IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v40y2012i4p537-551.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Public Choice Analysis of Congressional Franking

Author

Listed:
  • S. Tyler Edwards
  • E. Frank Stephenson
  • Melissa M. Yeoh

Abstract

Based on the rational choice assumption that politicians seek to enhance their reelection chances, the authors posit and test several hypotheses about how the use of franked mail varies across members of the House of Representatives. This study improves upon the existing literature by using a sample of all full-term representatives and by using multiple regression analysis that allows for estimation of the marginal effect of each explanatory variable after controlling for other factors that might affect franking behavior. The results of this study indicate that (1) politicians seeking higher office tend to make greater use of franked mail while those who are retiring engage in less franking, (2) narrower electoral margins, especially for first termers, are associated with more franking, (3) representatives who have larger campaign expenditures also have higher levels of franked mail, and (4) franked mail increases with a congressional district’s distance from Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation

  • S. Tyler Edwards & E. Frank Stephenson & Melissa M. Yeoh, 2012. "A Public Choice Analysis of Congressional Franking," Public Finance Review, , vol. 40(4), pages 537-551, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:40:y:2012:i:4:p:537-551
    DOI: 10.1177/1091142111432729
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142111432729
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1091142111432729?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matsusaka, John G, 1993. "Election Closeness and Voter Turnout: Evidence from California Ballot Propositions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 76(4), pages 313-334, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. , & ,, 2006. "Group formation and voter participation," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(4), pages 461-487, December.
    2. Alan Gerber & Mitchell Hoffman & John Morgan & Collin Raymond, 2020. "One in a Million: Field Experiments on Perceived Closeness of the Election and Voter Turnout," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 287-325, July.
    3. Adanu, Kwami & Hoehn, John P. & Norris, Patricia & Iglesias, Emma, 2012. "Voter decisions on eminent domain and police power reforms," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 187-194.
    4. João Amaro de Matos & Pedro Barros, 2004. "Social Norms and the Paradox of Elections’ Turnout," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 239-255, October.
    5. Fink, Alexander, 2012. "The effects of party campaign spending under proportional representation: Evidence from Germany," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 574-592.
    6. Fosco, Constanza & Laruelle, Annick & Sánchez, Angel, 2009. "Turnout Intention and Social Networks," IKERLANAK info:eu-repo/grantAgreeme, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.
    7. Anselm Hager & Johannes Hermle & Lukas Hensel & Christopher Roth, 2020. "Does Party Competition Affect Political Activism?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8431, CESifo.
    8. Mirabelle Muûls & Dimitra Petropoulou, 2013. "A swing state theory of trade protection in the Electoral College," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(2), pages 705-724, May.
    9. Mitch Kunce, 2001. "Pre-Election Polling and the Rational Voter: Evidence from State Panel Data (1986–1998)," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 107(1), pages 21-34, April.
    10. Richard J. Cebula & Gigi M. Alexander, 2017. "Female Labor Force Participation and Voter Turnout: Evidence from the American Presidential Elections," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 8(2).
    11. Joseph McMurray, 2008. "Information and Voting: the Wisdom of the Experts versus the Wisdom of the Masses," Wallis Working Papers WP59, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy.
    12. Lacombe, Donald J. & Coats, R. Morris & Shughart II, William F. & Karahan, Gökhan, 2016. "Corruption and Voter Turnout: A Spatial Econometric Approach," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 46(2), December.
    13. Cebula, Richard J., 2019. "The Voter Turnout/Relative Unemployment Rate Hypothesis," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 72(3), pages 255-280.
    14. Charles J Pattie & Ron J Johnston, 2005. "Electoral Participation and Political Context: The Turnout–Marginality Paradox at the 2001 British General Election," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(7), pages 1191-1206, July.
    15. Richard Cebula & Franklin Mixon, 2012. "Dodging the vote?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 325-343, February.
    16. Peter Calcagno & Christopher Westley, 2008. "An institutional analysis of voter turnout: the role of primary type and the expressive and instrumental voting hypotheses," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 94-110, June.
    17. Gebhard Kirchgässner & Tobias Schulz, 2005. "Expected Closeness or Mobilisation: Why Do Voters Go to the Polls? Empirical Results for Switzerland, 1981 – 1999," CESifo Working Paper Series 1387, CESifo.
    18. Yu Yu & Nita Umashankar & Vithala R. Rao, 2016. "Choosing the right target: Relative preferences for resource similarity and complementarity in acquisition choice," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(8), pages 1808-1825, August.
    19. C. Y. Cyrus Chu & S. Y. Lin & Wen‐Jen Tsay, 2021. "Estimating the Willingness to Pay for Voting when Absentee Voting is not Allowed," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1380-1393, July.
    20. Leonardo Bursztyn & Davide Cantoni & Patricia Funk & Noam Yuchtman, 2017. "Polls, the Press, and Political Participation: The Effects of Anticipated Election Closeness on Voter Turnout," Working Papers 2017-052, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.

    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:sae:pubfin:v:40:y:2012:i:4:p:537-551. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.