IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v58y1988i1p73-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Televising legislatures: Some thoughts on whether politicians are search goods

Author

Listed:
  • Gertrud Fremling
  • John Lott

Abstract

The evidence that televising legislative sessions helps politicians from homogeneous districts, where everyone agrees with his positions, but hurts politicians from heterogeneous districts, does not differentiate between whether politicians are search or experience goods. While evidence does exist that politicians are search goods (e.g., Lott, 1987b), it relies on the presence of the last period problem. If the conclusion that politicians are search goods is correct, it has important implications, because it contradicts the commonly held belief that it is the threat of re-election that prevents politicians from behaving opportunistically. It also indicates that there are fundamental differences between firm and political brand names. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1988

Suggested Citation

  • Gertrud Fremling & John Lott, 1988. "Televising legislatures: Some thoughts on whether politicians are search goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 73-78, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:58:y:1988:i:1:p:73-78
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00183329
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00183329
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00183329?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. Nelson, Phillip, 1976. "Political Information," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 315-336, August.
    2. Peltzman, Sam, 1984. "Constituent Interest and Congressional Voting," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 181-210, April.
    3. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    4. Ryan Amacher & William Boyes, 1978. "Cycles in senatorial voting behavior: implications for the optimal frequency of elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 5-13, January.
    5. John Lott, 1986. "Brand names and barriers to entry in political markets," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 87-92, January.
    6. Klein, Benjamin & Leffler, Keith B, 1981. "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 615-641, August.
    7. John Lott, 1987. "Political cheating," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 169-186, January.
    8. Robert Barro, 1973. "The control of politicians: An economic model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 19-42, March.
    9. Kalt, Joseph P & Zupan, Mark A, 1984. "Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 279-300, June.
    10. Kau, James B & Rubin, Paul H, 1979. "Self-Interest, Ideology, and Logrolling in Congressional Voting," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 365-384, October.
    11. Dougan, William R & Munger, Michael C, 1989. "The Rationality of Ideology," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 119-142, April.
    12. Laband, David N & Lentz, Bernard F, 1985. "Favorite Sons: Intergenerational Wealth Transfers among Politicians," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 23(3), pages 395-414, July.
    13. Telser, L G, 1980. "A Theory of Self-enforcing Agreements," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(1), pages 27-44, January.
    14. Crain, W Mark & Goff, Brian L, 1986. "Televising Legislatures: An Economic Analysis," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(2), pages 405-421, October.
    15. Telser, Lester G, 1976. "Political Information: Comment," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 337-340, August.
    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. John Lott & W. Reed, 1989. "Shirking and sorting in a political market with finite-lived politicians," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 75-96, April.
    2. John R. Lott JR, 1989. "Explaining Challengers' Campaign Expenditures: the Importance of Sunk Nontransferable Brand Name," Public Finance Review, , vol. 17(1), pages 108-118, January.

    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. John Lott & W. Reed, 1989. "Shirking and sorting in a political market with finite-lived politicians," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 75-96, April.
    2. John Lott, 1987. "Political cheating," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 169-186, January.
    3. Glenn Parker, 2005. "Reputational capital, opportunism, and self-policing in legislatures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 333-354, March.
    4. Michael Davis & Philip Porter, 1989. "A test for pure or apparent ideology in congressional voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 101-111, February.
    5. Matsusaka, John G., 2017. "When Do Legislators Follow Constituent Opinion? Evidence from Matched Roll Call and Referendum Votes," Working Papers 264, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    6. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    7. John Lott, 1987. "The institutional arrangement of public education: The puzzle of exclusive territories," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 89-96, January.
    8. Glenn Parker & Matthew Dabros, 2012. "Last-period problems in legislatures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 789-806, June.
    9. J. Sebastian Leguizamon & George R. Crowley, 2016. "Term limits, time horizons and electoral accountability," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 23-42, July.
    10. Dennis, Christopher & Medoff, Marshall H. & Magnera, Michael, 2008. "Constituents' economic interests and senator support for spending limitations," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2443-2453, December.
    11. Ernesto Dal Bó & Martín Rossi, 2008. "Term Length and Political Performance," NBER Working Papers 14511, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Franklin G. Mixon & Chandini Sankaran & Kamal P. Upadhyaya, 2019. "Is Political Ideology Stable? Evidence from Long-Serving Members of the United States Congress," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-19, May.
    13. Dennis, Christopher & Bishin, Benjamin & Nicolaou, Politimy, 2000. "Constituent diversity and congress: the case of NAFTA," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 349-360, July.
    14. Morong, Cyril, 1996. "Socio-economic elements in Public Choice research," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 559-569.
    15. Mark Burkey & Garey Durden, 1998. "The Political Economy of Clean Air Legislation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(2), pages 119-134, March.
    16. Laurent Bouton & Paola Conconi & Francisco Pino & Maurizio Zanardi, 2018. "Guns, Environment, and Abortion: How Single-Minded Voters Shape Politicians' Decisions," Working Papers gueconwpa~18-18-15, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    17. Rausser, Gordon C. & de Gorter, Harry, 1988. "Endogenizing Policy In Models Of Agricultural Markets," 1988 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Knoxville, Tennessee 270460, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    18. Bohara, Alok K. & Camargo, Alejandro Islas & Grijalva, Therese & Gawande, Kishore, 2005. "Fundamental dimensions of U.S. trade policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 93-125, January.
    19. Shaun M. Tanger & Richard Alan Seals Jr. & David N. Laband, 2011. "Does Bill Co-sponsorship Affect Campaign Contributions?: Evidence from the U.S. House of Representatives, 2000-2008," Auburn Economics Working Paper Series auwp2011-09, Department of Economics, Auburn University.
    20. Christopher John Boudreaux, 2015. "Democratic age and the size of governmen," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(3), pages 1531-1542.

    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:58:y:1988:i:1:p:73-78. 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.