“
We estimate that, when the president cannot seek reelection or the economy is not in a recession, the probability of war initiation in a year is about 30 percent. By contrast, the probability significantly increases to over 60 percent when both the economy is doing poorly and the president is up for reelection. These results appear to be robust to the choice of other indicators of economic performance, such as GDP growth and changes in the unemployment rate. We also find that historical evidence back to 1897 is also consistent with the theory.
— Gregory Hess and Athanasios Orphanides, “War Politics: An Economic, Rational-Voter Framework”.
