Joint work with: Sean Freeder and Justin de Benedictis-Kessner

While we know quite a bit about how individual-level factors affect citizens’ knowledge of party positions, less is known about the role the information environment plays in perceptions. In this paper, we argue that for citizens to learn about parties' issue positions, they have to be exposed to a sufficient amount of political information, and information should be unbiased. The implication of our argument is that citizens are better informed about parties’ ideological positions in election time, but that this information effect is conditional on a free media environment.

A vast literature on political cycles has shown that politicians often manipulate policy tools ahead of elections to win votes. Yet much less is known about the effects of policies designed to contain these cycles. I argue that legal constraints on politicians’ discretion over inputs like spending, debt, transfers, or hiring ahead of elections simply displace –and can even exacerbate– such cycles. I demonstrate these unintended consequences using large, monthly panels of Brazilian municipalities to measure cycles in public employment.

Joint work with: Erica Field, Ursula Aldana and Javier Romero