Is it all about competence? The human capital of U.S. presidents and economic performance

Roger Congleton and Yongjing Zhang ()

Constitutional Political Economy, 2013, vol. 24, issue 2, 108-124

Abstract: This paper explores the extent to which human capital improves the economic policy competence of US presidents. Several recent studies have used international data to test similar hypotheses. However, international studies suffer from a variety of comparability issues, not all of which can be avoided through fixed effects and error correction. The US results developed in this paper suggest that both career paths and education have significant effects on a president’s economic policy judgment, particularly in the period after the Civil War. However, the paper also suggests that more than good economic management skills are required to win national elections. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Keywords: Public choice; Political business cycles; Human capital; Presidential policy; D7; E2; D9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10602-013-9138-7

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