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A Replication of 'Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U.S. House' (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2004)

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  • Patrick Button

    (Department of Economics, Tulane University)

Abstract

I replicate Lee, Moretti, and Butler (2004) "Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the US House." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(3), 807-59, using new advances in regression discontinuity design methodology. Specifically, I use local linear regression with optimal bandwidths (Imbens and Kalyanaraman, 2012) and I follow advice on polynomial modelling in Lee and Lemieux (2010). I also run McCrary (2008)'s density test as an additional robustness check to investigate sorting around the treatment cut-off. I investigate the sensitivity of estimates to polynomial order, bandwidth, and to the inclusion of covariates. The conclusion of Lee, Moretti, and Butler (2004) that voters "elect" rather than "affect" policies still holds under this more rigorous scrutiny.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Button, 2015. "A Replication of 'Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U.S. House' (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2004)," Working Papers 1518, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tul:wpaper:1518
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    File URL: http://repec.tulane.edu/RePEc/pdf/tul1518.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Fernando Ferreira & Joseph Gyourko, 2009. "Do Political Parties Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 399-422.
    2. David S. Lee & Enrico Moretti & Matthew J. Butler, 2004. "Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U. S. House," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 807-859.
    3. Guido Imbens & Karthik Kalyanaraman, 2012. "Optimal Bandwidth Choice for the Regression Discontinuity Estimator," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 933-959.
    4. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    5. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    6. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    7. David Card & Carlos Dobkin & Nicole Maestas, 2009. "Does Medicare Save Lives?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(2), pages 597-636.
    8. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    9. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    10. Button Patrick, 2016. "Model Uncertainty and Model Averaging in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 103-116, January.
    11. Alesina, Alberto, 1988. "Credibility and Policy Convergence in a Two-Party System with Rational Voters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 796-805, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Brown, Annette N. & Wood, Benjamin Douglas Kuflick, 2018. "Which tests not witch hunts: A diagnostic approach for conducting replication research," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 12, pages 1-26.

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