular sense rather than the classical sense). Nevertheless, our findings are not explained by state policy liberalism. That result echoes the puzzle at the national level that key national policy differences cannot account for the presidential growth gap.
Globalisation is blamed for many socioeconomic shortcomings. I discuss the consequences of globalisation by surveying the empirical globalisation literature. My focus is on the KOF indices of ...globalisation that have been used in more than 100 studies. Early studies using the KOF index reported correlations between globalisation and several outcome variables. Studies published more recently identify causal effects. The evidence shows that globalisation has spurred economic growth, promoted gender equality and improved human rights. Moreover, globalisation did not erode welfare state activities, did not have any significant effect on labour market interaction and hardly influenced market deregulation. It increased, however, within‐country income inequality. The consequences of globalisation thus turn out to be overall much more favourable than often conjectured in the public discourse.
This paper describes the influence of government ideology on economic policy-making in the United States. I review studies using data for the national, state and local levels and elaborate on checks ...and balances, especially divided government, measurement of government ideology and empirical strategies to identify causal effects. Many studies conclude that parties do matter in the United States. Democratic presidents generate, for example, higher rates of economic growth than Republican presidents, but these studies using data for the national level do not identify causal effects. Ideology-induced policies are prevalent at the state level: Democratic governors implement somewhat more expansionary and liberal policies than Republican governors. At the local level, government ideology hardly influences economic policy-making at all. How growing political polarization and demographic change will influence the effects of government ideology on economic policy-making will be an important issue for future research.
We ask whether voters rewarded conservative politicians who voted in favor of same-sex marriage. The evidence is based on a rollcall vote in the German national parliament (Bundestag) in June 2017. ...That vote had a profound influence on public discourse concerning the social-political platforms of the conservative parties in Germany, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party Christian Social Union (CSU). National elections took place in September 2017. We find that, when comparing the outcomes of the 2017 and 2013 national elections, the vote share of conservative politicians who voted in favor of same-sex marriage was around 1.29% points higher (about 0.33 standard deviations of the change in the candidate’s vote share) than the vote share of conservative politicians who did not vote in favor of same-sex marriage. Voters apparently were seeking policy outcomes other than economic ones when evaluating politicians’ performances in office.
We examine whether collective memories on the aid and reform programs chosen to handle the 2010 European debt crisis differ between citizens from borrower and lender countries. We use new ...international survey data for non-experts and experts in member countries of the euro area. The results show that non-experts from borrower and lender countries remember aspects of the programs in different manners; indicating biases for assessments of how the crisis outcomes are perceived in borrower and lender countries. Nation-serving biases may well explain that the 2010 European debt crisis has reduced the sense of belonging rather than bringing European citizens closer together.
We examine partisan bias in inflation expectations. Our dataset includes inflation expectations of the New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations over the period June 2013 to June 2018. The ...results show that inflation expectations were 0.46% points higher in Republican-dominated than in Democratic-dominated US states when Barack Obama was US president. Compared to inflation expectations in Democratic-dominated states, inflation expectations in Republican-dominated states declined by 0.73% points when Donald Trump became president. We employ the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method to disentangle the extent to which political ideology and other individual characteristics predict inflation expectations: around 25% of the total difference between inflation expectations in Democratic-dominated versus Republican-dominated states is based on how partisans respond to changes in the White House’s occupant (partisan bias). The results also corroborate the belief that voters’ misperceptions of economic conditions decline when the president belongs to the party that voters support.
We investigate whether politicians award intergovernmental grants to core supporters. Our new dataset contains information on discretionary project grants from a German state government to ...municipalities over the period 2008–2011. The results show that discretionary grants were awarded to municipalities with many core supporters of the incumbent state government. Discretionary grants per capita increased by about 1.4 percent when the vote share of the incumbent party in the state election increased by one percentage point. The fiscal capacity of a municipality does, by contrast, not predict the level of discretionary grants. We propose to trim discretionary project grants to the benefit of formula-based grants.
•Do politicians award intergovernmental grants to core supporters?•New dataset on discretionary grants from a German state to municipalities.•Discretionary grants were awarded to core-supporter municipalities.•The fiscal capacity does not predict the level of discretionary grants.•We propose to trim discretionary grants to the benefit of formula-based grants.
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