Published since January 1, 2010

Statistics, Politics and Policy

ISSN: 2151-7509

Editor-in-chief: Uwe Wagschal

About this journal

Objective
Statistics, Politics, and Policy studies the ways that statistical analysis drives public policy decisions, and publishes significant research on the application of statistical ideas to problems that relate to policy implementation.

The increasing amount and complexity of available data is constantly creating new challenges for statistical thinking in policy problems. While many academic statisticians tend to share among themselves their latest methods and models, less attention has been paid to the usefulness of those statistical methods and models to inform public policy decisions, and what statistical approaches might be most effective in designing how policies are implemented. In the policy sphere, statistical methods are sometimes taken as a given, with less attention to all the variations, assumptions, and effects of different methods in differing contexts. But it is in the policy sphere that statistical debates can have the great value and impact, and the intersection of statistics and public policy is a fertile ground for statistical research and analysis to address important policy issues that may have widespread ramifications.

As an electronic journal, Statistics, Politics, and Policy will use a mix of voices and approaches to reach a broad audience. The journal aims to open avenues of communication between statisticians and policy makers on questions that pique the interest of the public. The primary objective of the journal will be to highlight the use of innovative statistical methodology in order to elucidate and resolve important public policy issues.

Statistics, Politics, and Policy will publish applied research articles that explore the implications of statistical thinking and methods applied to public policy issues. The journal will also publish engaging commentary pieces and innovative policy ideas on the public issues of the day where statistics plays, or ought to play, a role.

Papers for the commentary and ideas section are short, ideally 600-2000 words, and are intended to be of general interest and readability. That is, they should contain deeper analysis than is found on the Op-Ed page of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, but to be of comparable interest the Statistics, Politics, and Policy readership.

Topics

Applied statistical research
Policy issues
Educational testing and policy
Energy and environmental policy
Demography
Climate change
Public finance
History and review of statistical ideas applied to public policy controversies
Taxation and business policy
Justice, crime and forensic analyses
Health policy including health care finance
Drug development
Approval and monitoring
Politics
Sociological policy analyses
Statistical methodology including study design and causal inference, and survey methods

Article formats
Research articles, commentaries

Your Benefits

CALL FOR PAPERS

Topic: Machine Learning
Submission Deadline: 31.07.2022
Please see the call details in the PDF at the bottom of this page

Topic: Polarization (call extended)
Submission Deadline: 31.03.2022
Please see the call details in the PDF at the bottom of this page

The current Call for Papers does not correspond with your research topic? Submit your paper to our regular issues if your field of research corresponds with the overall focus of Statistics, Politics and Policy (SPP). We are always looking forward to publish new and innovative contributions to the fields of political, social, economic and statistical sciences.

Your benefits

Prestigious editors
High quality peer review
International recognition of the journal
Innovative approach to Statistics, Politics and Policy
Practical use of scientific knowledge in policy implementation

From 2021 onwards, Statistics, Politics and Policy awards the Emil J. Gumbel Prize for outstanding contributions to the Journal.
All submitted full articles and research notes are eligible to win this award. The award comes with a modest financial reward of 500 $ and the full recognition regarding the merits of the published research contribution.
The award winner is chosen annually by members of our editorial board.　

History

From 2022 onwards, three issues/year, updated continuously
ISSN: 2151-7509

Abstracting and Indexing

Statistics, Politics and Policy is covered by the following services:

Baidu Scholar
CNKI Scholar (China National Knowledge Infrastructure)
CNPIEC - cnpLINKer
Current Index to Statistics
Dimensions
EBSCO (relevant databases)
EBSCO Discovery Service
EconBiz
ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences)
Genamics JournalSeek
Google Scholar
IBR (International Bibliography of Reviews of Scholarly Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences)
IBZ (International Bibliography of Periodical Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences)
J-Gate
JournalTOCs
KESLI-NDSL (Korean National Discovery for Science Leaders)
MyScienceWork
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Naviga (Softweco)
Primo Central (ExLibris)
ProQuest (relevant databases)
Publons
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ReadCube
RePEc (Research Papers in Economics): IDEAS, EconPapers
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SCOPUS
Semantic Scholar
Sherpa/RoMEO
Summon (ProQuest)
TDNet
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory/ulrichsweb
WanFang Data
WorldCat (OCLC)
X-MOL
Yewno Discover

Supplementary Materials

Topics

External Links

Online Submission of Manuscripts

Volume 13 Issue 2

June 2022

Publicly Available June 13, 2022

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iii

Download PDF

May 31, 2022

Politically Viable U.S. Electoral College Reform

Geoffrey Wise

Page range: 119-143

Abstract

The U.S. Electoral College’s winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes creates a high susceptibility to disputes and errors, but past reform attempts have glossed over their likely disruptions to power balances among states and between the two political parties. This gap is filled by connecting pragmatic models of power shifts and election disputability to a historically informed probabilistic model of future elections. This methodology is then applied to a continuum of reform proposals between the current system and the Lodge-Gossett version of a national popular vote. The results show that a modest smoothing of winner-take-all near the toss-up point delivers a good tradeoff between reducing dispute frequency and distorting power balances, enabling meaningful reform in an era of high polarization. This conclusion holds for extrapolation of the current national landscape into near-future elections, as well as for more arbitrary distributions of partisans among states to represent far-future landscapes. However, as electoral award smoothing diminishes the frequency of disputed elections, it inevitably broadens their scope.

May 31, 2022

Voting for Eurosceptic Parties and Societal Polarization in the Aftermath of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

Maike Rump

Page range: 145-162

Abstract

The question of whether people voting for Eurosceptic parties in almost every European country is simply a democratic way of expressing a political opinion, or if it presents a threat to democracy by giving a voice to Eurosceptic parties that challenge the EU in a populist manner, has not lost its currency since the 2008 European sovereign dept crisis. In fact, at the first glance, the situation of anti-Corona protestors in Canada or Germany seems comparable. But contrary to some scholars, I argue that it was the economic crisis that first visualized the interdependency of the EU members to the citizens, and was, therefore, the ideal setting for populists to create an atmosphere of mistrust, with the help of the media in some countries. This Research Note addresses the undertheorized link between populism and crisis, by developing a theoretical model focussing on the aggregate level, which shows that EU-membership duration is a crucial factor in explaining voting for Eurosceptic parties. I use data from the European Social Survey and compare a period from 2002 to 2016, conducting trend analysis and difference-in-difference-estimation. My analysis reveals that Eurosceptic parties are more successful in those countries, where anti-EU protest has already been established before. In addition, I find a delayed crisis effect. This could be important for our understanding of the current Covid-19-crisis, which is a health crisis in first place, but a threat to democratic values and instrumentalized by populists as well.

April 11, 2022

Improving the Explanation of Electoral Behavior Through a Combination of Historical and Local Context – The Case of the AfD’s Results at the Federal Election in Germany in 2017

Sebastian Jäckle

Page range: 163-199

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which an approach that takes into account the historical and spatial context of an election can contribute to a better understanding of electoral dynamics in general. It applies this approach to the analysis of the results of the populist radical right party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) at the 2017 federal election in Germany. Making use of a newly compiled dataset at the municipality level in Germany, local context will first be included in a direct way, measured by distances from the municipalities to relevant geographical markers that can be associated with a long-term or a short-term historical legacy. These spatial points include former Nazi concentration camps (main camps as well as relevant sub-camps) in order to test for the long-term legacy, first reception facilities for refugees during the so-called “refugee crisis” (2015–16) as markers of one of the most incisive developments of the recent past in Germany. Additionally, the distance to the Eastern border is tested, as this variable has proven to be relevant in the context of earlier studies on the AfD. Second, actively modeling spatial non-stationarity using Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) in an exploratory manner shows that most effects on the strength of the AfD at the municipality level (from modernization loser theory to the contact hypothesis) vary significantly and considerably in terms of strength throughout Germany.

May 31, 2022

The Politics of Income Inequality: Redistribution, Turnout and Responsiveness

Matthew Polacko

Page range: 201-218

Abstract

Income inequality is viewed as one of the greatest challenges facing democracies today. Democracy is predicated on the ideal of equality, but political inequality occurs when the preferences of some are systematically afforded more weight in the political process than others. This research paper investigates the causal chain that allows for political inequality to arise through preference formation, articulation, and aggregation, by outlining the effects that income inequality can have on preferences for redistribution, political participation, and policy responsiveness. It finds that the policy choices presented to the electorate substantially matter for democracy, especially so in this age of increasing income inequality. There appears to be a lack of policy choice provided by political parties resulting in unequal policy responsiveness to the preferences of lower-income earners.

March 16, 2022

Economy, Commerce, and Energy: How Do the Factors Influence Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Japan? An Application of ARDL Model

Syed Mahbubur Rahman, Yasuhiro Ogura, Md. Nasir Uddin, Rezwanul Haque, Syed Mustafizur Rahman

Page range: 219-233

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) traps heat from the sun, and thereby prevents oceans from becoming frozen solid to keep the earth habitable. CO 2 emission also stimulates global warming and increases the pace of climate change. For such contradictory influences, researchers across the globe have shown interest in examining the relationship among energy, emission, trade and commerce, focusing on different regions, including the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Investigation from a developed country perspective is understudied. Hence, this research aims at analysing how trade and commerce, urbanisation, energy consumption, and economy affect the volume of CO 2 emission in Japan. The World Bank database was used to collect data for 1960–2010. The findings suggest that the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic progress and carbon emissions follows the Environmental Kuznets Curve theorem. However, per capita energy consumption has no significant impact on emission in the long run; the trade volume does not directly affect the emission of CO 2 in Japan. Besides, the ratio of the urban population shows a negative impact on carbon emission in the long run.

May 31, 2022

Bayesian Switching Volatility Models for Analysing Stock Returns in Ghana

Edward Akurugu, Irene Dekomwine Angbing, Suleman Nasiru, Abdul Ghaniyyu Abubakari

Page range: 235-254

Abstract

The goal of this research was to use Bayesian switching volatility models to model the stock returns of the GCB, bank in Ghana. Monthly stock prices of GCB bank for the period of 138 months were used for the study. The two-state Markov-Switching GARCH models were used in the study to determine the best model for modelling and forecasting the stock returns. The Deviance Information Criteria was considered when selecting the best model. Based on the Deviance Information Criteria, E-GARCH variance specification with skewed student- t innovation was shown to be appropriate for modelling the stock returns. The estimates of the best model showed the first regime to exhibit the features of “turbulent market conditions” while the second regime exhibits “tranquil market conditions”. The risk analysis finds the best model to generally perform better in estimating both Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall at 1% rather than 5%. The study advises investors to invest in GCB bank because of the high returns connected with the stock and the fact that when “turbulent market conditions” arise, the recovery rate for these stocks is faster.

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Volume 13 (2022)

Volume 12 (2021)

Volume 11 (2020)

Volume 10 (2019)

Volume 9 (2018)

Volume 8 (2017)

Volume 3 (2012)

Volume 2 (2011)

Issue 1

Volume 1 (2010)

Issue 1

European Reference Index for the Humanities

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Editorial

Editor
Uwe Wagschal, University of Freiburg, Germany

Assistant Managing Editor
Felix Ettensperger, University of Freiburg, Germany

Associate Editors
David W. Nickerson, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA
Georg Wenzelburger, University of Kaiserlautern, Germany

Editorial Board
Hanna Bäck, Lund University, Sweden
Keith Dowding, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Carsten Jensen, Aarhus University, Denmark
Gary King, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Bernhard Kittel, University of Vienna, Austria
Maria Kolosnitsyna, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Jonathan Slapin, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Adrian Vatter, University of Bern, Switzerland
Barbara Vis, Utrecht University, Netherlands

(Deutsch)

Online ISSN: 2151-7509
Print ISSN: 2194-6299
Type: Journal
Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
First published: January 1, 2010
Publication Frequency: 3 Issues per Year
Audience: Professional statisticians, statistically trained professionals from fields including epidemiology, education, economics, law, and policy analysis; policy analysts, and anyone interested in the implicit yet powerful ways that statistical thinking influences decisions that affect many aspects of public life.