IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v89y2022i2p522-539.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Governors and electoral hazard in the allocation of federal disaster aid

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Husted
  • David Nickerson

Abstract

U.S. public disaster aid provide elected officials opportunities to engage in “electoral hazard,” where an incumbent can influence the probability of re‐election by allocating aid to influence voters' expectations of their future welfare. This is the first test for electoral hazard in the allocation of federal aid to counties exposed to the risk of economic loss from disasters by incumbent state governors running for re‐election. Using a unique county‐level data set, we estimate the determinants of the equilibrium allocation strategy of an incumbent in the presence of electoral hazard. Controlling for loss and the demographic, economic and political characteristics of at‐risk counties, we find the average incumbent governor seeking re‐election actively engages in the manipulation of voter expectations by allocating greater shares and magnitudes of the largest federal disaster aid program to those at‐risk counties that awarded the incumbent governor a plurality of votes in the preceding election.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Husted & David Nickerson, 2022. "Governors and electoral hazard in the allocation of federal disaster aid," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(2), pages 522-539, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:89:y:2022:i:2:p:522-539
    DOI: 10.1002/soej.12603
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12603
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/soej.12603?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leah Platt Boustan & Matthew E. Kahn & Paul W. Rhode, 2012. "Moving to Higher Ground: Migration Response to Natural Disasters in the Early Twentieth Century," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 238-244, May.
    2. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    3. Berganza, Juan Carlos, 2000. "Two Roles for Elections: Disciplining the Incumbent and Selecting a Competent Candidate," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 105(1-2), pages 165-193, October.
    4. Healy, Andrew & Malhotra, Neil, 2009. "Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(3), pages 387-406, August.
    5. Thomas Husted & David Nickerson, 2021. "Private Support for Public Disaster Aid," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-19, June.
    6. Christina M. Fong & Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2009. "What Determines Giving to Hurricane Katrina Victims? Experimental Evidence on Racial Group Loyalty," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 64-87, April.
    7. Johan F. M. Swinnen & Harry De Gorter, 1993. "Why Small Groups And Low Income Sectors Obtain Subsidies: The “Altruistic” Side Of A “Self‐Interested” Government," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(3), pages 285-293, November.
    8. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 1995. "Does Electoral Accountability Affect Economic Policy Choices? Evidence from Gubernatorial Term Limits," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 769-798.
    9. Helms, L Jay, 1985. "The Effect of State and Local Taxes on Economic Growth: A Time Series-Cross Section Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(4), pages 574-582, November.
    10. Frederico Finan & Maurizio Mazzocco, 2021. "Electoral Incentives and the Allocation of Public Funds," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(5), pages 2467-2512.
    11. Thomas A. Garrett & Russell S. Sobel, 2003. "The Political Economy of FEMA Disaster Payments," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(3), pages 496-509, July.
    12. Thomas Eisensee & David Strömberg, 2007. "News Droughts, News Floods, and U. S. Disaster Relief," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(2), pages 693-728.
    13. Fleck, Robert K, 1999. "The Value of the Vote: A Model and Test of the Effects of Turnout on Distributive Policy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(4), pages 609-623, October.
    14. W. Viscusi & Richard Zeckhauser, 2006. "National survey evidence on disasters and relief: Risk beliefs, self-interest, and compassion," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 13-36, September.
    15. Fredriksson, Per G. & Wang, Le & Mamun, Khawaja A., 2011. "Are politicians office or policy motivated? The case of U.S. governors' environmental policies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 241-253, September.
    16. Rubens Penha Cysne, 2009. "On the Positive Correlation between Income Inequality and Unemployment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 218-226, February.
    17. Jeroen Klomp, 2020. "Election or Disaster Support?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(1), pages 205-220, January.
    18. Stephen Ansolabehere & James M. Snyder, 2006. "Party Control of State Government and the Distribution of Public Expenditures," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 108(4), pages 547-569, December.
    19. Shaughnessy, Timothy M. & White, Mary L. & Brendler, Michael D., 2010. "The Income Distribution Effect of Natural Disasters: An Analysis of Hurricane Katrina," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 40(1), pages 1-12.
    20. Arulampalam, Wiji & Dasgupta, Sugato & Dhillon, Amrita & Dutta, Bhaskar, 2009. "Electoral goals and center-state transfers: A theoretical model and empirical evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 103-119, January.
    21. Thomas Husted & David Nickerson, 2014. "Political Economy of Presidential Disaster Declarations and Federal Disaster Assistance," Public Finance Review, , vol. 42(1), pages 35-57, January.
    22. Matthew Davis & Mary Eschelbach Hansen & Thomas Husted, 2018. "The Impact of Political Influence on Appointees: Evidence from the Small Business Administration Disaster Loan Program," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 771-785, January.
    23. Bin, Okmyung & Bishop, John A. & Kousky, Carolyn, 2011. "Redistributional Effects of the National Flood Insurance Program," RFF Working Paper Series dp-11-14, Resources for the Future.
    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. Margaret Bock & Benjamin Blemings, 2024. "Road maintenance over the local election cycle," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 198(1), pages 129-151, 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. Marcel Henkel, Eunjee Kwon, Pierre Magontier, 2022. "The Unintended Consequences of Post-Disaster Policies for Spatial Sorting," Diskussionsschriften credresearchpaper37, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft - CRED.
    2. Stephan Schneider & Sven Kunze, 2021. "Disastrous Discretion: Ambiguous Decision Situations Foster Political Favoritism," KOF Working papers 21-491, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    3. Meri Davlasheridze & Qing Miao, 2021. "Does post-disaster aid promote community resilience? Evidence from federal disaster programs," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 109(1), pages 63-88, October.
    4. Tatyana Deryugina & Benjamin M. Marx, 2021. "Is the Supply of Charitable Donations Fixed? Evidence from Deadly Tornadoes," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 383-398, September.
    5. Meri Davlasheridze & Qing Miao, 2019. "Does Governmental Assistance Affect Private Decisions to Insure? An Empirical Analysis of Flood Insurance Purchases," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 95(1), pages 124-145.
    6. Jeroen Klomp, 2020. "Election or Disaster Support?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(1), pages 205-220, January.
    7. Carla Morvan & Sonia Paty, 2024. "Natural disasters and voter gratitude: What is the role of prevention policies?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 198(3), pages 427-465, March.
    8. Per G. Fredriksson & Khawaja A. Mamun, 2014. "Tobacco Politics and Electoral Accountability in the United States," Public Finance Review, , vol. 42(1), pages 4-34, January.
    9. Jerch, Rhiannon & Kahn, Matthew E. & Lin, Gary C., 2023. "Local public finance dynamics and hurricane shocks," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    10. Christian Bjørnskov & Niklas Potrafke, 2013. "The size and scope of government in the US states: does party ideology matter?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(4), pages 687-714, August.
    11. Li, Cheng & Wang, Le & Zhang, Junsen, 2024. "Politician’s childhood experience and government policies: Evidence from the Chinese Great Famine," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 76-92.
    12. Meri Davlasheridze & Qing Miao, 2021. "Natural disasters, public housing, and the role of disaster aid," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(5), pages 1113-1135, November.
    13. Chauvin, Juan Pablo & Tricaud, Clemence, 2022. "Gender and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Crisis Response," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 12411, Inter-American Development Bank.
    14. Reed, W. Robert, 2006. "Democrats, republicans, and taxes: Evidence that political parties matter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 725-750, May.
    15. Markus Reischmann, 2016. "Empirical Studies on Public Debt and Fiscal Transfers," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 63.
    16. W. Robert Reed, 2009. "The Determinants Of U.S. State Economic Growth: A Less Extreme Bounds Analysis," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(4), pages 685-700, October.
    17. Magontier, Pierre, 2020. "Does media coverage affect governments' preparation for natural disasters?," MPRA Paper 101291, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Kousky, Carolyn, 2014. "Informing climate adaptation: A review of the economic costs of natural disasters," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 576-592.
    19. Garance Genicot & Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira, 2021. "Electoral Systems and Inequalities in Government Interventions [“Distributive Politics and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Seven US State Legislatures.”]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(6), pages 3154-3206.
    20. Louis-Philippe Beland & Sara Oloomi, 2017. "Party Affiliation And Public Spending: Evidence From U.S. Governors," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 982-995, April.

    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:wly:soecon:v:89:y:2022:i:2:p:522-539. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    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.