IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v11y1983i2p217-236.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Presidential Elections: Cyclical and Distributional Economic Effects

Author

Listed:
  • Walker A. Pollard

    (Case Western Reserve University)

Abstract

Studies of the effects of economic conditions on elections reach a mixed verdict. Some find significant effects of unemployment, real income, and/or inflation, while others do not. Stigler contends that macroeconomic factors are not important but that distributional issues are. In this article the effects of real income growth and inflation on U.S. presidential elections are studied using a pooling of state-level and time-series data. The data are analyzed using ordinary least squares, variance components, and other estimation techniques, since any single technique is not wholly satisfactory for the analysis of this data set. The effect of real income growth is found to be insignificant over time but significant across states. This suggests that Stigler's contention is correct. The effect of inflation is not as clear since high t-values for the full-sample inflation term may be due to conincidental correlation with time-dependent factors outside the model .

Suggested Citation

  • Walker A. Pollard, 1983. "Presidential Elections: Cyclical and Distributional Economic Effects," Public Finance Review, , vol. 11(2), pages 217-236, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:11:y:1983:i:2:p:217-236
    DOI: 10.1177/109114218301100205
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109114218301100205
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/109114218301100205?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fair, Ray C, 1978. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(2), pages 159-173, May.
    2. MacRae, C Duncan, 1977. "A Political Model of the Business Cycle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(2), pages 239-263, April.
    3. T. S. Breusch & A. R. Pagan, 1980. "The Lagrange Multiplier Test and its Applications to Model Specification in Econometrics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 239-253.
    4. Stigler, George J, 1973. "General Economic Conditions and National Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 160-167, May.
    5. Susan Lepper, 1974. "Voting behavior and aggregate policy targets," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 67-81, June.
    6. Burton Abrams, 1980. "The influence of state-level economic conditions on presidential elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 35(5), pages 623-631, January.
    7. Arcelus, Francisco & Meltzer, Allan H., 1975. "The Effect of Aggregate Economic Variables on Congressional Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(4), pages 1232-1239, December.
    8. Frey, Bruno S., 1978. "Politico-economic models and cycles," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 203-220, April.
    9. Nerlove, Marc, 1971. "A Note on Error Components Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(2), pages 383-396, March.
    10. Meltzer, Allan H & Vellrath, Marc, 1975. "The Effects of Economic Policies on Votes for the Presidency: Some Evidence from Recent Elections: Reply," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 803-805, December.
    11. Maddala, G S, 1971. "The Use of Variance Components Models in Pooling Cross Section and Time Series Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(2), pages 341-358, March.
    12. Meltzer, Allan H & Vellrath, Marc, 1975. "The Effects of Economic Policies on Votes for the Presidency: Some Evidence from Recent Elections," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 781-798, December.
    13. Bloom, Howard S. & Price, H. Douglas, 1975. "Voter Response to Short-Run Economic Conditions: the Asymmetric Effect of Prosperity and Recession," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(4), pages 1240-1254, December.
    14. Fuller, Wayne A. & Battese, George E., 1974. "Estimation of linear models with crossed-error structure," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 67-78, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2016. "Voting and Popularity," CREMA Working Paper Series 2016-08, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    2. Amanat ALI* & Eatzaz AHMAD** & BILAWAL***, 2019. "SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEPRIVATIONS AND VOTERS’ PREFERENCES: A District Level Analysis," Pakistan Journal of Applied Economics, Applied Economics Research Centre, vol. 29(2), pages 181-199.
    3. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.
    4. Paul R. Blackley & Edward M. Shepard, 1994. "A Statistical Analysis of the Effect of State-Level Economic Conditions On the 1992 Presidential Election," Public Finance Review, , vol. 22(3), pages 366-382, July.
    5. Frey, Bruno S., 1978. "Politico-economic models and cycles," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 203-220, April.
    6. Ryan Amacher & William Boyes, 1982. "Unemployment rates and political outcomes: An incentive for manufacturing a political business cycle," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 197-203, January.
    7. Robert Michaels, 1986. "Reinterpreting the role of inflation in politico-economic models," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 113-124, January.
    8. James Adams & Lawrence Kenny, 1989. "The retention of state governors," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 1-13, July.
    9. Henry Chappell & William Keech, 1985. "The political viability of rule-based monetary policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 125-140, January.
    10. Bennett, Daniel L. & Long, Jason T., 2019. "Is it the economic policy, stupid? Economic policy, political parties & the gubernatorial incumbent advantage," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 118-137.
    11. Rausser, Gordon C. & de Gorter, Harry, 1988. "Endogenizing Policy In Models Of Agricultural Markets," 1988 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Knoxville, Tennessee 270460, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    12. Boryana Dimitrova, 2000. "An Empirical Model of Voting Behavior in the Bulgarian Parliamentary Elections of 1994," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 44(2), pages 71-77, October.
    13. William D. Nordhaus, 1989. "Alternative Approaches to the Political Business Cycle," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 20(2), pages 1-68.
    14. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Dimitrios D. Thomakos, 2007. "Consumer Confidence and Elections," Working Paper series 42_07, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    15. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Melvin Stephens Jr., 2013. "Employment, Wages, and Voter Turnout," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 111-143, October.
    16. Marius C. O. Amba, 2021. "Simultaneous Equations with Three Way Error Components," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 19(3), pages 583-596, September.
    17. Faust, Jon & Irons, John S., 1999. "Money, politics and the post-war business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 61-89, February.
    18. Garey Durden & Patricia Gaynor, 1987. "The rational behavior theory of voting participation: Evidence from the 1970 and 1982 elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 231-242, January.
    19. Eduardo Lora & Mauricio Olivera, 2005. "The Electoral Consequences of the Washington Consensus," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Spring 20), pages 1-61, January.
    20. Leo Kahane, 2009. "It’s the economy, and then some: modeling the presidential vote with state panel data," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 343-356, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:11:y:1983:i:2:p:217-236. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.