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Causal estimation of the short-term effects of tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) on vegetable producer prices is hampered by the large variety and different growing seasons of vegetables and is therefore rarely performed. We quantify the effects of Swiss seasonal TRQs on domestic producer prices of a variety of vegetables based on a difference-indifferences estimation using a novel dataset of weekly producer prices for Switzerland and neighbouring countries. We find that TRQs increase prices of most vegetables by more than 20% above the prices in neighbouring countries during the main harvest time for most vegetables and even more than 50% for some vegetables. The effects are stronger for more perishable vegetables and for conventionally produced ones compared with organic vegetables. However, we do not find clear-cut effects of TRQs on the week-to-week price volatility of vegetables although the overall lower price volatility in Switzerland compared with neighbouring countries might be a result of the TRQ system in place.

We reply to the comment of John Carey and Simon Hix on our original contribution entitled "District Magnitude and Representation of the Majority's Preferences: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Popular and Parliamentary Votes” in Public Choice 151:585-610 (2012). District magnitude does not necessarily affect deviations between political representatives and their district voters in a strictly monotonic way but monotonicity is upheld for deviations between representatives and the national majority. We provide new perspectives and caution against evaluating electoral systems by focusing on individual politicians' behavior but neglecting aggregation effects

Die wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Erfolge der Schweiz werden oft auf zwei für sie typische politische Institutionen zurückgeführt: direkte Demokratie und Föderalismus. Wir vermuten, dass eine dritte, bisher weitgehend vernachlässigte Institution eine ähnlich wichti- ge Rolle spielt: ihr Wahlsystem. Die Schwei z hat eine einmalige Mischung von Proporzwah- len (Verhältniswahlen) für die Gemeinde- und Kantonsparlamente sowie den Nationalrat und Majorzwahlen (Mehrheitswahlen) für die besonders einflussreichen Politiker, die Regie- rungsmitglieder auf Gemeinde-, Kantons- und Bundesebene sowie die Ständeräte. Dabei finden die Majorzwahlen nicht wie international üblich in Einerwahlkreisen statt, sondern in Wahlkreisen mit mehreren Sitzen. Wir argum entieren, dass die Proporzwahlen eine grosse Vielfalt an Parteien und politischen Meinungen hervorbringt, zugleich aber die Majorzwahlen mit mehreren Sitzen die besonders fähigen und erfolgsorientierten Politiker kraftvoll in die Mitte des politischen Spektrums lenken, weshalb wir dieses Wahlverfahren als Superma- jorz bezeichnen möchten. Wir halten diese besondere Kombination aus Proporz und Majorz für eine wichtige Ursache der für die Schweiz typischen Konkordanz und hohen politischen Stabilität. Dieses fruchtbare Wahlsystem ist auf andere Länder und Gebietskörperschaften übertragbar.

Combining referendum results with parliamentary votes of proportionally-elected politicians of the Swiss Lower House of Parliament, Giger and Klüver (American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming) find that sectional and cause interest groups affect the quality of political representation. We extend their analysis to a new dataset of majority-elected politicians of the Upper House. Our results show that sectional and cause groups do not affect defection of politicians from their constituents. This suggests that the electoral system moderates the influence of interest groups on political representation.

We demonstrate a simple model of opinion diffusion where a local opinion leader acts as the initiator of public discussion. We show the possibility of driving a significant wedge between opinions of two groups that exhibit homophily even though individuals are highly conformist. In particular, we show that there exists an opinion gap between the group which the opinion leader belongs to (referred to as the residence community) and the other group; and this opinion gap is increasing in the relative size of the residence community. Using a unique dataset of national referenda in Switzerland from 2008 to 2012, we show that members of parliament (MPs) match referenda outcomes in their residence communities closer than they do in neighboring communities, and this wedge interacts signicantly with the relative size of the residence community, thus aligning with our theoretical conjectures. We conclude that observed opinion gaps can actually be overrated to the extent that they are driven by structures that underlie the social web of different groups within the society.

Do politicians with a military background decide differently on military affairs? We investigate the informative institutional setting of the Swiss conscription army. Politicians who served in the military have a higher probability of accepting pro-military legislative proposals, even when controlling for party affiliations and revealed preferences of constituents that politicians are supposed to represent. While conscription requires all able-bodied man to serve at least as soldiers, we can exploit variation in exposure to enforced and voluntary service. This allows us to provide indicative evidence that motivation for the military, instead of compulsory service, plays a substantial role for explaining legislative decisions on military affairs.

Exploiting a natural voting experiment we identify female preferences for real policy issues in the electorate. We then analyze whether female or male politicians in parliament more closely correspond to female preferences. Holding constant revealed constituent preferences, there is generally no difference between male and female politicians with respect to representation of female preferences. However, when focusing only on social and redistribution issues, we find that female politicians correspond in their decisions more closely to female preferences.

We exploit a natural measure of congruence between politicians and their constituency' bnm bnnb fgvhjuis preferences to directly quantify the extent of legislative shirking and evaluate the mechanism of the median voter model. The median voter model explains the behavior of politicians with respect to revealed preferences of their constituency about 18.8 percentage points better than a random decision benchmark. However, it fails to account for a substantial part of its theoretical prediction of convergence. Nevertheless, competition for voters under majority rule crowds out individual charact eristics and party affiliations as potential factors which explain legislative shirking.

We identify the impact of transparency in political decision -making on the quality of political representation with a difference- in-difference strategy. The quality of political representation is measured by observed divergence of parliamentary decisions from revealed voter preferences on the very same issues. Full transparency of votes of individual politicians does not decrease divergence from voter preferences.

In Switzerland, two key church institutions – the Conference of Swiss Bishops (CSB) and the Federation of Protestant Churches (FPC) – make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this unique situation to directly measure religious organizations’ power to shape human decision making. We employ an objective measure of voters’ commitment to their religious organization to determine whether they are more likely to vote in line with this organization’s recommendations. We find that voting recommendations do indeed matter, implying that even in a secularized world, religion plays a crucial role in voting decisions.

We compare the votes of parliamentary representatives and their constituents on a popular initiative that directly aimed at weakening the separation of powers in 1922 in Switzerland. We analyze whether the strength of individual ties to the public service affect the probability of voting for the initiative , holding constituents' preferences constant. Our results indicate that while politicians tend to represent their constituents' preferences, representatives with ties to the public service have a higher probability of supporting the eligibility of public servants for the legislature. Thus, they favor reducing the separation of powers between legislature and administration.

Electoral systems determine the role party affiliations play in political representation. According to conventional expectations, politicians' party affiliations should influence political representation when they are elected by proportional representation. In contrast, majoritarian systems force politicians to converge to the median position of their constituents, and party affiliation should play no or at least a much smaller role. We test these predictions with unique quasi-experimental data within a common party system by matching referenda decisions of constituents with voting behavior of their representatives, who are elected either by a majoritarian system or proportional representation.

What determines political candidates' election prospects' We match roll call votes of candidates for the majority elected upper house of parliament who were previously in the lower house with revealed preferences of their constituency. Thereby, we obtain a direct measure of past congruence. Politicians have a significantly and quantitatively important higher probability of election when they more closely matched the preferences of their constituency. This pr ovides evidence for the direct retrospective voting rule that voters elect politicians who represented their preferences well.

We analyze whether female or male members of parliament adhere more closely to citizens' revealed preferences with quasi-experimental data. By matching individual representatives' voting behavior on legislative proposals with real referenda outcomes on the same issues, we identify the effect of gender on representatives' responsiveness to revealed preferences of the majority of voters. Overall, female members of parliament tend to adhere less to citizens' preferences than male parliamentarians. However, when party affiliation is controlled for, the effect of gender vanishes. These results are consistent with other evidence showing that women are more socially minded and tend to affiliate themselves more with left parties.

In parliament, individual representatives vote with a certain probability according to their constituents' preferences. Thus, the mechanism of the Condorcet Jury Theorem can be fruitfully applied to parliamentary representation: The probability that a majority of representatives votes according to the preferences of the majority of their constituents increases with the number of representatives per district. The political economy literature has so far disregarded this aspect. We provide a theoretical discussion and quasi-experimental evidence for the validity of the Condorcet Jury Theorem in parliamentary representation by contrasting unique data from parliamentary roll call votes and popular referenda decisions.

We assess the effect of constituents' preferences on legislators' decisions within a quasiexperimental setting: In the Swiss referendum process, citizens and legislators reveal their preferences for legislative proposals. We match roll call votes of all Swiss legislators on 102 legislative proposals with revealed constituents' preferences on exactly the same issues from 1996 to 2008. The setting allows us to quantify the quality of parliamentary representation and we identify conditions which affect convergence between constituents' preferences and legislators' decisions. Results show that a legislator's probability to accept a law proposal increases by 16.8 percentage points when district voters accept the proposal.