IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v129y2006i1p41-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents? Learning vs. Re-Election Concerns

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Borgne
  • Ben Lockwood

Abstract

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between office-holder and an electorate, where everyone is initially uninformed about the office-holder’s ability. If office-holder effort and ability interact in the determination of performance in office, then an office-holder has an incentive to learn, i.e., raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of her ability. Elections reduce the learning effect, and the reduction in this effect may more than offset the positive “re-election concerns” effect of elections on effort, implying higher effort with appointment. When this occurs, appointment of officials may welfare-dominate elections. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Borgne & Ben Lockwood, 2006. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents? Learning vs. Re-Election Concerns," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 41-60, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:129:y:2006:i:1:p:41-60
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-006-0863-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-006-0863-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-006-0863-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baron, David P. & Ferejohn, John A., 1989. "Bargaining in Legislatures," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(4), pages 1181-1206, December.
    2. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1997. "An Economic Model of Representative Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 85-114.
    3. Aidt, Toke S. & Magris, Francesco, 2006. "Capital taxation and electoral accountability," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 277-291, June.
    4. Rogoff, Kenneth, 1990. "Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 21-36, March.
    5. Otto Swank & Bauke Visser, 2006. "Do elections lead to informed public decisions?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 435-460, December.
    6. Banks, Jeffrey S. & Sundaram, Rangarajan K., 1998. "Optimal Retention in Agency Problems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 293-323, October.
    7. Besley, Tim & Smart, Michael, 2002. "Does Tax Competition Raise Voter Welfare?," CEPR Discussion Papers 3131, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 1998. "Sources of Inefficiency in a Representative Democracy: A Dynamic Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 139-156, March.
    9. le Borgne, E. & Lockwood, B., 2000. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 580, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    10. Mirman, Leonard J & Samuelson, Larry & Urbano, Amparo, 1993. "Monopoly Experimentation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 34(3), pages 549-563, August.
    11. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 2002. "The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1415-1451.
    12. Torsten Persson & Gérard Roland & Guido Tabellini, 1997. "Separation of Powers and Political Accountability," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1163-1202.
    13. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 199-217.
    14. Biglaiser, Gary & Mezzetti, Claudio, 1997. "Politicians' decision making with re-election concerns," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 425-447, December.
    15. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    16. Coate, Stephen & Morris, Stephen, 1995. "On the Form of Transfers in Special Interests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1210-1235, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Martinez Leonardo, 2009. "Reputation, Career Concerns, and Job Assignments," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-29, May.
    2. Melissa Williams & Timothy Baghurst, 2014. "The Management Impact of Elected Leaders," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(2), pages 21582440145, April.
    3. Martinez, Leonardo, 2009. "A theory of political cycles," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1166-1186, May.
    4. Snyder Jr., James M. & Ting, Michael M., 2008. "Interest groups and the electoral control of politicians," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 482-500, April.
    5. Koch, Alexander K. & Morgenstern, Albrecht & Raab, Philippe, 2009. "Career concerns incentives: An experimental test," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 571-588, October.
    6. Querubin, Pablo & Snyder, James M., 2013. "The Control of Politicians in Normal Times and Times of Crisis: Wealth Accumulation by U.S. Congressmen, 1850–1880," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 8(4), pages 409-450, October.
    7. María García-Vega & José Herce, 2011. "Does tenure in office affect regional growth? The role of public capital productivity," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(1), pages 75-92, January.
    8. Akihiko Kawaura & Yasutomo Kimura & Yuzu Uchida, 2024. "Deeds, not words? Speech and re-election of Japan’s local legislators," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 123-140, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. César Martinelli & John Duggan, 2014. "The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results," Working Papers 1403, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    2. le Borgne, E. & Lockwood, B., 2000. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 580, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    3. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    4. Hans Gersbach, 2004. "Competition of Politicians for Incentive Contracts and Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 157-177, October.
    5. Aidt, Toke S. & Magris, Francesco, 2006. "Capital taxation and electoral accountability," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 277-291, June.
    6. Banks, Jeffrey S. & Duggan, John, 2008. "A Dynamic Model of Democratic Elections in Multidimensional Policy Spaces," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 3(3), pages 269-299, October.
    7. Borgne, Eric Le & Lockwood, Ben, 2004. "Do Elections Always Notivate Incumbents? Learning Vs Career Concerns," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 714, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    8. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    9. Gilles Saint‐Paul & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2016. "A Theory of Political Entrenchment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(593), pages 1238-1263, June.
    10. Mattozzi, Andrea & Snowberg, Erik, 2018. "The right type of legislator: A theory of taxation and representation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 54-65.
    11. Testa, Cecilia, 2003. "Government corruption and legislative procedures: is one chamber better than two?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6642, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Mani, Anandi & Mukand, Sharun, 2007. "Democracy, visibility and public good provision," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 506-529, July.
    13. Klaas Beniers & Robert Dur, 2007. "Politicians’ motivation, political culture, and electoral competition," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 14(1), pages 29-54, February.
    14. Julia Cage, 2009. "Asymmetric information, rent extraction and aid efficiency," Working Papers halshs-00575055, HAL.
    15. Acemoglu, Daron, 2003. "Why not a political Coase theorem? Social conflict, commitment, and politics," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 620-652, December.
    16. Dulleck, Uwe & Wigger, Berthold U., 2015. "Politicians as experts, electoral control, and fiscal restraints," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 106-116.
    17. Bordignon, Massimo & Minelli, Enrico, 2001. "Rules transparency and political accountability," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 73-98, April.
    18. Raveh, Ohad & Tsur, Yacov, 2020. "Reelection, growth and public debt," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    19. Juan Carlos Berganza, 2000. "Politicians, voters and electoral processes: an overview," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 24(3), pages 501-543, September.
    20. Aidt, Toke S. & Dutta, Jayasri, 2007. "Policy myopia and economic growth," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 734-753, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:129:y:2006:i:1:p:41-60. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.