Divided We Reform? Evidence from US Welfare Policies

Andreas Bernecker

No 4564, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Divided government is often thought of as causing legislative deadlock. I investigate the link between divided government and economic reforms using a novel data set on welfare reforms in US states between 1978 and 2010. Panel data regressions show that under divided government a US state is around 25% more likely to adopt a welfare reform than under unified government. An analysis of close elections providing quasi-random variation in the form of government and other robustness checks confirm this counter-intuitive finding. The empirical evidence is consistent with an explanation based on policy competition between governor, senate, and house.

Keywords: divided government; legislative deadlock; policy innovation; US welfare reform; policy competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 H11 H75 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4564

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