Aggregate Economic Variables and Votes for Congress: A Rejoinder

1975 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1266-1269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Arcelus ◽  
Allan H. Meltzer

Our interest in the effect of aggregate economic variables on election results began in 1970 following a conversation with an administration official that we have reported elsewhere. We doubted both the implicit theory of voting behavior and the ability of the administration to achieve rates of inflation and unemployment even close to the ranges mentioned. We take this opportunity to note that the unemployment rate was higher and the inflation rate substantially higher than the adviser's estimate, but President Nixon was reelected.At the time, the principal econometric evidence of the effects of aggregate economic variables was a study by Kramer. Kramer found evidence of an effect of real income, but despite (or perhaps because of) the flaws in his procedure, he found no evidence of an effect of inflation or unemployment. Furthermore, then and now, most of the reported evidence pertains to congressional not presidential elections and to votes for congressmen, not seats in the Congress.

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
Pankaj Sinha ◽  
Aastha Sharma Aastha Sharma ◽  
Harsh Vardhan Singh

This paper investigates the factors responsible for predicting 2012 U.S. Presidential election. Though contemporary discussions on Presidential election mention that unemployment rate will be a deciding factor in this election, it is found that unemployment rate is not significant for predicting the forthcoming Presidential election. Except GDP growth rate, various other economic factors like interest rate, inflation, public debt, change in oil and gold prices, budget deficit/surplus and exchange rate are also not significant for predicting the U.S. Presidential election outcome. Lewis-Beck and Rice (1982) proposed Gallup rating, obtained in June of the election year, as a significant indicator for forecasting the Presidential election. However, the present study finds that even though there exists a relationship between June Gallup rating and incumbent vote share in the Presidential election, the Gallup rating cannot be used as the sole indicator of the Presidential elections. Various other non-economic factors like scandals linked to the incumbent President and the performance of the two parties in the midterm elections are found to be significant. We study the influence of the above economic and non-economic variables on voting behavior in U.S. Presidential elections and develop a suitable regression model for predicting the 2012 U.S. Presidential election. The emergence of new non-economic factors reflects the changing dynamics of U.S. Presidential election outcomes. The proposed model forecasts that the Democrat candidate Mr. Barack Obama is likely to get a vote percentage between 51.818 % - 54.239 %, with 95% confidence interval.


1946 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 528-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick W. Williams

In continuation of a previous study, the rôle of some nationality groups in the last three presidential elections has been investigated. Whereas the previous study was based upon political behavior by counties within eight states, the present work is based upon political behavior by wards within four cities. The cities were chosen because they contained large proportions of certain nationality groups, and because in these cities it was possible to order census tract material from the 1940 census by wards. Only four cities (Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh) were examined because of limitations of time and expense. New York City is not included because of appreciable changes in the boundaries of Assembly districts between elections.In order that a group be amenable to our procedure, it was necessary that there be proportionately great enough concentrations within wards so that the actual voting behavior of the group could possibly induce a shift in the election results. In this respect, it must be remembered that the proportion of foreign-born is usually about one-third of the total stock of any given group in the localities. Of the fourteen nationality groups studied here, therefore, not every one could be tested by our method.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
L. H. M. Jacintho ◽  
T. P. da Silva ◽  
A. R. S. Parmezan ◽  
G. E. A. P. A. Batista

Since 1989, the first year of the democratic presidential election after a long period of a dictatorship regime, Brazil conducted eight presidential elections. Short and long-term shifts of power and two impeachment processes marked such a period. This instability is a research case in electoral studies, mainly regarding the understanding of citizens' voting behavior. Comprehending patterns in the population behavior can give us insight into phenomena and processes that affect democratic political decisions. In light of this, our paper analyses Brazilian electoral data at the municipal level from 1998 to 2018 using a simple data science pipeline, which consists of five steps: (i) data selection; (ii) data preprocessing; (iii) identification of spatial patterns, in which we seek to understand the role of space in the election results employing spatial auto-correlation techniques; (iv) identification of temporal patterns, where we investigate similar trends of votes over the years applying a hierarchical clustering method; and (v) evaluation of results. We study the presidential elections focusing on the right and left-wing parties most relevant for the period: the Brazilian Social Democracy Party~(PSDB) and the Workers' Party~(PT). We also analyse the congressman election data regarding parties ideologically to the right and left in the political spectrum. Through the obtained results, we found the existence of spatial dependence in every electoral year investigated. Moreover, despite the changes in the political-economic context over the years, neighboring cities seem to present similar voting behavior trends.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Henrique Mantovani Jacintho ◽  
Tiago Pinho Da Silva ◽  
Antonio Rafael Sabino Parmezan ◽  
Gustavo Enrique de Almeida Prado Alves Batista

Since 1989, the first year of the democratic presidential election after a long period of a dictatorship regime, Brazil conducted eight presidential elections. This period was marked by short and long-term shifts of power and two impeachment processes. Such instability is a case of study in electoral studies, e.g., the study of the population voting behavior. Understanding patterns in the population behavior can give us insight into factors and influences that affect the quality of democratic political decisions. In light of this, our paper focuses on analyzing the Brazilian presidential election voting behavior across the years and the Brazilian territory. Following a data science pipeline, we divided the analysis process into five steps: (i) data selection; (ii) data preprocessing; (iii) identification of spatial patterns, in which we seek to understand the role of space in the election results using spatial autocorrelation techniques; (iv) identification of temporal patterns, where we investigate similar trends of votes over the years using a hierarchical clustering method; and (v) evaluation of the results. It is noteworthy that the data in this work represents the election results at the municipal level, from 1994 to 2018, of the two most relevant parties of this period: the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and the Workers’ Party (PT). Through the results obtained, we found the existence of spatial dependence in every electoral year investigated. Moreover, despite the changes in the political-economic context over the years, neighboring cities seem to present similar voting behavior trends.


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-72
Author(s):  
Luky Sandra Amalia ◽  
Aisah Putri Budiatri ◽  
Mouliza KD. Sweinstani ◽  
Atika Nur Kusumaningtyas ◽  
Esty Ekawati

In the 2019 election, the proportion of women elected to Indonesia’s People’s Representative Assembly ( Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, DPR) increased significantly to almost 21 per cent. In this article, we ask whether an institutional innovation – the introduction of simultaneous presidential and legislative elections – contributed to this change. We examine the election results, demonstrating that, overall, women candidates did particularly well in provinces where the presidential candidate nominated by their party won a majority of the vote. Having established quantitatively a connection between results of the presidential elections and outcomes for women legislative candidates, we turn to our qualitative findings to seek a mechanism explaining this outcome. We argue that the simultaneous elections helped women candidates by easing their access to voters who supported one of the presidential candidates, but who were undecided on the legislative election. Rather than imposing additional burdens on female candidates, simultaneous elections assisted them.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thushel Jayaweera ◽  
Matthijs Bal ◽  
Katharina Chudzikowski ◽  
Simon de Jong

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the macroeconomic factors that may moderate the psychological contract breach (PCB) and work outcome relationship.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted a meta-analysis based on data from 134 studies.FindingsThe study revealed that the inflation rate and the unemployment rate of a country moderated the association among employee PCB, job performance and turnover.Research limitations/implicationsThe availability of more detailed macroeconomic data against the PCB and outcome relationship for other countries and studies examining the impact of micro-economic data for PCB and outcome relationship would provide a better understanding of the context.Practical implicationsThe authors believe that the results highlight the importance of the national economy since it impacts individual outcomes following a breach.Social implicationsEmployment policies to capture the impact of macroeconomic circumstances as discussed.Originality/valueOne of the valuable contributions made by this paper is that the authors capture the current accumulative knowledge regarding the breach and performance and breach and turnover relationship. Second, the study examines how the inflation rate and unemployment rate could moderate the association between PCB and job performance and turnover.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-92
Author(s):  
Sara Muhammadullah ◽  
Amena Urooj ◽  
Faridoon Khan

The study investigates the query of structural break or unit root considering four macroeconomic indicators; unemployment rate, interest rate, GDP growth, and inflation rate of Pakistan. The previous studies create ambiguity regarding the stationarity and non-stationarity of these variables. We employ Zivot & Andrews (1992) unit root test and Step Indicator Saturation (SIS) method for multiple break detection in mean. GDP growth and inflation rate are stationary at level whereas unit root tests fail to reject the null hypothesis of the unemployment rate and interest rate at level. However, Zivot and Andrew unit root test with a single endogenous break indicates that the unemployment rate and interest rate are stationary at level with a single endogenous break. On the other hand, the SIS method reveals that the series are stationary with multiple structural breaks. It is inferred that it is inappropriate to take the first difference of the unemployment rate and interest rate to attain stationarity. The results of this study confirmed that there exist multiple breaks in the macroeconomic variables considered in the context of Pakistan.


Author(s):  
Monday Osagie Adenomon ◽  
N. A. Okoro-Ugochukwu ◽  
C. A. Adenomon

This study employed the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and the Error Correction Model (ECM) to investigate the long-run and short-run determinants of unemployment rate in Nigeria. To achieve this annual data on unemployment rate, inflation rate, interest rate, exchange rate and population growth from 1981 to 2016 was collected from Central Bank Statistical Bulletins and the World Bank website. The ADF test revealed that the macroeconomic variables are stationary at first difference while the Cointegration test revealed that the variables are cointegrated. Using unemployment rate as dependent variable, the FMOLS model revealed that exchange rate and population growth are positively significantly related to unemployment rate, interest rate and inflation rate were negatively related to unemployment rate but only interest rate was significant. The short run relationship revealed that the coefficient of the ecm(-1) is negative and statistically significant at 5% level indicating that the system corrects its previous period disequilibrium at the speed of 48.93% yearly. This study concludes that high exchange rate and population growth can lead to increase in unemployment rate in Nigeria while the government should develop the industrial sector and non-oil sector in order to generate employment and boost export in Nigeria.


Author(s):  
Sharif Hossain ◽  
Rajarshi Mitra ◽  
Thasinul Abedin

Although the amount of foreign aid received by Bangladesh as a share of GDP has declined over the years, Bangladesh remains one of the heavily aiddependent countries in Asia. The results of most empirical studies that have examined the effectiveness of foreign aid or other forms of development assistance for economic growth have varied considerably depending on the econometric methodology used and the period of study. As the debate and controversy over aid-effectiveness for economic growth continue to grow, this paper reinvestigates the short-run and long-run effects of foreign aid received on percapita real income of Bangladesh over the period 1972–2015. A vector error correction model is estimated. The results indicate lack of any significant short-run and long-run relation between foreign aid and per-capita real income. Results further indicate short-run unidirectional causalities from per-capita real GDP to domestic investment (in proportion to GDP), from government expenditure (in proportion to GDP) to inflation rate, from inflation rate to domestic investment (in proportion to GDP), and from domestic investment to foreign aid (as percentages of GDP). Short-run bidirectional causality is observed between per-capita electricity consumption and per-capita real GDP, and between per-capita real GDP and government expenditure (in proportion to GDP).


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