IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/emc/wpaper/dte494.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who Runs Against the Incumbent? Candidate Entry Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Luciana Moscoso Boedo

    (Division of Economics, CIDE)

Abstract

This paper offers an explanation for the common observation that political incumbents not only frequently win reelection, but often face weak competition or no competition at all when running for reelection. I explain this outcome by modeling the entry decision of potential election candidates as a process of self-selection. Candidates choose either to enter a political race against a known-quality incumbent or to wait for an open election. The model predicts that the entry decision is non-monotonic in candidate quality: both low quality and very high quality candidates choose to enter the race. The tendency of mid-quality candidates to stay out increases the ex-ante probability that the incumbent will win, suggesting an explanation for incumbency advantage, the existence of uncontested races, and of 'sacrificial lambs'.

Suggested Citation

  • Luciana Moscoso Boedo, 2010. "Who Runs Against the Incumbent? Candidate Entry Decisions," Working papers DTE 494, CIDE, División de Economía.
  • Handle: RePEc:emc:wpaper:dte494
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economiamexicana.cide.edu/RePEc/emc/pdf/DTE/DTE494.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1982. "Limit Pricing and Entry under Incomplete Information: An Equilibrium Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 443-459, March.
    2. Carson, Jamie L. & Engstrom, Erik J. & Roberts, Jason M., 2007. "Candidate Quality, the Personal Vote, and the Incumbency Advantage in Congress," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(2), pages 289-301, May.
    3. Stephen Morris, 2001. "Political Correctness," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 231-265, April.
    4. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Matthew F. Mitchell & Andrea Moro, 2004. "Why Do Incumbent Senators Win? Evidence from a Dynamic Selection Model," NBER Working Papers 10748, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    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. Lagerlof, Johan & Frisell, Lars, 2004. "Lobbying, Information Transmission and Unequal Representation," CEPR Discussion Papers 4313, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. 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).
    3. Yazaki, Yukihiro, 2018. "The effects of bureaucracy on political accountability and electoral selection," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 57-68.
    4. Kyle Bagwell & Garey Ramey, 1988. "Advertising and Limit Pricing," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(1), pages 59-71, Spring.
    5. Anders Gustafsson, 2019. "Busy doing nothing: why politicians implement inefficient policies," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 282-299, September.
    6. Kunal Sengupta & Amal Sanyal, 2004. "Delegation in a Cheap-Talk Game: A Voting Example," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 471, Econometric Society.
    7. Vaccari, Federico, 2023. "Competition in costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    8. Aleksei Smirnov & Egor Starkov, 2019. "Timing of predictions in dynamic cheap talk: experts vs. quacks," ECON - Working Papers 334, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    9. Michael Waldman, 1987. "Underinvestment in Entry Deterrence: When and Why," UCLA Economics Working Papers 456, UCLA Department of Economics.
    10. Miguel Ángel Ropero, 2021. "Entry deterrence when the potential entrant is your competitor in a different market," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(3), pages 1010-1030, January.
    11. Lindsey, Robin & West, Douglas S., 2003. "Predatory pricing in differentiated products retail markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 551-592, April.
    12. Joo, Hailey Hayeon & Lee, Jungmin, 2018. "Encountering female politicians," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 88-122.
    13. Bagwell, Kyle & Wolinsky, Asher, 2002. "Game theory and industrial organization," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 49, pages 1851-1895, Elsevier.
    14. Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2011. "Dictators And Their Viziers: Endogenizing The Loyalty–Competence Trade‐Off," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(5), pages 903-930, October.
    15. Gayle, Philip G. & Wu, Chi-Yin, 2013. "A re-examination of incumbents’ response to the threat of entry: Evidence from the airline industry," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 119-130.
    16. Srihari Govindan & Robert Wilson, 2009. "On Forward Induction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(1), pages 1-28, January.
    17. Flavio Toxvaerd, 2017. "Dynamic limit pricing," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(1), pages 281-306, March.
    18. Andrade de Sá, Saraly & Daubanes, Julien, 2016. "Limit pricing and the (in)effectiveness of the carbon tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 28-39.
    19. Sibert, Anne, 2002. "Monetary policy with uncertain central bank preferences," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(6), pages 1093-1109, June.
    20. Kim-Sau Chung & Peter Eso, 2007. "Signalling with Career Concerns," Discussion Papers 1443, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incumbent; Candidate; Entry Decisions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    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:emc:wpaper:dte494. 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: Alfonso Miranda (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cideemx.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.