It's a little bit mysterious why exactly this is the case, but which party controls the White House sure does seem to have a large effect on a variety of macroeconomic variables. Might I suggest that figuring out what explains this is a pretty important area for research? Smarter people than I are going to have to get on the case.
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Partisan Trends
13 Jul 2008 11:00 am
Comments (16)
We'll never be able to cut through the partisan obfuscation and explain the patterns. My advice is: Stay empirical - Vote for Dems!
Delaware has had a woman Governor (Ruth Ann Minner) since 2001?!? Why doesn't that get more press? Why doesn't Minner get mentioned in all the other stories with the usual suspects and Rell and Palin? I follow the news fairly closely and I don't think I ever heard the name Minner before 5 minutes ago.
Extremely simple explanation.
The time constant for the change in the macroeconomic variables due to change in economic policies is four to eight years. So the sound policies of the GOP presidents take effect only when they have been voted out due to the sometimes intolerable transient effects of such policies during the Republicans' regimes.
The President doesn't have the power to set economic policy; the Congress does. How about we see that same chart with which party was in Congress at the time?
The President doesn't have the power to set economic policy; the Congress does. How about we see that same chart with which party controlled Congress at the time?
Larry Bartels.
Republicans --> Deficits --> Inflatoin --> High Interest Rates --> Weaker Economy & Better Bond Returns for Wealthy Americans.
There isn't more research here because there are extremely few data points and a huge number of variables to control for. Not to mention problems of delayed effects, which throws in even more variables. The odds that you would get any useful information from a study is basically zero, particularly because presidents are much, much less important than demographic shifts, technology, the Fed chairman, oil, etc. Oh, and you also have problems where people vote based on how they feel they're doing economically, so presidential elections aren't even exogenous variables. Then you have to use some fancy instrumental variable and even if you could find one (none come to mind) it would reduce your confidence in the answer even more by adding extra noise.
The graphs are pretty compelling, though.
"Smarter people than I are going to have to get on the case."
I believe the field is called "political economy".
Smarter people than I...
I did not think this was possible.
Enforcement! Nothing mysterious about it.
"So the sound policies of the GOP presidents take effect only when they have been voted out due to the sometimes intolerable transient effects of such policies during the Republicans' regimes."
Some of the worst values are for Bush 41, tailing the most extensive period of Republican control. The best values are for Truman, tailing the most extensive period of Democratic control. So no.
Read Larry Bartels' Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Guilded Age. It's a statistical analysis of the post-war correlation between party control of the White House (mainly) and income trends. He also has a lot to say on how/why national politics ignores the opinions of the bottom 1/3 of the income spectrum entirely.
It looks at first glance that Republican policies tend to be pro-asset rather than pro-business. They want low inflation and good returns on loans. I think it promotes itself as pro-business because this is an easier sell politically. Businesses create jobs, and provide goods and services that the common people want. You can win elections being labelled pro-business. You're not going to do so well running on a platform of protecting the value of the wealthiest 1%'s assets.
Correlation is not causation. It looks to me like date of term (older the better) might be just as good an indicator as party.
Comments closed July 27, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Speaking of trends, here's an interesting event being held this afternoon (per The Page):
Governors Napolitano, Minner, Sebelius, Granholm and Gregoire host a a town hall meeting on the economy in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.
Now what do those five governors all have in common?
That's a hell of a lot of artillery being deployed in Plymouth Meeting, PA. If we don't win the vote of every single Democratic woman in that town, it will be a disgrace!
Posted by lampwick | July 13, 2008 11:27 AM