Why don’t our political parties tell us exactly what they plan to do if they win in November?
Erik Voeten
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
When Is Judicial Behavior Political?
Who’s to judge whether Chief Justice Roberts’s decision on health care was prompted by political or strategic concerns?
Posted inArticle
Defining Decline
Is China beating the United States? It depends what ruler you use.
Posted inArticle
Conventional Wisdom About China’s Economy is Wrong
China “catching up” does not equal China “taking over the world” nor does it equate a future world where Americans can expect to be catering to their Chinese overlords.
Posted inArticle
The Death of Kim, Jong-il: Grounds for Apprehension
We are delighted to welcome the following guest post from Patrick M. Morgan, the Tierney chair in global peace and conflict studies at the University of California Irvine. Among others, he is a specialist on deterrence and a founding member of the Council on U.S. Korean Security studies. (Full disclosure: Pat is also my father […]
Posted inArticle
Can Google Search Behavior Predict Political Behavior?
One of the driving forces behind the creation of Google Insights was the observation that Google searches can predict flu epidemics more quickly than other types of observations. Shauna Reilly, Sean Richey, and Benjamin Taylor have a forthcoming article (nongated), which suggests that political behavior too can be predicted from search terms. In particular they […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Forecasting Elections with Real-Time Economic Data
This post is jointly written with Anton Strezhnev, a very bright Georgetown undergraduate. One of the challenges in forecasting elections is that economic data are often inaccurate when first released. Some of the adjustments are substantial. Just to illustrate this point, the image below (source) shows the change from original issue to current estimate in […]
Posted inArticle
How Violence in Mexico is Designed to Work
We are delighted to welcome back UCSD professor Barbara Walter and her colleague, professor Alberto Díaz-Cayeros. Professor Díaz-Cayeros is an expert on Mexico and professor Walter is an expert on insurgency. Below they combine their respective sources of expertise and analyze the violence in Mexico as a form of insurgency. ## President Obama and his […]
Posted inArticle
The World’s Most Bizarre Political Ads, Part II
My call last week for bizarre political ads from across the globe received a fair number of peculiar and sometimes downright frightening examples. Especially popular were singing politicians, like these German Social-Democrats and Iceland’s Best Party, which actually won the mayoral election for which the ad was made although, according to commenter Sona, they failed […]
Posted inArticle
The Palestine UNESCO Vote
Will the recent recognition of the country by UNESCO lead to full membership in the General Assembly?