The informational value of incumbency
Abstract
This paper proposes an argument that explains incumbency advantage without recurring to the collective irresponsibility of legislatures. For that purpose, we exploit the informational value of incumbency: incumbency confers voters information about governing politicians not available from challengers. Because there are many reasons for high reelection rates different from incumbency status, we propose a measure of incumbency advantage that improves the use of pure reelection success. We also study the relationship between incumbency advantage and ideological and selection biases. An important implication of our analysis is that the literature linking incumbency and legislature irresponsibility most likely provides an overestimation of the latter.Download Info
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Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 962.Length:
Date of creation: Apr 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:962
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.econ.upf.edu/
Related research
Keywords: Incumbency; information; candidate quality; selection bias; ideology;Other versions of this item:
- Carmen Bevi� & Humberto Llavador, 2009. "The Informational Value of Incumbency," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(5), pages 773-796, October.
- Carmen Bevia & Humberto Llavador, 2006. "The Informational Value of Incumbency," Working Papers 276, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
- 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).
- 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-Making and Implementation
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2006-06-03 (All new papers)
- NEP-POL-2006-06-03 (Positive Political Economics)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135.
- 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, MIT Press, vol. 119(3), pages 807-859, August.
- 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.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Enriqueta Aragones & Santiago Sanchez-Pages, 2010.
"The disadvantage of winning an election,"
ESE Discussion Papers
194, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
- Aragonès, Enriqueta & Sánchez-Pagés, Santiago, 2010. "The disadvantage of winning an election," SIRE Discussion Papers 2010-21, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
- Enriqueta Aragonès & Santiago Sánchez-Pagés, 2010. "The Disadvantage of Winning an Election," Working Papers 439, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
- Enriqueta Aragonès & Santiago Sánchez-Pagés, 2010. "The disadvantage of winning an election," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 811.10, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
- Roland Hodler & Simon Loertscher & Dominic Rohner, 2007.
"Inefficient Policies and Incumbency Advantage,"
Department of Economics - Working Papers Series
996, The University of Melbourne.
- 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.
- Hodler, R. & Loertscher , S. & Rohner, D., 2007. "Inefficient Policies and Incumbency Advantage," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0738, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
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