Does the World Economy Swing National Elections?*

Andrew Leigh

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2009, vol. 71, issue 2, 163-181

Abstract: Do voters reward national leaders who are more competent economic managers, or merely those who happen to be in power when the world economy booms? Using data from 268 democratic elections held between 1978 and 1999, I compare the effect of world growth (luck) and national growth relative to world growth (competence). Both matter, but the effect of luck is larger than the effect of competence. Voters are more likely to reward competence in countries that are richer and better educated; and there is some suggestive evidence that media penetration rates affect the returns to luck and competence.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0084.2008.00545.x

Related works:
Working Paper: Does the World Economy Swing National Elections? (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:obuest:v:71:y:2009:i:2:p:163-181

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0305-9049

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Christopher Adam, Anindya Banerjee, Christopher Bowdler, David Hendry, Adriaan Kalwij, John Knight and Jonathan Temple

More articles in Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics from Department of Economics, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().