IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/2381.html

Elected Versus Appointed Regulators: Theory And Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Besley, Tim
  • Coate, Stephen

Abstract

This paper contrasts direct election with political appointment of regulators. When regulators are appointed, regulatory policy becomes bundled with other policy issues for which the appointing politicians are responsible. Since regulatory issues are not salient for most voters, regulatory policy outcomes reflect the preferences of party élites and special interests. Direct election of regulators strengthens the power of voters by ensuring the saliency of regulatory issues. Using panel data on regulatory outcomes from US states, we find evidence in favour of the idea that elected states are more pro-consumer in their regulatory policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Besley, Tim & Coate, Stephen, 2000. "Elected Versus Appointed Regulators: Theory And Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 2381, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:2381
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP2381
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    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:cpr:ceprdp:2381. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.