IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednrp/9404.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A model of voter choice in a life cycle setting

Author

Listed:
  • S. Brock Blomberg

Abstract

This paper employs an overlapping generations framework in which voters choose political parties based on the economic shocks faced over their lifetimes. Parties internalize voting preferences and develop platforms based on this information. The resulting equilibrium implies that voters select parties that maximize income in their labor period and that minimize inflation in their retirement period. The equilibrium also has the property that individuals switch their votes between the parties, in the presence of adverse states of nature. These results provide an explanation for post World War II voting patterns in the United States. The paper also provides empirical support for the theoretical findings.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • S. Brock Blomberg, 1994. "A model of voter choice in a life cycle setting," Research Paper 9404, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednrp:9404
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ray C. Fair, 1994. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President: 1992 Update," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1084, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    2. Alesina, Alberto & Londregan, John & Rosenthal, Howard, 1993. "A Model of the Political Economy of the United States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 12-33, March.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Philippe Weil, 1987. "Love Thy Children," Post-Print hal-03393237, HAL.
    6. Alberto Alesina, 1987. "Macroeconomic Policy in a Two-Party System as a Repeated Game," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(3), pages 651-678.
    7. S. Brock Blomberg, 1996. "A Model Of Voter Choice In A Life‐Cycle Setting," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(3), pages 213-229, November.
    8. Fair, Ray C, 1982. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President: 1980 Results," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(2), pages 322-325, May.
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/8711 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    11. Kramer, Gerald H., 1971. "Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896–1964," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(1), pages 131-143, March.
    12. Weil, Philippe, 1987. "Love thy children : Reflections on the Barro debt neutrality theorem," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 377-391, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. S. Brock Blomberg, 1996. "A Model Of Voter Choice In A Life‐Cycle Setting," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(3), pages 213-229, November.

    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. Fabio Milani, 2010. "Political Business Cycles In The New Keynesian Model," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(4), pages 896-915, October.
    2. 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.
    3. Blomberg, S. Brock, 2000. "Modeling political change with a regime-switching model," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 739-762, November.
    4. Kouvavas, Omiros, 2013. "Political Budget Cycles Revisited, the Case for Social Capital," MPRA Paper 57504, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Sep 2013.
    5. Paola Assael & Felipe Larraín, 1994. "El Ciclo Político-económico: Teoría, Evidencia y Extensión para una Economía Abierta," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 31(92), pages 87-114.
    6. David Mitchell, 2023. "Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 188-209, June.
    7. Fuest, Clemens & Gründler, Klaus & Potrafke, Niklas & Ruthardt, Fabian, 2024. "Read my lips? Taxes and elections," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    8. Bialkowski, Jedrzej & Gottschalk, Katrin & Wisniewski, Tomasz Piotr, 2008. "Stock market volatility around national elections," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1941-1953, September.
    9. Paola Assael & Felipe Larraín, 1995. "Cincuenta Años de Ciclo Político-Económico en Chile," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 32(96), pages 129-150.
    10. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    11. Alberto Alesina & Geoffrey Carliner, 1991. "Introduction to "Politics and Economics in the Eighties"," NBER Chapters, in: Politics and Economics in the Eighties, pages 1-16, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Steven Block & Burkhard N. Schrage & Paul M. Vaaler, 2003. "Democratization???s Risk Premium: Partisan and Opportunistic Political Business Cycle Effects on Sovereign Ratings in Developing Countries," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 546, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    13. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political business cycles 40 years after Nordhaus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 235-259, January.
    14. Stefan Krause & Fabio Méndez, 2009. "Corruption And Elections: An Empirical Study For A Cross‐Section Of Countries," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 179-200, July.
    15. Blomberg, S. Brock & Hess, Gregory D., 2003. "Is the political business cycle for real?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 1091-1121, May.
    16. 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.
    17. Leif Helland, 2011. "Partisan conflicts and parliamentary dominance: the Norwegian political business cycle," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 139-154, April.
    18. Josef Brechler & Adam Geršl, 2014. "Political legislation cycle in the Czech Republic," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 137-153, June.
    19. Jeroen Klomp, 2020. "Election or Disaster Support?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(1), pages 205-220, January.
    20. Ali T. Akarca & Aysit Tansel, 2003. "Economic Performance and Political Outcomes: An Analysis of The 1995 Turkish Parliamentary Election Results," Working Papers 0321, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2003.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political science;

    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:fip:fednrp:9404. 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: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.html .

    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.