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The 1896 presidential election between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley has new salience in the wake of the 2016 presidential contest. We provide the first systematic analysis of presidential voting in 1896, combining county-level returns with economic, financial, and demographic data. We show that Bryan did well where interest rates were high, railroad penetration was low, and crop prices had declined. We show that further declines in crop prices or increases in interest rates would have been enough to tip the Electoral College in Bryan’s favor. But to change the outcome, the additional changes would have had to be large.

This chapter explores the political economy of banking in Texas at the turn of the last century. The empirical work sheds light on why Texans voted to allow the chartering of banks by the state government. The evidence shows that county-level voting patterns for state-chartered banks were significantly related to business interests, consumer interests, agricultural activity, and the presence of existing national banks. The work also shows that the first counties to receive the new state banks were associated with higher agricultural activity, larger population size, and the presence of existing national banks. By examining the vote and the location of early entrants in state banking, this chapter contributes to the literature exploring the historical development of state-chartered banking and the dual-banking system in the US.

In this study the authors aim to comprehensively investigate the determinants of voting behavior in Turkey, with a specific focus on the dynamics of the center-periphery debate. Mainly, the authors focus on regional voting patterns during the period that is dominated by the Justice and Development Party (JDP/AKP) in the elections. The authors apply the random effects generalized least squares (GLS) methodology, and analyze electoral data covering four pivotal parliamentary elections (2007, 2011, 2015 and 2018) across all 81 provinces (NUTS III regions). The authors individually examine voting dynamics of the four major parties in parliament: the JDP/AKP, the Republican People's Party (RPP/CHP), the Nationalist Movement Party (NMP/MHP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP/HDP). The authors contribute to a comprehensive understanding of how socioeconomic cleavages, economic performance, party alignment and social dynamics shape voter preferences in the Turkish context, thereby addressing gaps in the existing literature.

This research employs an ecological study of Turkish NUTS III sub-regions, covering national elections from 2007 to 2018. The authors utilize the random effects GLS method to account for heteroscedasticity and time effects. The inclusion of the June and November 2015 elections enables a comprehensive analysis of the evolving dynamics in Turkish voting behavior. The results remain robust when applying pooled OLS and fixed effect OLS techniques for control.

The study's findings reveal that economic performance, specifically economic growth, plays a pivotal role in the sustained dominance of the JDP/AKP party. Voters closely associate JDP preference with economic growth, resulting in higher voting shares during periods of economic prosperity. Along with economic growth; share of agriculture in regions' GDP, female illiteracy rate, old population rate, net domestic migration, terrorism and party alignment are also influential factors in the Turkish case. Furthermore, differences among sociocultural groups, and East–West dichotomy seem to be important factors that reveal the impact of social cleavages to understand electoral choice in Turkey.

This study contributes to the existing literature by offering a comprehensive multidimensional analysis of electoral behavior in Turkey, focusing on the JDP/AKP dominance period. The main contribution of this study is its multidimensional perspective on the power bases of all main parties, considering key voter choice theories (cleavages, party alignment and retrospective economic performance voting) that have not been systematically analyzed in prior research. The main research question of this study is to examine which factors affect voting behavior in Turkey and how the dynamics of center-periphery or eastern-western region voting behavior under the JDP hegemony can be explained. The contribution of this study consists not only in its empirical testing of panel data approaches but also in its comprehensive analysis of four major political parties. Building upon existing studies in the literature, this research seeks to extend the understanding of voting dynamics for the four main parties in the parliament — JDP/AKP, RPP/CHP, NMP/MHP and PPDP/HDP — by delving into their dynamics individually, thereby expanding the scope of previous studies. This study aims to make a contribution by not only empirically testing panel data approaches but also conducting a comprehensive analysis of four major political parties. Furthermore, the separate inclusion of the 2015 elections and utilization of a panel data approach enrich the analysis by capturing the evolving dynamics of Turkish voting behavior. The study underscores the significance of socioeconomic factors, economic performance and social cleavages for voters' choices within the context of a dominant party rule.

This study examines the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and managers' ex ante strategic choice on firms’ fixed and variable costs structure, i.e. cost rigidity and the moderating effect of government contracts and political connections.

Using a sample of 4,162 US firms during 2003–2019 and EPU measure from Baker et al. (2016), the authors examine the association between EPU and cost rigidity using multivariate regression analysis. The authors also examine the moderating effects of government customers and political connections using the subsampling method.

This study finds that increases in EPU leads to higher cost rigidity, suggesting that managers tend to look ahead and make an ex ante commitment to invest more in fixed costs to avoid congestion costs in anticipation of future product demand during EPU. The study also finds that the presence of government customers and political connections moderates the need for adopting greater cost rigidity.

This study measures firms' cost rigidity based on archival data. Future studies could utilize managers' cost structure choices using firms' internal management cost structure forecasts data to measure cost rigidity to examine the relationship between cost rigidity and EPU.

This study demonstrates that managers tend to make a proactive commitment to invest in fixed inputs when facing demand uncertainty from EPU to avoid congestion costs. This study also highlights the value of having government contracts and political connections by demonstrating that managers are less concerned about the congestion costs, hence weakening the impact of EPU on cost rigidity when they have government as major customers and/or political connections.

This study extends the management accounting literature by documenting that cost rigidity is related to EPU and that the relationship between cost rigidity and EPU also depends on whether the firm has government as major customers and/or political connections or not.

This paper tests the degree to which Sunstein's law of group polarization predicts the increase or decrease in polarization among individuals in an out-group during a polarizing event. The authors use the discourse on Parler surrounding the events of January 6th as a case study.

The study includes an overall sentiment analysis, a statistical analysis of emotions, along with eight other feelings, including anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and trust. Specifically, the authors measure the differences in feelings related language used in posts as they pertain to Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement vs. Trump's Vice President Mike Pence both before and after January 6, 2021. The authors use this empirical analysis to show whether polarization in the Parler community increased or decreased after January 6th.

The authors find evidence that there is more complexity to polarization than Sunstein's theory would predict. The authors would expect a very polarized outed group to become more polarized relative to the general public after a central event; however, the authors see two extremes emerging within the Parler community (both strongly positive and strongly negative feelings toward Trump). The authors do not see unanimous consent across the Parler platform as Sunstein's theory would suggest; the out-group is becoming more polarized relative to the rest of the population. Instead, the authors observe a wide mix in reactions. The results of this study demonstrate that there is dissent even among the Parler echo chamber. For many themes surrounding the January 6th riots, Parler users express strong disagreement with each other and a lack of unity in their feelings for former President Trump.

The results suggest further research into polarization of outed groups and the policy implications of their polarization changes over time.

Increases in group polarization are often a motivator for public policy and are further becoming a major focus for research. Brookings' authors Stephanie Forrest and Joshua Daymude point to polarization as a substantial threat to American society, claiming “reducing extreme polarization is key to stabilizing democracy” (2022). Researchers Diana Epstein and John D. Graham demonstrate that polarized politics has impacted the “substance of rulemaking, judicial decisions, and legislation” along with “complicating long-term policy changes” (2007). The authors study how entrepreneurs have responded to this increase in polarization and its implications for public policy.

Not only does group polarization impact all types of groups, from the social to the economic, but also it has “particular implications for insulated ‘outgroups’” (Sunstein, 1999, p. 21). Groups that are excluded by either coercion or choice from dialog with other groups become even more polarized and extreme (Sunstein, 1999; Turner et al., 1989).

The authors have engaged in an empirical analysis that no other paper has addressed. This paper summarized the Parler sample data set and analyzed various themes associated with the events of January 6th, namely President Trump and MAGA themes and Vice President Pence. The analysis demonstrated a dramatic increase in negative sentiment and emotion related to Vice President Mike Pence after January 6th as well as mixed support for President Trump and an increase in disgust before and after the Capitol riot.

This paper aims to present a catalogue of the influential aspects resulting from a bibliometric meta-analysis of political connection literature.

This study undertakes a bibliometric meta-analysis review of political connections literature, covering 138 research papers from 2000 to 2020 using the visualization of similarities viewer program.

The authors identify six research groups: the value of political connections; political connections and finance; political connections in banks; political connections and debt; management and political connections; and political connections and governance. This study discusses each stream through a cartographic analysis, including co-authorship, countries and time networks.

This study makes an important and novel contribution to political connection literature. So far, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the only bibliometric study on political connections. This study is the first to use network analysis and community detection to understand social clustering and to identify main research steams in political connection literature.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence regarding the selection procedures for and characteristics of senior officials in supreme audit institutions (SIAs).

This study follows a quantitative approach using original data collected for presidential elections of SIAs in the 16 federal states in Germany. A fractional logit model is calculated to test different theoretical assumptions in relation to structural, political and individual factors.

The descriptive results confirm the findings of prior research that presidential candidates are elected with very high approval rates. The main determinants are the vote share of the ruling coalition and the executive experience of the presidential candidate.

This study focuses on 16 federal states in Germany, but an international comparative perspective covering subnational levels would further augment analysis through the variance of selection procedures and electoral outcomes.

Independence of auditors is a fundamental issue for the control of the executive, but it seems that there are inevitable trade-offs therein, such as between knowledge of the auditing objects or the politicization of the election process and the independence of the auditor.

This study provides novel empirical insights into the election and selection procedures for senior SIA officials at the subnational level, and shows that the executive exerts strong, but functionally reasonable, influence on candidate selection.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is a causal impact of party affiliation of state governors operating within a liberal state legislature on labor market activity of transgender individuals. The common perception is that Republicans are more likely to believe a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth than Democrats. Such beliefs can influence voting, policies and practices.

Survey data on employment outcomes and other individual level characteristics are used from two surveys focusing on transgender individuals for the periods 2008 and 2015. These surveys represent the largest collection of data that examines the experiences of transgender people in the USA. To establish a casual effect, this analysis employs fixed effects Ordinary Least Squares methods and Propensity Score Matching algorithms.

Exploiting variations in the party affiliation of governors and liberal state governments, the study finds mixed employment effects of living in a Democratic-governed liberal state. Specifically, this paper shows that transgender people living in such states have an 18 percentage point (or 26 percent) higher likelihood of being employed in the 2008 survey, but a 16.4 percentage point (or 25 percent) lower likelihood of being employed in the 2015 survey. Despite the lower propensity to be out of the labor market in the 2008 sample, results from both surveys indicate a higher likelihood of being unemployed. These findings are robust to the inclusion of additional covariates (including confounders), alternative specifications and different estimation techniques. Heterogeneous effects are also explored.

To the authors’ current knowledge, this is the first study to systematically investigate the relationship between living in democratically governed liberal states and labor market circumstances of transgender people in the USA. This is the first paper to establish a causal relationship using matching techniques. The paper also provides suggestive evidence of the role of government ideology in influencing the working lives of transgender people.

This paper investigates the market responses towards four types of politically connected (PCON) firms during two political events – general election and change of leader in Malaysia.

The authors capture the market response using cumulative abnormal return and further test it using regression analysis. The authors use a sample of 376 politically connected (PCON) and non-politically connected (non-PCON) firms from 2002 to 2013.

The market reacted negatively towards government-linked companies (GLC) during both events, showing that GLCs are negatively perceived by the market during political instability. On the other hand, the reaction of the market towards firms connected by businessmen does not differ from other firms. When compared to the findings of past literature, it shows the decreasing influence that businessmen have over the government leader. In further analysis, this study finds firms that are connected to the incoming government leader recorded a higher CAR as compared to firms connected to the outgoing government leader.

The authors’ study offers several practical implications. Knowing how the market responds to the different types of political connections might prove beneficial to investors. With this information, investors can recognize stocks with potential returns before the event date and may consider buying or selling them to capture a short-term profit. The authors’ findings may also have important implications for the management of PCON firms in terms of implementing an effective risk management and asset allocation plan to safeguard their value during political events that may disrupt the stability of their firms.

This paper provides an insight on how the markets have a different perception towards different types of politically connected firms during short-run political events. Past studies usually categorize political connection into a single category. With this separation, the authors are able to see how their individual CAR differs from other types of PCON.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of left Brazilian political parties and partisan disruption on the homicide rate in Brazil.

The authors use panel data for the states between the years 1980 and 2011. The database used is an unbalanced panel covering a sample of 27 Brazilian states over 32 years, 1980-2011, totaling about 855 observations.

It is estimated that these two political factors are sources that have connection to the increased level of violence in Brazil. These analyses provide several important results. First, partisan disruption is associated with a higher homicide rate, compared to non-partisan disruption. The results from the panel also suggest that left-parties in government have a positive impact on homicide, compared to non-left-parties.

Information regarding premeditated homicides (CID-BR-9 database) is available for all Brazilian states, and may be tabulated from the same micro-data at any level of aggregation. Some of the well-known problems regarding the choice of this variable are as follows. First, deaths resulting from wounds are sometimes included in the statistics whether wounds were intentionally inflicted or not. In addition, some incidents end up not being registered because certain deaths are not reported. This tends to occur more frequently in rural areas. Fortunately, this second problem does not appear to be too significant, as under-registry of deaths due to external causes is much lower than the amount resulting from natural causes (see, e.g. Cano and Santos, 2000). In addition, this problem may be controlled if under-registry remains stable over time by applying fixed effects to the panel data.

The main Brazilian political parties diverge on the causes of crime and how criminals should be punished. For example, in Brazil, the minimum age for one individual to be punished with imprisonment is 18 years old. Practices crimes for young people between 12 and 18 implies only in socio-educational measures. Given the high level of violence in Brazil, there is a bill being debated in the parliament that proposes to reduce the age to 16 years. Based on the research, 90 percent of the population approves the reduction of age to 16 years. However, the majority of parliament is opposed to changing the law. In general, the more conservative parties are favorable to changing the law.

These divergent postures can be associated with the ideological essence or to belief system of each political party. Political parties have the potential capacity of changing crime trends through economic and social policies as well as by applying stronger sanctions against crime. Given the law enforcement system, the cycle of crime in Brazil may be related to the profile of the political party elected.

The authors assume the hypothesis that the current Brazilian multi-partisan system has an incentive system in which politicians do not respond adequately to the basic wishes of voters. Among such desires, the authors emphasize public safety. This paper evaluates the empirical effect of partisan disruption on homicide rate.