CES Visiting Scholars Seminar: Economic Downturns and Political Competition since the 1870s
Date and Time
November 9, 2016
12:15PM - 01:45PM EST
Location
Adolphus Busch Hall, Hoffmann Room, 27 Kirkland St. Cambridge
Visiting Scholars Seminar: New Research on Europe
SPEAKERJohannes LindvallProfessor of Political Science, Lund University; Visiting Scholar, CES, Harvard UniversityRelying on new data on the ideology of heads of government in 32 democracies over a period of more than 140 years, this paper shows that short economic downturns, with a single year of falling per-capita consumption or economic output, have more often resulted in shifts to the right than shifts to the left. But long-lasting economic downturns, with more than one consecutive year of falling consumption or output, are different, since they often affect a much greater proportion of the population: compared with short downturns which favor the right, long downturns have more uniform political effects.