The economic determinants of U.S. presidential approval: A survey

Abstract

Even after four decades of research it remains unclear, whether presidential popularity depends on the state of the economy. While about half of all studies for the United States find a significant effect of unemployment and inflation on pr esidential popularity, the others do not. Additional economic issues have rarely been studied. In this survey article we study the likely causes for the inconclusive findings. While various factors have an influence on t he results, especially the choice of the sample period is of crucial importance. While in the very long run we find unemployment, inflation and the budget deficit to have a robust effect on presidential approval, this holds not true for shorter sub-periods. This result might indicate that the popularity function is instable over time. However, the findings might also be taken as an indication that the most often employed linear estimation approach is inadequate. Further research on these issues is necessary. JEL-Code: D720, H110.

Presidential Approval and Public Security in Mexico's War on Crime

“…Much of the literature has focused on assessing presidential approval in terms of executive performance on the economy and foreign policy (Norpoth et al 1991;Gronke and Newman 2003;Berlemann and Enkelmann 2012). Few works exist that link presidential approval and public security, most probably because crime is commonly linked to local authorities (e.g., Arnold and Carnes 2012;Chevigny 2003;Devroe 2013).…”

“…1. For reviews of the literature on presidential approval see Norpoth et al 1991;Gronke and Newman 2003;Berlemann and Enkelmann 2012.…”

Unraveling the Relationship Between Presidential Approval and the Economy: A Multidimensional Semiparametric Approach

“…While it is more or less uncontroversial in this literature that political events as well as foreign conflicts have significant effects on presidential popularity, the influence of the state of the economy on presidential approval is less clear. Although there is a widespread belief that voters hold governments accountable for economic outcomes (see, for example, Fair, ; Norpoth, ; Kiefer, ; Faust and Irons, ; Gronke and Brehm, ), the empirical evidence summarized in Berlemann and Enkelmann () indicates that the effects of economic variables on presidential popularity vary enormously among existing studies. While proxies of inflation turned out to be significant in roughly 60% of all reported estimations, unemployment variables performed even worse, delivering significant and plausible coefficients in only about half the studies in which they were used.…”

“…While proxies of inflation turned out to be significant in roughly 60% of all reported estimations, unemployment variables performed even worse, delivering significant and plausible coefficients in only about half the studies in which they were used. Berlemann and Enkelmann () also show that the coefficients of economic variables turn out to be highly unstable when running the typically employed linear regression models for randomly chosen sub‐periods. A possible reason for this finding is the inadequacy of the typically employed linear regression approach.…”

Government popularity and the economy: first evidence from German microdata

“…Excellent overviews are given by LewisBeck and Paldam (2000), Stegmaier (2000, 2007) and Paldam (2008). Berlemann and Enkelmann (2012) survey and discuss the large field of popularity functions for the United States.…”