Paper #962

Títol:

The informational value of incumbency

Autors:

Humberto Llavador i Carmen Beviá

Data:

Abril 2006

Resum:

This paper proposes an argument that explains incumbency advantage without recurring to the collective irresponsibility of legislatures. For that purpose, we exploit the informational value of incumbency: incumbency confers voters information about governing politicians not available from challengers. Because there are many reasons for high reelection rates different from incumbency status, we propose a measure of incumbency advantage that improves the use of pure reelection success. We also study the relationship between incumbency advantage and ideological and selection biases. An important implication of our analysis is that the literature linking incumbency and legislature irresponsibility most likely provides an overestimation of the latter.

Paraules clau:

Incumbency, information, candidate quality, selection bias, ideology

Codis JEL:

D72, D78

Àrea de Recerca:

Economia Laboral, Pública, de Desenvolupament i de la Salut

Publicat a:

Journal of Public Economic Theory, Vol. 11 (5):775 - 798, 2009

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