How Democracy Matters: Evidence of Electoral Incentives for Environmental Policy

Youngseok Park

No 16-20, Working Papers from Department of Economics, Appalachian State University

Abstract: I test the theoretical predictions from Park (2016) that the right-wing politicians will distort environmental policy to avoid losing the election. I study how the population environmental preferences, as measured by the LCV scores, influence state governors to become more concerned about the environment. From a U.S. panel data in the period of 1971-2007, I find the Republican state governors increase the environmental expenditure per capita by approximately 1.5 percent as the Democrat LCV scores increase by 1 percent; and they increase the environmental expenditure per capita by 4.8 percent as the Republican LCV scores decrease by 1 percent. That is, Republican governors respond positively to the environmental preferences of Democrats, but not to that of Republicans. Key Words: Democracy; Environmental Policy.

JEL-codes: Q48 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-pol
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