Laron Williams
Biographic Data
| ID | 4149504 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laron Williams |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laron |
| FAMILY NAME | Williams |
| SIGNATURE | WILLIAMS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Missouri |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 612 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Origins of Public Agenda Capacity: The Role of Attention, Information, and Civic Resources
Research has shown that issue importance is a significant mediator of various political phenomena, such as issue voting, political fragmentation, and substantive representation, among many others. Studies focusing on issue prioritization among voters often relied on the implicit assumption that the issue-carrying capacity of the public—the number of issues the public prioritizes at a time—is relatively fixed over time because of individual-level …
Expanding the Spatial Toolkit with Spatial Eigenfunction Modeling
The economic roots of cross‐national similarity in voter preferences
We argue that economic and political integration leads voters' political preferences toward cross‐national convergence. Analyzing data on voter preferences across 30 European democracies from 1976 to 2022, we measure the similarity of preference distributions across state dyads over time, documenting an average increase in similarity over this period. We then model these associations statistically and find that greater similarity and complementar…
The space between: How ideological similarity limits the effectiveness of ambiguity
Look over there. Where? A compositional approach to the modeling of public opinion on the most important problem
Objective This study aims to test whether the American public is polarized and/or parallel in its assessments of the most important problem. Methods We use compositional time series models and new data on public opinion to test for differences between subgroups. Results We find inconsistent evidence of polarization for some issue areas but not others and remarkably robust evidence of parallel reactions across subgroups to economic and internation…
Problem importance across time and space: Updating the “Most Important Problem Dataset
This article introduces the second release of the Most Important Problem Dataset (MIPD) – a publicly available dataset that codes all available responses to the most important problem question in American public opinion. In the article, we first describe a number of innovations in the new release of the dataset and then demonstrate its usefulness through illustrative cases. In the new MIPD, we switch from providing a single code for the entire re…
Learning at Home and Abroad: How Competition Conditions the Diffusion of Party Strategies
How do parties decide when to campaign on valence issues given high degrees of uncertainty? Although past studies have provided evidence of transnational emulation of parties' position-taking strategies, these findings do not directly apply to saliency strategies. Moreover, the exact diffusion mechanism remains largely elusive. Based on the issue saliency literature, this study develops novel theoretical propositions and argues that conscious lea…
X Marks the Spot: Unlocking the Treasure of Spatial-X Models
In recent years, political scientists have made extensive use of spatial econometric models to test a wide range of theories. In a review of spatial papers, we find that a majority of these studies use the spatial autoregressive (SAR) model. Although this is a powerful method that reveals inferences about diffusion processes, it is also highly restrictive and makes assumptions that often are not appropriate given the expressed theories. We conten…
Interpretation: The Final Spatial Frontier
The use of spatial econometric models in political science has steadily risen in recent years. However, the interpretation of these models has generally ignored the important substantive, and even spatial, nature of the estimated effects. This leaves many papers with a (non-spatial) interpretation of coefficients on the covariates and a brief discussion of the sign and strength of the spatial parameter. We introduce a general approach to interpre…
Taking Time (and Space) Seriously: How Scholars Falsely Infer Policy Diffusion from Model Misspecification
Scholars have long been interested in how policies and ideas spread from one observation to another. Yet, the spatial and temporal dynamics of policy diffusion present unique challenges that empirical researchers often neglect. Scholars often use temporally lagged spatial lags (TLSL)—such as the number (or percentage) of prior adopters in a neighborhood—to test various mechanisms of delayed policy diffusion but are largely unaware of two under ap…
Should we talk about the weather? How party competition and coalition participation influence parties’ attention to economic issues
Media narratives of political campaigns paint a complex picture of parties carefully selecting communication strategies in response to the current social and economic climate as well as the strategic choices made by rival parties. Current empirical efforts based on simple ordinary least squares, however, fail to honor those complexities. We argue that ignoring the spatial and temporal dynamics at play produces misleading inferences about parties’…
Guns Yield Butter? An Exploration of Defense Spending Preferences
The popular notion of a trade-off between social and defense spending—or guns versus butter—appears often in elite discourse, popular media, and empirical studies of budgetary politics. Yet, there are good reasons to suspect that the public’s preferences for these types of spending do not reflect that trade-off. I develop a theory that whether social and defense spending preferences are competing or complementary depends on if the respondent view…
Temporal Dependence and the Sensitivity of Quantities of Interest: A Solution for a Common Problem
Scholars of international relations increasingly use temporal dependence variables (polynomials or splines) to control for unmodeled duration dependence in nonlinear models (such as logit or probit) of events ranging from interstate conflict and civil war to sanctions imposition and trade agreements. I identify two inferential obstacles that are widespread to nonlinear models, and are exacerbated by the unique features of temporal dependence vari…
North American Public Opinion on Health and Smoking
Public opinion regarding smoking and health has been of interest to polling companies since the 1940s. This article documents the rate of change in the public's awareness and beliefs about smoking and health in North America (the United States and Canada). It reports on four broad categories of opinions: public awareness of reports that smoking has been linked to lung cancer; beliefs that smoking is harmful to health and a cause of lung cancer; b…
All Economics is Local: Spatial Aggregations of Economic Information
National economic indicators play a foundational role in political economic research, particularly in regards to electoral politics. Yet, scholars have failed to recognize that national economic indicators are simply aggregations of local economic information, and the manner in which they are aggregated may not be consistent with the process voters use to acquire, access, and incorporate economic information. We argue that the economic similariti…
The “Most Important Problem” Dataset (Mipd): A new dataset on American issue importance
This article introduces the Most Important Problem Dataset (MIPD). The MIPD provides individual-level responses by Americans to “most important problem” questions from 1939 to 2015 coded into 58 different problem categories. The MIPD also contains individual-level information on demographics, economic evaluations, partisan preferences, approval and party competencies. This dataset can help answer questions about how the public prioritizes all pro…
Making and Breaking Party Leaders? An Informational Theory of Temporary and Lasting Impacts of Prime Minister Debates in Spain
Objective In this project, we develop an informational theory that identifies which prime minister debates are the most meaningful in terms of shifting Spanish public opinion . We argue that debates immediately following the installation of new leaders (because they shine light on leadership traits) and debates occurring in times of crisis (because voters can judge both the leader's ability to remedy the problems and their policy proposals) will …
Relaxing the Constant Economic Vote Restriction: Economic evaluations and party support in Germany
The popularity function literature has traditionally focused on incumbent government support, even under coalition governments. Here, we shift the focus from the government to the parties. To what extent are German parties held accountable for economic conditions when they hold the Chancellorship, serve in coalition, or sit in opposition? Using Seemingly Unrelated Regression to relax the Constant Economic Vote Restriction, we simultaneously model…
Opposition Parties and the Timing of Successful No-Confidence Motions
The power to remove the government via no-confidence motion is a powerful tool afforded to the opposition. By triggering the government’s downfall, opposition parties can substantially influence policy direction in parliamentary democracies. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how government and opposition parties interact to determine the occurrence of no-confidence motions and their chance of success. In this project, I develop a simple form…
You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do The Influence of Economic Conditions and Spatial Competition on Party Strategy
Although a voluminous literature has shed light on the relationship between economic conditions and government accountability, most studies in this literature have implicitly assumed that the actions of competing political parties are either irrelevant or that they cancel each other out. In this paper, we take an important first step toward relaxing this strong assumption. We develop and test a set of theoretical propositions from the issue compe…
Long-Term Effects in Models with Temporal Dependence
A dominant trend in models with binary outcomes is to control for unmodeled duration dependence by including temporal dependence variables. A second, distinct trend is to interpret both the short- and long-term effects of explanatory variables in autoregressive models. While the first trend is nearly ubiquitous in models with binary outcomes, the second trend has yet to be applied consistently beyond models with continuous outcomes. While scholar…
Forecasting the 2015 British election through party popularity functions
It's all relative: Spatial positioning of parties and ideological shifts
The usefulness of the general class of spatial econometric models, which relaxes the assumption that the observations are independent, has only recently been realised. One particularly fruitful application includes models of parties' ideological change as well as the electoral consequences of party competition. In these studies, scholars can explicitly model the spatial interconnectedness of political parties in theoretically pleasing ways, produ…
Don't Stand So Close to Me: Spatial Contagion Effects and Party Competition
In this article, we bring together elements from the literatures on economic voting and spatial voting to gain theoretical leverage on the combined role of clarity of responsibility, party policy positions, and economic performance in elections. Building on evidence of voter knowledge, we develop a theory of spatial contagion effects to explain how factors drawn from both of these literatures combine to shape changes in support for political part…
Estimating the defense spending vote
Updating the Party Government data set
Buttery Guns and Welfare Hawks: The Politics of Defense Spending in Advanced Industrial Democracies
In this article, we present a new theory that, given the economic consequences of military spending, some governments may use military spending as a means of advancing their domestic non-military objectives. Based on evidence that governments can use military spending as welfare policy in disguise, we argue that the role of ideology in shaping military spending is more complicated than simple left-right politics. We also present a theory that str…
But Wait, There’s More! Maximizing Substantive Inferences from TSCS Models
Political scientists rarely take full advantage of the substantive inferences that they can draw from time-series cross-section data. Most studies have emphasized statistical significance and other standard inferences that can be drawn from single coefficients over one time period. We show that by simulating the quantities of interest over longer periods of time and across theoretically interesting scenarios, we can draw much richer inferences. I…
You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do The Influence of Economic Conditions and Spatial Competition on Party Strategy
Although a voluminous literature has shed light on the relationship between economic conditions and government accountability, most studies in this literature have implicitly assumed that the actions of competing political parties are either irrelevant or that they cancel each other out. In this paper, we take an important first step toward relaxing this strong assumption. We develop and test a set of theoretical propositions from the issue compe…
Don't Stand So Close to Me: Spatial Contagion Effects and Party Competition
In this article, we bring together elements from the literatures on economic voting and spatial voting to gain theoretical leverage on the combined role of clarity of responsibility, party policy positions, and economic performance in elections. Building on evidence of voter knowledge, we develop a theory of spatial contagion effects to explain how factors drawn from both of these literatures combine to shape changes in support for political part…
It's all relative: Spatial positioning of parties and ideological shifts
The usefulness of the general class of spatial econometric models, which relaxes the assumption that the observations are independent, has only recently been realised. One particularly fruitful application includes models of parties' ideological change as well as the electoral consequences of party competition. In these studies, scholars can explicitly model the spatial interconnectedness of political parties in theoretically pleasing ways, produ…
Survival of the Fittest? Cabinet Duration in Postcommunist Europe
Studies of government duration in transitional democracies are critically important in that they have profound implications for stability, democratic representation and accountability, and the prospects for continued democratic consolidation. For example, there is a long-standing debate on the different effects of presidential and parliamentary systems on the survivability of regimes.1 Examining government duration in postcommunist Europe address…
Unsuccessful Success? Failed No-Confidence Motions, Competence Signals, and Electoral Support
If no-confidence motions are primarily motivated by bringing down governments, why do only approximately 5% of no-confidence motions in advanced parliamentary democracies from 1960 result in the termination of government? In this project the author addresses this puzzle by developing a formal model of the electoral benefits of no-confidence motions and tests these hypotheses with the use of an original data set. No-confidence motions represent hi…
Relaxing the Constant Economic Vote Restriction: Economic evaluations and party support in Germany
The popularity function literature has traditionally focused on incumbent government support, even under coalition governments. Here, we shift the focus from the government to the parties. To what extent are German parties held accountable for economic conditions when they hold the Chancellorship, serve in coalition, or sit in opposition? Using Seemingly Unrelated Regression to relax the Constant Economic Vote Restriction, we simultaneously model…
Flexible Election Timing and International Conflict
While there are a large number of studies examining the differences in conflict behavior due to varying institutional arrangements, scholars have not effectively addressed the differences in electoral cycles between systems with fixed versus flexible election timing. At the same time that parliamentary regimes give the Prime Minister the power to dissolve parliament, they give the parliament the power to remove the government with a vote of no-co…
War Voting: Interstate Disputes, the Economy, and Electoral Outcomes
This article explores the interactive effects of the economy and the use of force on incumbent parties’ electoral performance. Research on the diversionary use of force assumes that leaders (especially democratic leaders) use force abroad to bolster their domestic political fortunes during hard economic times. But other research suggests that crises either lead to removal from office or have no effect on incumbents’ political fortunes. Although a…
The “Most Important Problem” Dataset (Mipd): A new dataset on American issue importance
This article introduces the Most Important Problem Dataset (MIPD). The MIPD provides individual-level responses by Americans to “most important problem” questions from 1939 to 2015 coded into 58 different problem categories. The MIPD also contains individual-level information on demographics, economic evaluations, partisan preferences, approval and party competencies. This dataset can help answer questions about how the public prioritizes all pro…
Opposition Parties and the Timing of Successful No-Confidence Motions
The power to remove the government via no-confidence motion is a powerful tool afforded to the opposition. By triggering the government’s downfall, opposition parties can substantially influence policy direction in parliamentary democracies. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how government and opposition parties interact to determine the occurrence of no-confidence motions and their chance of success. In this project, I develop a simple form…
Interpretation: The Final Spatial Frontier
The use of spatial econometric models in political science has steadily risen in recent years. However, the interpretation of these models has generally ignored the important substantive, and even spatial, nature of the estimated effects. This leaves many papers with a (non-spatial) interpretation of coefficients on the covariates and a brief discussion of the sign and strength of the spatial parameter. We introduce a general approach to interpre…
All Economics is Local: Spatial Aggregations of Economic Information
National economic indicators play a foundational role in political economic research, particularly in regards to electoral politics. Yet, scholars have failed to recognize that national economic indicators are simply aggregations of local economic information, and the manner in which they are aggregated may not be consistent with the process voters use to acquire, access, and incorporate economic information. We argue that the economic similariti…
The Political Consequences of Terrorism: Terror Events, Casualties, and Government Duration
Journal Article The Political Consequences of Terrorism: Terror Events, Casualties, and Government Duration Get access Laron K. Williams, Laron K. Williams University of Missouri Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Michael T. Koch, Michael T. Koch Texas A&M University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jason M. Smith Jason M. Smith Texas A&M University Search for other wor…
X Marks the Spot: Unlocking the Treasure of Spatial-X Models
In recent years, political scientists have made extensive use of spatial econometric models to test a wide range of theories. In a review of spatial papers, we find that a majority of these studies use the spatial autoregressive (SAR) model. Although this is a powerful method that reveals inferences about diffusion processes, it is also highly restrictive and makes assumptions that often are not appropriate given the expressed theories. We conten…
Taking Time (and Space) Seriously: How Scholars Falsely Infer Policy Diffusion from Model Misspecification
Scholars have long been interested in how policies and ideas spread from one observation to another. Yet, the spatial and temporal dynamics of policy diffusion present unique challenges that empirical researchers often neglect. Scholars often use temporally lagged spatial lags (TLSL)—such as the number (or percentage) of prior adopters in a neighborhood—to test various mechanisms of delayed policy diffusion but are largely unaware of two under ap…
Opposition party policy shifts in response to no‐confidence motions
No‐confidence motions ( NCMs ) are attempts by opposition parties to publicise the government's failings in a salient policy arena, and previous research has shown that they often negatively affect citizens' evaluations of governing parties' competence and damage their electoral prospects. Yet currently there is a lack of understanding of how opposition parties respond ideologically to these NCMs . It is argued in this article that opposition par…
Estimating the defense spending vote
Pick your poison: Economic Crises, International Monetary Fund Loans and Leader Survival
Loans from international organizations impose large costs on the receiving nation. The decisions to accept such loans and then whether or not to implement the prescribed reforms are made with high stakes in mind. Domestic leaders are most likely facing punishment for the current economic crisis, but what is their incentive to implement the arrangements if the costly reforms associated with the loans may reduce their ability to satisfy their suppo…
Guns Yield Butter? An Exploration of Defense Spending Preferences
The popular notion of a trade-off between social and defense spending—or guns versus butter—appears often in elite discourse, popular media, and empirical studies of budgetary politics. Yet, there are good reasons to suspect that the public’s preferences for these types of spending do not reflect that trade-off. I develop a theory that whether social and defense spending preferences are competing or complementary depends on if the respondent view…
Forecasting the 2015 British election through party popularity functions
Predictably Unpredictable: The Effects of Conflict Involvement on the Error Variance of Vote Models
International conflict has profoundly influenced election outcomes in some cases, and in other cases has had a minimal impact. This article develops a theory that the increased salience of foreign policy issues following periods of international hostilities increases the variance of government parties’ vote shares. In elections following conflict, the ability to accurately predict election outcomes using traditional economic voting models is redu…
Democracy and Diversion: Government Arrangements, the Economy, and Dispute Initiation
Do legislative constraints constrain or compel democratic executives' conflict behavior during periods of economic decline? Although institutional constraints are thought to reduce democratic executives' propensity to engage in interstate conflict, other research suggests that such constraints may provide incentives to engage in diversionary uses of force. Incorporating work from the comparative study of economic voting and cross-national researc…
Survival of the Fittest? Cabinet Duration in Postcommunist Europe
Studies of government duration in transitional democracies are critically important in that they have profound implications for stability, democratic representation and accountability, and the prospects for continued democratic consolidation. For example, there is a long-standing debate on the different effects of presidential and parliamentary systems on the survivability of regimes.1 Examining government duration in postcommunist Europe address…
Democracy and Diversion: Government Arrangements, the Economy, and Dispute Initiation
Do legislative constraints constrain or compel democratic executives' conflict behavior during periods of economic decline? Although institutional constraints are thought to reduce democratic executives' propensity to engage in interstate conflict, other research suggests that such constraints may provide incentives to engage in diversionary uses of force. Incorporating work from the comparative study of economic voting and cross-national researc…
War Voting: Interstate Disputes, the Economy, and Electoral Outcomes
This article explores the interactive effects of the economy and the use of force on incumbent parties’ electoral performance. Research on the diversionary use of force assumes that leaders (especially democratic leaders) use force abroad to bolster their domestic political fortunes during hard economic times. But other research suggests that crises either lead to removal from office or have no effect on incumbents’ political fortunes. Although a…
Unsuccessful Success? Failed No-Confidence Motions, Competence Signals, and Electoral Support
If no-confidence motions are primarily motivated by bringing down governments, why do only approximately 5% of no-confidence motions in advanced parliamentary democracies from 1960 result in the termination of government? In this project the author addresses this puzzle by developing a formal model of the electoral benefits of no-confidence motions and tests these hypotheses with the use of an original data set. No-confidence motions represent hi…
Buttery Guns and Welfare Hawks: The Politics of Defense Spending in Advanced Industrial Democracies
In this article, we present a new theory that, given the economic consequences of military spending, some governments may use military spending as a means of advancing their domestic non-military objectives. Based on evidence that governments can use military spending as welfare policy in disguise, we argue that the role of ideology in shaping military spending is more complicated than simple left-right politics. We also present a theory that str…
The Political Consequences of Terrorism: Terror Events, Casualties, and Government Duration
Journal Article The Political Consequences of Terrorism: Terror Events, Casualties, and Government Duration Get access Laron K. Williams, Laron K. Williams University of Missouri Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Michael T. Koch, Michael T. Koch Texas A&M University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jason M. Smith Jason M. Smith Texas A&M University Search for other wor…
But Wait, There’s More! Maximizing Substantive Inferences from TSCS Models
Political scientists rarely take full advantage of the substantive inferences that they can draw from time-series cross-section data. Most studies have emphasized statistical significance and other standard inferences that can be drawn from single coefficients over one time period. We show that by simulating the quantities of interest over longer periods of time and across theoretically interesting scenarios, we can draw much richer inferences. I…
Pick your poison: Economic Crises, International Monetary Fund Loans and Leader Survival
Loans from international organizations impose large costs on the receiving nation. The decisions to accept such loans and then whether or not to implement the prescribed reforms are made with high stakes in mind. Domestic leaders are most likely facing punishment for the current economic crisis, but what is their incentive to implement the arrangements if the costly reforms associated with the loans may reduce their ability to satisfy their suppo…
The Science‐Natural Resource Policy Relationship: How Aspects of Diffusion Theory Explain Data Selection for Making Biodiversity Management Decisions
This study extends a previous project which examined the salience of neo‐institutional theory in explaining how data are selected for use in making and implementing biodiversity management decisions. Our prior findings prompted us to examine the selection of data from federal, state or local, and nongovernmental sources using aspects of diffusion theory. We argue that diffusion theory also possesses explanatory value regarding the identification …
Data Selection for Making Biodiversity Management Decisions: Best Available Science and Institutionalized Agency Norms
Best available science has long been the standard for using science to inform environmental and natural resource policy. This study examines the selection of data from federal, state or local, and nongovernmental sources for use in making ground-level natural resource policy, or biodiversity management decisions. The authors argue that aspects of neo-institutional theory are explanatory of data selection within a natural resource agency. They emp…
Opposition party policy shifts in response to no‐confidence motions
No‐confidence motions ( NCMs ) are attempts by opposition parties to publicise the government's failings in a salient policy arena, and previous research has shown that they often negatively affect citizens' evaluations of governing parties' competence and damage their electoral prospects. Yet currently there is a lack of understanding of how opposition parties respond ideologically to these NCMs . It is argued in this article that opposition par…
Flexible Election Timing and International Conflict
While there are a large number of studies examining the differences in conflict behavior due to varying institutional arrangements, scholars have not effectively addressed the differences in electoral cycles between systems with fixed versus flexible election timing. At the same time that parliamentary regimes give the Prime Minister the power to dissolve parliament, they give the parliament the power to remove the government with a vote of no-co…
Who should be chef? The dynamics of valence evaluations across income groups during economic crises
Predictably Unpredictable: The Effects of Conflict Involvement on the Error Variance of Vote Models
International conflict has profoundly influenced election outcomes in some cases, and in other cases has had a minimal impact. This article develops a theory that the increased salience of foreign policy issues following periods of international hostilities increases the variance of government parties’ vote shares. In elections following conflict, the ability to accurately predict election outcomes using traditional economic voting models is redu…
Updating the Party Government data set
Hawks, doves, and opportunistic opposition parties
Parliamentary regimes offer the unique opportunity for opposition parties to react to foreign policy by proposing no-confidence motions (NCMs). The threat of an NCM bringing down the government may be enough to induce pacific behavior by the executive. Yet, this simplistic characterization neglects the possible electoral motivations of opportunistic opposition parties. I develop a theory that opposition parties respond to involvement in internati…
It's all relative: Spatial positioning of parties and ideological shifts
The usefulness of the general class of spatial econometric models, which relaxes the assumption that the observations are independent, has only recently been realised. One particularly fruitful application includes models of parties' ideological change as well as the electoral consequences of party competition. In these studies, scholars can explicitly model the spatial interconnectedness of political parties in theoretically pleasing ways, produ…
Don't Stand So Close to Me: Spatial Contagion Effects and Party Competition
In this article, we bring together elements from the literatures on economic voting and spatial voting to gain theoretical leverage on the combined role of clarity of responsibility, party policy positions, and economic performance in elections. Building on evidence of voter knowledge, we develop a theory of spatial contagion effects to explain how factors drawn from both of these literatures combine to shape changes in support for political part…
Estimating the defense spending vote
Opposition Parties and the Timing of Successful No-Confidence Motions
The power to remove the government via no-confidence motion is a powerful tool afforded to the opposition. By triggering the government’s downfall, opposition parties can substantially influence policy direction in parliamentary democracies. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how government and opposition parties interact to determine the occurrence of no-confidence motions and their chance of success. In this project, I develop a simple form…
You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do The Influence of Economic Conditions and Spatial Competition on Party Strategy
Although a voluminous literature has shed light on the relationship between economic conditions and government accountability, most studies in this literature have implicitly assumed that the actions of competing political parties are either irrelevant or that they cancel each other out. In this paper, we take an important first step toward relaxing this strong assumption. We develop and test a set of theoretical propositions from the issue compe…
Long-Term Effects in Models with Temporal Dependence
A dominant trend in models with binary outcomes is to control for unmodeled duration dependence by including temporal dependence variables. A second, distinct trend is to interpret both the short- and long-term effects of explanatory variables in autoregressive models. While the first trend is nearly ubiquitous in models with binary outcomes, the second trend has yet to be applied consistently beyond models with continuous outcomes. While scholar…
Forecasting the 2015 British election through party popularity functions
The “Most Important Problem” Dataset (Mipd): A new dataset on American issue importance
This article introduces the Most Important Problem Dataset (MIPD). The MIPD provides individual-level responses by Americans to “most important problem” questions from 1939 to 2015 coded into 58 different problem categories. The MIPD also contains individual-level information on demographics, economic evaluations, partisan preferences, approval and party competencies. This dataset can help answer questions about how the public prioritizes all pro…
Making and Breaking Party Leaders? An Informational Theory of Temporary and Lasting Impacts of Prime Minister Debates in Spain
Objective In this project, we develop an informational theory that identifies which prime minister debates are the most meaningful in terms of shifting Spanish public opinion . We argue that debates immediately following the installation of new leaders (because they shine light on leadership traits) and debates occurring in times of crisis (because voters can judge both the leader's ability to remedy the problems and their policy proposals) will …
Political science (33 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (30 works) · Politics (27 works) · Economics (25 works) · Law (25 works) · Law (22 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (14 works) · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy (10 works)