Discussion paper
DP13763 The Role of Electoral Incentives for Policy Innovation: Evidence from the U.S. Welfare Reform
This paper shows that electoral incentives matter for the decision to implement novel policies. Our empirical setting is the period prior to and following the U.S. welfare reform in 1996, which marked the most dramatic shift in social policy since the New Deal. Our findings indicate that governors with strong electoral support are less likely to experiment than governors with little support. Yet, governors who cannot be reelected actually experiment more than governors striving for reelection. These findings are robust to controlling for ideology, preferences for redistribution, the state legislature, and cross-state learning.
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