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In this paper we re-consider the effects of monetary policy shocks on exchange rates and forward premia. In the recent empirical literature, these effects have been predominantly described as puzzling, in that they would include delayed overshooting of the exchange rate as well as persistent deviations from uncovered interest parity. We specify an empirical model that in particular (i) allows for simultaneous multi-country adjustments in response to monetary policy shocks, and (ii) takes advantage of the identifying restrictions for monetary policy shocks implied by empirically supported long-run relations between the macroeconomic variables under consideration. Using monthly data from 1978 to 2006 for a panel of nine industrial economies (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States), we find that U.S. Dollar effective and bilateral real exchange rates appreciate on impact after a contractionary U.S. monetary policy shock, and that there is no delay in the overshooting of the U.S. Dollar. Furthermore, there is no persistent significant forward premium. These results are consistent with the real exchange rate effects of monetary policy shocks in sticky price macroeconomic models, though the results of this paper also suggest that the latter models should be specified so as to capture simultaneous multi-country adjustments to shocks.

I argue that voters do quite well translating their preferences to votes in ballot proposition races vis-à-vis presidential elections. Overall voters get it right almost 80% of the time, and on some ballot measures more than 85% vote correctly. Though some initiatives are 'harder issues' (see Carmines and Stimson 1980) and voters are less successful at voting correctly on those issues, they still get it right upwards of 70% of the time. Confusion, while not a clear cause of a status quo bias in direct democracy, does impair the ability of voters to vote correctly. Conversely, voters who are aware of political cues or heuristics are better able to match their stated preferences with their votes or more simply, vote correctly. No matter your judgment about the levels of correct voting, the 80% that get it right is a good level or the 20% that get it wrong is mind blowingly unacceptable, it is a rare occurrence that election results would actually change if everyone voted correctly

ObjectiveDo people set aside their partisan differences and rally around elected officials during a pandemic? President Trump's delegation of responsibility to the states during the COVID‐19 pandemic placed governors on the frontlines of the battle; some have shined and garnered positive national attention, others have wilted under the pressure of the national spotlight.MethodsWe use regression discontinuity design and exploit a discontinuity in the state's political events to assess the support of a governor's response to the pandemic.ResultsUsing survey data from Florida's registered voters, we find that Governor DeSantis's approval dropped by 7 percentage points following his "Safer at Home" order press conference on April 1.ConclusionOur results suggest that under certain circumstances partisanship can blunt a "rally around the flag" effect. This finding provides context to understanding when and under which circumstances elected officials can expect increases (or decreases) in public support.

Why do legislative parties emerge in democracies where elections are contested by individual candidates, rather than national party organizations? And can parties survive in the absence electoral pressure for their members to work on shared political goals? In this article, we examine the emergence and maintenance of party discipline in an atypical legislative context: California's 1878–79 constitutional convention. The unusual partisan alignments among the delegates at the California convention provide us with a unique empirical opportunity to test election- and policy-based explanations for legislative discipline. Our study combines a careful reading of the historical record with a statistical analysis of roll call votes cast at the convention to show how leaders of the "Nonpartisan" majority held together their disparate coalition of Democratic and Republican members in the face of conflicting preferences, ideological divisions, and well-organized political opponents. Our findings provide evidence that cohesive parties can exist even in the absence of broadly shared electoral pressures or policy goals.

In this paper, we study development in a panel of 87 countries from 1970 to 2005. We focus on characterizing institutionally driven heterogeneities in the development effects of macroeconomic policies and on comparing the development process as measured by GDP to that measured by the Human Development Index (HDI). We do so within a novel dynamic panel modelling framework that can account for crucial aspects of both the cross-sectional and intertemporal features of the observed process of development, and that can capture the dependence of the development effects of macroeconomic policies on differences in countries' persistent characteristics, such as their institutions. Among our findings are that macroeconomic policies affect development with less delay than suggested by conventional econometric frameworks, yet impact HDI with longer delay and overall less strongly than GDP. Differences in countries' persistent characteristics may even affect the sign of the long-run development effects of a given macroeconomic policy: Fiscal stimuli in the form of government consumption expansions positively affect long-run GDP in countries with low institutional quality, but negatively affect long-run GDP in countries with high institutional quality.