Around the world people today participate in May Day demonstrations (some call them ‘celebrations’) and in some countries it is even a public holiday. But why do people participate in May Day demonstrations? My good friend Professor Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard has the answer: It’s the weather, stupid!
Here is the abstract from Peter’s 2010 paper on the topic:
“We investigate the possible explanations of variations in aggregate levels of participation in large-scale political demonstrations. A simple public choice inspired model is applied to data derived from the annual May Day demonstrations of the Danish socialist parties and labour movement taking place in Copenhagen in the period 1980-2009. The most important explanatory variables are variation in the weather conditions. Political variables exhibit few or no robust effects and socio-economic variables none.”
Judging from the weather in Copenhagen today the annual May Day demonstrations will be well-attended (I will not be there…)
The Market Monetarist 
Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard
/ May 1, 2013Thanks. Actually, Lars, the final version of the paper (with some minor changes in the statistics) is here (to be published this month by “Public Choice”):
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11127-012-9914-3 (gated version)
http://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/27891.html (final draft, not gated)