IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aub/autbar/662.06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Informational Value of Incumbency

Author

Abstract

This paper proposes an argument that explains incumbency advantage with- out recurring to the collective irresponsibility of legislatures. For that purpose, we exploit the informational value of incumbency: incumbency confers voters informa- ion about governing politicians not available from challengers. Because there are many reasons for high reelection rates di?erent from incumbency status, we pro- pose a measure of incumbency advantage that improves the use of pure reelection uccess. We also study the relationship between incumbency advantage and ideo- ogical and selection biases. An important implication of our analysis is that the iterature linking incumbency and legislature irresponsibility most likely provides an overestimation of the latter.

Suggested Citation

  • Carmen Bevi? & Humberto Llavador, 2006. "The Informational Value of Incumbency," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 662.06, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    • Handle: RePEc:aub:autbar:662.06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://pareto.uab.es/wp/2006/66206.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Walter J. Stone & L. Sandy Maisel & Cherie D. Maestas, 2004. "Quality Counts: Extending the Strategic Politician Model of Incumbent Deterrence," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(3), pages 479-495, July.
    2. David S. Lee & Enrico Moretti & Matthew J. Butler, 2004. "Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U. S. House," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 807-859.
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135-135.
    4. Larry Samuelson, 1984. "Electoral equilibria with restricted strategies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 307-327, January.
    5. Richard D. Mckelvey & Raymond Riezman, 2013. "Seniority in Legislature," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 12, pages 185-199, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    7. Alesina, Alberto, 1988. "Credibility and Policy Convergence in a Two-Party System with Rational Voters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 796-805, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hodler, Roland & Loertscher, Simon & Rohner, Dominic, 2010. "Inefficient policies and incumbency advantage," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 761-767, October.
    2. Enriqueta Aragonès & Santiago Sánchez-Pagés, 2014. "Incumbency (dis)advantage when citizens can propose Abstract:This paper analyses the problem that an incumbent faces during the legislature when deciding how to react to citizen proposals such as the ," UB School of Economics Working Papers 2014/314, University of Barcelona School of Economics.
    3. Bryan C. McCannon & Joylynn Pruitt, 2018. "Taking on the boss: Informative contests in prosecutor elections," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(5), pages 657-671, October.
    4. Enriqueta Aragonès & Santiago Sánchez-Páges, 2010. "The Disadvantage of Winning an Election," Working Papers 439, Barcelona School of Economics.
    5. Christopher Duquette & Franklin Mixon & Richard Cebula, 2013. "The Impact of Legislative Tenure and Seniority on General Election Success: Econometric Evidence from U.S. House Races," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 41(2), pages 161-172, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Barbosa, Klenio & Ferreira, Fernando, 2023. "Occupy government: Democracy and the dynamics of personnel decisions and public finances," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    2. Ferreira, Fernando & Gyourko, Joseph, 2014. "Does gender matter for political leadership? The case of U.S. mayors," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 24-39.
    3. Solé-Ollé, Albert & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2013. "Do political parties matter for local land use policies?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 42-56.
    4. Per G. Fredriksson & Le Wang & Patrick L Warren, 2013. "Party Politics, Governors, and Economic Policy," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(1), pages 106-126, July.
    5. Irma Clots-Figueras, 2012. "Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 212-244, January.
    6. Solé-Ollé, Albert & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2013. "Do political parties matter for local land use policies?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 42-56.
    7. Patrick Button, 2015. "A Replication of 'Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U.S. House' (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2004)," Working Papers 1518, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    8. Magnus Carlsson & Gordon B. Dahl & Dan-Olof Rooth, 2015. "Backlash in Policy Attitudes After the Election of Extreme Political Parties," NBER Working Papers 21062, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Eduardo Fé, 2010. "An application of local linear regression with asymmetric kernels to regression discontinuity designs," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1016, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    10. Klenio Barbosa & Fernando V. Ferreira, 2019. "Occupy Government: Democracy and the Dynamics of Personnel Decisions and Public Sector Performance," NBER Working Papers 25501, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Carlsson, Magnus & Dahl, Gordon B. & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2016. "Do Politicians Change Public Attitudes?," IZA Discussion Papers 10349, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Fredriksson, Per G. & Wang, Le & Mamun, Khawaja A., 2011. "Are politicians office or policy motivated? The case of U.S. governors' environmental policies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 241-253, September.
    13. Ferraz, Claudio & Finan, Frederico S., 2008. "Motivating Politicians: The Impacts of Monetary Incentives on Quality and Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 3411, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2011. "Competing on Good Politicians," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 79-99, February.
    15. Gouvêa, Raphael & Girardi, Daniele, 2021. "Partisanship and local fiscal policy: Evidence from Brazilian cities," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    16. Caselli, Francesco & Morelli, Massimo & Moreno de Barreda, Inés & Cunningham, Tom, 2012. "Signalling, Incumbency Advantage, and Optimal Reelection Thresholds," CEPR Discussion Papers 8832, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Hoffman, Mitchell & León, Gianmarco & Lombardi, María, 2017. "Compulsory voting, turnout, and government spending: Evidence from Austria," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 103-115.
    18. Navid Sabet, 2023. "Turning out for redistribution: the effect of voter turnout on top marginal tax rates," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 194(3), pages 347-367, March.
    19. Stefano Gagliarducci & M. Daniele Paserman, 2012. "Gender Interactions within Hierarchies: Evidence from the Political Arena," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 1021-1052.
    20. Bhalotra, Sonia & Clots-Figueras, Irma & Iyer, Lakshmi, 2021. "Religion and abortion: The role of politician identity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incumbency; information; candidate quality; selection bias; ideology.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aub:autbar:662.06. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Xavier Vila (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ufuabes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.