IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2003-057.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents? Experimentation vs. Career Concerns

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Ben Lockwood
  • Mr. Eric Le Borgne

Abstract

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between an incumbent officeholder and the electorate, where the officeholder is initially uninformed about her ability. If officeholder effort and ability interact in the "production function" that determines performance in office, then an officeholder has an incentive to experiment-that is, raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of her ability. Elections reduce the experimentation effect, and the reduction in this effect may more than offset the positive "career-concerns" effect of elections on effort. Moreover, when this occurs, appointment of officeholders may Pareto-dominate elections.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Ben Lockwood & Mr. Eric Le Borgne, 2003. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents? Experimentation vs. Career Concerns," IMF Working Papers 2003/057, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2003/057
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=16358
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    2. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 199-217.
    3. Dhillon, Amrita & Lockwood, Ben, 2004. "When are plurality rule voting games dominance-solvable?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 55-75, January.
    4. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    5. Mirman, Leonard J & Samuelson, Larry & Urbano, Amparo, 1993. "Monopoly Experimentation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 34(3), pages 549-563, August.
    6. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    7. Wittman, Donald, 1989. "Why Democracies Produce Efficient Results," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1395-1424, December.
    8. le Borgne, E. & Lockwood, B., 2000. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 580, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    9. Prescott, Edward C, 1972. "The Multi-Period Control Problem Under Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 40(6), pages 1043-1058, November.
    10. Gibbons, Robert & Waldman, Michael, 1999. "Careers in organizations: Theory and evidence," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 36, pages 2373-2437, Elsevier.
    11. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 199-217.
    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. Otto Swank & Bauke Visser, 2006. "Do elections lead to informed public decisions?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 435-460, December.
    2. Koch, Alexander K. & Morgenstern, Albrecht & Raab, Philippe, 2004. "An Experimental Test of Career Concerns," IZA Discussion Papers 1405, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Phongthorn Wrasai, 2005. "Politicians' Motivation, Role of Elections, and Policy Choices," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 05-050/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Mr. Eric Le Borgne & Mr. Gauti B. Eggertsson, 2007. "Dynamic Incentives and the Optimal Delegation of Political Power," IMF Working Papers 2007/091, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Eric Le Borgne, 2010. "A Political Agency Theory of Central Bank Independence," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(4), pages 647-677, June.
    6. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Eric Le Borgne, 2005. "The politics of central bank independence: a theory of pandering and learning in government," Staff Reports 205, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    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. Le Borgne, Eric & Lockwood, Ben, 2000. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents?," Economic Research Papers 269351, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    2. Eric Borgne & Ben Lockwood, 2006. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents? Learning vs. Re-Election Concerns," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 41-60, October.
    3. Le Borgne, Eric & Lockwood, Ben, 2004. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents? Learning vs. Career Concerns," Economic Research Papers 269608, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    4. Simon Burgess & Carol Propper & Marisa Ratto & Emma Tominey, 2017. "Incentives in the Public Sector: Evidence from a Government Agency," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 117-141, October.
    5. Schinkel, M.P. & Tóth, L. & Tuinstra, J., 2014. "Discretionary Authority and Prioritizing in Government Agencies," CeNDEF Working Papers 14-15, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.
    6. Luis Garicano & Luis Rayo, 2016. "Why Organizations Fail: Models and Cases," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(1), pages 137-192, March.
    7. Uwe Jirjahn & Erik Poutsma, 2013. "The Use of Performance Appraisal Systems: Evidence from Dutch Establishment Data," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 801-828, October.
    8. Byford, Martin C., 2017. "Moral hazard in strategic decision making," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 114-136.
    9. Ash, Elliott & MacLeod, W. Bentley, 2021. "Reducing partisanship in judicial elections can improve judge quality: Evidence from U.S. state supreme courts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    10. Liu, Taoxiong & Zhou, Bihua, 2011. "Commitment and optimal incentive," MPRA Paper 35550, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 20 Dec 2011.
    11. Mr. Eric Le Borgne & Mr. Ben Lockwood, 2002. "Candidate Entry, Screening, and the Political Budget Cycle," IMF Working Papers 2002/048, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    13. Ghosh, Suman, 2007. "Job mobility and careers in firms," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 603-621, June.
    14. Laurent Franckx & Isabelle Brose, 2004. "A theoretical framework for incentives in the public sector," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 10(2), pages 1-8.
    15. Bingley, P. & Eriksson, T, 2001. "Pay Spread and Skewness. Employee Effort and Firm Productivity," Papers 01-2, Aarhus School of Business - Department of Economics.
    16. He, Zhenyu & Tang, Yuwei, 2023. "Local environmental constraints and firms’ export product quality: Evidence from China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    17. Lagunoff, Roger, 2006. "Credible communication in dynastic government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 59-86, January.
    18. Ishida, Junichiro, 2004. "Signaling and strategically delayed promotion," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(6), pages 687-700, December.
    19. Thiele, Veikko, 2007. "Performance measurement in multi-task agencies," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 148-163, September.
    20. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "The size and scope of government:: Comparative politics with rational politicians," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 699-735, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    WP; disp-formula id;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:imf:imfwpa:2003/057. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.