Efthyvoulou (2012) Flashcards
Empirical memorisation.
What is the research objective of Efthyvoulou (2012)?
To determine whether political cycles vary across countries, specifically in the EU currency union.
What is the main hypothesis of Efthyvoulou (2012)?
Electoral cycles may vary over time depending on the governments incentive structure at each election.
Cycles will be negatively correlated with Non-Economic voting and positively correlated with Electoral Competitiveness.
Non-Economic Voting impacts political cycles.
Briefly describe the concept and how this impacts the size of cycles.
Non-Economic voting is voting on ideals outside a political economic model (things like how well you like the politician etc.)
More Non-Economic voting leads to smaller electoral cycles as if the general public aren’t concerned about the economics then it isn’t worth pumping money into it.
Electoral Competitiveness impacts political cycles.
How is this related to the Probabilistic Voting Model and how does this impact the size of cycles?
Electoral competitiveness can be interpreted as the m parameter, the ‘sensitivity to re-election’.
Greater Electoral Competition raises the size of cycles as the closer the vote the more willing you’ll be to exert greater hidden effort. This is seen in dR1/dm being negative in the model: less R1 leads to more g1 which is a larger cycle.
What are the findings of Efthyvoulou (2012) regarding the likelihood of electoral cycles?
Electoral cycles are more likely in developing countries as well as young democracies.
This is mainly due to lower access to free media or a lack of familiarity with electoral politics.
What are the findings of Efthyvoulou (2012) regarding the size of electoral cycles and Policy Rule?
Electoral cycles tend to be larger in countries with Majoritarian systems due to greater accountability and stronger incentives to perform well.
Discuss the findings of Efthyvoulou (2012) concerning unconditional electoral effects.
Three columns: Net Lending, Total Expenditure, Current Expenditure.
For NL, coefficients are negative and significant suggesting Net Lending decreases near elections.
For TEXP, coefficients are positive suggesting increased gov. expenditure in elections.
For CEXP, same interpretation as TEXP.
What is the main finding of conditional electoral effects at min. and max. levels of non-economic voting?
When non-economic voting is at a minimum, electoral cycles become three times as large.
