Optimum electoral areas: Should Europe adopt a single election day?

The paper lies at the intersection between the literature on macroeconomics and politics and the literature on coordination. It uses models of politic al business cycles in an open economy setting to investigate the costs and benefits of forming electoral areas, i.e. regions where countries share the same electoral calendar. Both opportunistic and partisan models are consid ered. The main finding of the paper is that the desirability of an electora l area between two countries is enhanced when the spillovers between these countries are large and positive, and when they face symmetric shocks (or a re of comparable size). (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D72; F42.