2012 Reports
The Incumbency Effects of Signalling
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.
Subjects
Files
- DP1213-05.pdf application/pdf 515 KB Download File
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