DP11331 A Structural Model of Electoral Accountability

• Allan Drazen Boragan Aruoba
15 Jun 2016

This paper proposes a structural approach to measuring the effects of electoral accountability. We estimate a political agency model with imperfect information in order to identify and quantify discipline and selection effects, using data on U.S. governors. We …find that the possibility of reelection provides a significant incentive for incumbents to exert effort, that is, a disciplining effect. We also …find a positive but weaker selection effect. According to our model, the widely-used two-term regime improves voter welfare by 4:2% compared to a one-term regime.
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