Nature's choice? a study of the displacement of incumbents in elections

• Autor(a) principal: Canen, Nathan Joseph
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10438/10937
• topic: Regression discontinuity; Incomplete information; Incumbency; Regressão em descontinuidade; Efeitos de incumbência; Informação incompleta; Economia; Eleições - Modelos econômicos

How do economic shocks affect the behaviour of elections in democracies? Using U.S. Congress electoral data, I test whether sudden shocks affect unequally incumbent par- ties and opponents. This is identified through, among other procedures, a regression discontinuity design. I consider possible theoretical channels for this effect, where cit- izens cannot perfectly observe whether their lack of public goods is due to an adverse shock, or due to private consumption by a politician. I find that, with observable shocks close to the election, there is no effect. Empirical evidence is consistent with the theory.