Motivation of politicians and long-term policies

Müller, Markus

doi:10.1007/s11127-007-9151-3

Cited by 23 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Electoral accountability alone appears ill‐suited to properly incentivize policy makers to seek appropriate long‐term policy solutions to fundamental long‐term economic, financial, and environmental problems. This provides an additional rationale to recent attempts that develop complementary accountability mechanisms (Gersbach and Liessem 2008; Mueller 2007) intended to alleviate some of the deficiencies arising from what Sir Winston Churchill has termed “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short‐ and Long‐Term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy

Bechtel

Hainmueller

2011

American J Political Sci

348

224

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Dominant theories of electoral behavior emphasize that voters myopically evaluate policy performance and that this shortsightedness may obstruct the welfare-improving effect of democratic accountability. However, we know little about how long governments receive electoral credit for beneficial policies. We exploit the massive policy response to a major natural disaster, the 2002 Elbe flooding in Germany, to provide an upper bound for the short-and long-term electoral returns to targeted policy benefits. We estimate that the flood response increased vote shares for the incumbent party by 7 percentage points in affected areas in the 2002 election. Twenty-five percent of this short-term reward carried over to the 2005 election before the gains vanished in the 2009 election. We conclude that, given favorable circumstances, policy makers can generate voter gratitude that persists longer than scholarship has acknowledged so far, and elaborate on the implications for theories of electoral behavior, democratic accountability, and public policy.E lections incentivize politicians to calibrate policy to voter preferences if voters reward good and punish poor policy performance electorally. This incentivizing effect of electoral accountability crucially depends on voters' retrospective evaluations. To secure the welfare-improving effect of democracy, voters need to remember, evaluate, and reward the policies that incumbents deliver. Yet, many perceive citizens as having a short-lived memory when it comes to political issues and electoral choice (

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short‐ and Long‐Term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy

Bechtel

Hainmueller

2011

American J Political Sci

348

224

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…There is also a literature on officemotivated politicians, so called populists, who pander to the public by pursuing short-term policies to maximize reelection chances. The concern of this literature is how to give incentives to implement projects that are beneficial in the long term but come at costs in the short term [see, e.g., Müller (2007); Gersbach (2004)]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Endogenous Enforcement of Intellectual Property, North–south Trade, and Growth

Schäfer

Schneider

2014

Macroecon. Dynam.

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Now that most countries have harmonized intellectual property right (IPR) legislation as a consequence of signing the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), the dispute about the optimal level of IPR protection has shifted toward IPR enforcement. This paper develops an endogenous growth framework with two open economies satisfying the classical North-South assumptions to study (a) the regions' incentives to enforce IPRs in a decentralized game, (b) the desired IPR enforcement of the two regions in negotiation rounds on global harmonization, and (c) the constrained efficient enforcement level. We show how the different solutions relate to each other and how the results depend on the research productivity in the North and the regions' relative market sizes. Although growth rates increase substantially when IPR enforcement is harmonized at the North's desired level, our numerical simulation suggests that the South may also benefit in terms of long-run welfare.

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“…Political scientists have long established that reelection is among the most powerful political motivators (Beniers and Dur, 2007;Glazer et al, 1998;Kroszner and Stratmann 1998;Muller, 2007). In the U.S., the fate of politicians' careers is intimately connected with the economic well-being of their constituents (Grossman and Helpman, 1994;Nezi, 2012;Pacek and Radcliff, 1995;Shah et al, 1999).…”

Section: Theoretical Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

We Fly Congress: Market Actions as Corporate Political Activity in the U.S. Airline Industry

Pang¹,

Funk

Hirschman

2020

Proceedings

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The literature on corporate political activity (CPA) generally views nonmarket actions aimed at influencing political actors (e.g., lobbying or campaign contributions) as related but separate activities from market actions. This study demonstrates how firms' core market actions (e.g., market entry or geographic expansion) can function as CPA. We theorize two mechanisms through which firms leverage market actions as CPA-"pork" and "perk." We document these mechanisms through an empirical analysis of data from the U.S. airline industry over 30 years (1990-2019). Specifically, we find that airlines increase the supply of flights from airports in the home district of the Chair of the Transportation Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives (pork). Moreover, this increase in flight supplies is negatively associated with formal policy changes in Congress. We also find that the airlines increase the supply of flights to Washington, D.C. from the home district of the Speaker of the House and the home state of the Senate Majority Leader (perk). We contribute to the literature on CPA by demonstrating a blurred boundary between market and nonmarket actions, which may help explain firms' competitive actions that cannot be explained by market considerations alone.-2-"Something is broken, and the obvious divide between passengers and airlines needs to be addressed."-Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), Chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the U.S. House of Representatives

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Motivation of politicians and long-term policies

Abstract: Democracy, Elections, Incentive contracts,

Cited by 23 publications

References 18 publications

How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short‐ and Long‐Term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy

How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short‐ and Long‐Term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy

Endogenous Enforcement of Intellectual Property, North–south Trade, and Growth

We Fly Congress: Market Actions as Corporate Political Activity in the U.S. Airline Industry

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