Michael Berlemann, Soeren Enkelmann, and Torben Kuhlenkasper,
"Unraveling the Relationship between Presidential Approval and the
Economy -- A Multidimensional Semiparametric Approach", Journal of
Applied Econometrics, Vol. 30, No. 3, 2015, pp. 468-486.

The data used for the regression analyses are stored in the file
'bek-data.csv'. This file is an ASCII file in DOS format, with
semi-colons as separators.  Within the file, "NA" corresponds to
missing values in the dataset ("Not Available").

The file bek-data.csv is zipped in bek-data.zip. Unix/Linux users
should use "unzip -a".

The response variable 'approval' is obtained from the Gallup Institute,
which publishes the results of the question "Do you approve or
disapprove of the way [name of the president] is handling his job as
president?" on a monthly base.

The employed economic covariates are obtained from the Federal Reserve
Economic Data (FRED) database from the Federal Reserve Bank of St.
Louis. (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/)

We use the time series

- UNRATE for the unemployment rate 

- CPIAUCNS for the inflation rate

- GCE less FDEFX for the governmental consumption without military
  expenditure as a share of the GDP.

The additional noneconomic control variables, which are binary coded,
are taken from 

Newman, B. and A. Forcehimes (2010): "Rally Round the Flag Events for
Presidential Approval Research", Electoral Studies, 29, 144-154

Please address any questions to 

Torben Kuhlenkasper
Pforzheim University

torben.kuhlenkasper [AT] hs-pforzheim.de