TY - BOOK A1 - Bernecker, Andreas T1 - Essays in Empirical Political Economics Y1 - 2014 N1 - Mannheim, Univ., Diss., 2014. ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bernecker, Andreas T1 - Divided Government and the Adoption of Economic Reforms JF - CESifo DICE Report - Journal for Institutional Comparison Y1 - 2014 SN - 1612-0663 VL - 12 IS - 4 SP - 47 EP - 52 PB - Ifo Institute for Economic Research CY - München ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bernecker, Andreas T1 - Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament JF - European Journal of Political Economy N2 - Does stiffer electoral competition reduce political shirking? For a micro-analysis of this question, I construct a new data set spanning the years 2005 to 2012 covering biographical and political information about German Members of Parliament (MPs), including their attendance rates in voting sessions. For the parliament elected in 2009, I show that indeed opposition party MPs who expect to face a close race in their district show significantly and relevantly lower absence rates in parliament beforehand. MPs of governing parties seem not to react significantly to electoral competition. These results are confirmed by an analysis of the parliament elected in 2005, by several robustness checks, and also by employing an instrumental variable strategy exploiting convenient peculiarities of the German electoral system. The study also shows how MPs elected via party lists react to different levels of electoral competition. Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2014.07.001 SN - 0176-2680 VL - 36 SP - 55 EP - 70 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -