Reports

The Incumbency Effects of Signalling

Caselli, Francesco; Cunningham, Tom; Morelli, Massimo; Moreno de Barreda, Ines

Much literature on political behavior treats politicians as motivated by reelection, choosing actions to signal their types to voters. We identify a novel implication of incumbent signalling. Because incumbents only care about clearing a reelection hurdle, signals will tend to cluster just above the threshold needed for reelection. This generates a skew distribution of signals leading to an incumbency advantage in the probability of election. We also solve for the optimal threshold when voters have the ability to commit.

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More About This Work

Academic Units
Economics
Publisher
Department of Economics, Columbia University
Series
Department of Economics Discussion Papers, 1213-05
Published Here
November 7, 2012