In January 2005, the German Supreme Court permitted the state governments to charge tuition fees. By exploiting the natural experiment, we examine how government ideology influenced tuition fee policy. The results show that right-wing governments were active in introducing tuition fees. By...

We investigate empirically how party ideology influences size and scope of government as measured by the size of government, tax structure and labor market regulation. Our dataset comprises 49 US states over the 1993-2009 period. We employ the new data on the ideological mapping of US...

This paper examines how political ideology influenced economic freedom across the Canadian provinces. We analyze the data set of economic freedom indicators compiled by the Fraser Institute in 10 Canadian provinces over the 1981-2005 period and introduce two different indices of political...

This article examines how government ideology influenced privatization efforts in Central and Eastern Europe after the transition from socialism. We analyse a dataset of privatization indicators covering small- and large-scale industries in 19 transition countries over the period 1990-2007 and...

Principal-agent problems can arise when preferences of voters are not aligned with preferences of political representatives. Often the consequence of the political principal-agent problem is political catering to special interests. In this paper I provide examples of principal-agent problems...

Using the POLITY IV and Freedom House indices, Rowley and Smith (Public Choice 139(3-4):273, 2009) found that countries with Muslim majorities enjoy less freedom and are less democratic than countries in which Muslims are a minority. Because the POLITY IV and Freedom House indices have been...

Potrafke N. Economic freedom and government ideology across the German states, Regional Studies. This paper examines whether government ideology influenced economic freedom across the German states. The results show that in former West Germany rightwing governments promoted economic freedom,...

I study diversity in views expressed by economists regarding appropriate economic policies. The dataset is for voting by economists on the German Council of Economic Experts, over the period 1971-2011. The results show that the best predictor of minority voting is having been nominated by the...

This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced political alignment with the U.S. in voting in the UN General Assembly. I analyze a dataset of UN General Assembly voting behavior of 21 OECD countries over the 1984-2005 period employing two alternative indices of government...