Tag Archives: Politics

Local Elections in America Project: “a digital archive of past election results”

Posted on June 21, 2015 by ozidar

Here is their website. From a quick glance, it seems to have election data since 1970 for most if not all elected offices ranging from local to federal offices. Awesome. HT:@BrendanNyhan

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Market-based Lobbying: Evidence from Advertising Spending in Italy

Posted on May 2, 2014 by ozidar

From Stefano DellaVigna, Ruben Durante, Brian Knight, Eliana La Ferrara: An extensive literature has studied lobbying by special interest groups. We analyze a novel lobbying channel: lobbying businessmen-politicians through business proxies. When a politician controls a business, firms attempting to curry … Continue reading →

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Unintentional Gerrymandering: Political Geography and Electoral Bias in Legislatures

Posted on October 1, 2013 by ozidar

Here’s some very interesting research on gerrymandering, especially relevant for pundits and journalists who have been citing gerrymandering as one of the main causes of today’s gridlock and government shutdown. Roughly speaking, Jowei Chen and Jonathan Rodden show that having a computer … Continue reading →

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Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence from the Tea Part Movement

Posted on September 25, 2013 by ozidar

From Andreas Madestam, Daniel Shoag, Stan Veuger, and David Yanagizawa-Drott:  Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? This paper studies the effect of the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose … Continue reading →

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Can Lower Taxes Be Bought? The Role of Business Rent-Seeking

Posted on June 20, 2013 by ozidar

Robert Chirinko and Dan Wilson have a paper in which they estimate the economic value of $1 corporate donation in terms of lower corporate tax liabilities and find it is worth roughly $6.65. Abstract: The standard model of strategic tax competition assumes that … Continue reading →

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Why Politicians Love Getting on TV: Words Rewarded Just as Much as Results

Posted on June 18, 2013 by ozidar

Justin Grimmer, Solomon Messing and Sean Westwood have an interesting paper that shows that voters give similar credit for members of Congress who (1) intend to request funds, (2) request funds, and (3) secure funds. The idea is that members … Continue reading →

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Valuing The Vote:
 Evidence from the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Posted on May 18, 2013 by ozidar

From Elizabeth Cascio and Ebonya Washington: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) has been called one of the most effective pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history, having generated dramatic increases in black voter registration across the South. We show … Continue reading →

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Why Keith Hennessey’s Debt Ceiling Plan Doesn’t Make Sense

Posted on January 17, 2013 by ozidar

Keith Hennessey proposed a debt ceiling plan for republicans, which wisely begins by saying not increasing the debt ceiling makes little sense. However, he goes on to say the following: Congressional Republicans offer Mr. Obama a choice. He can have … Continue reading →

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Delong on the Lack of a Political Reaction to the Second Gilded Age

Posted on December 29, 2012 by ozidar

Brad Delong: Ray Ginger put it in two absolutely brilliant books–Altgeld’s America and The Age of Excess–even the Republicans thought that they wanted to live in Abe Lincoln’s America, where when you are young you split wood into fence rails and go … Continue reading →

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Lessons from a Half Century of Federal Individual Income Tax Changes

Posted on December 3, 2012 by ozidar

This chart shows how income tax liabilities have changed each year for the five income quintiles over the past half century.  Here are a few things to notice: We love cutting income taxes. Almost all of the changes are tax … Continue reading →

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