The Role of Electoral Incentives for Policy Innovation: Evidence from the U.S. Welfare Reform

Pierre Boyer, Andreas Bernecker and ,
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Christina Gathmann

No 13763, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper shows that electoral incentives matter for the decision to implement novel policies. Our empirical setting is the period prior to and following the U.S. welfare reform in 1996, which marked the most dramatic shift in social policy since the New Deal. Our findings indicate that governors with strong electoral support are less likely to experiment than governors with little support. Yet, governors who cannot be reelected actually experiment more than governors striving for reelection. These findings are robust to controlling for ideology, preferences for redistribution, the state legislature, and cross-state learning.

Keywords: Spillovers; Electoral incentives; Policy innovation; Welfare reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 H75 I38 O35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cse and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13763 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: The Role of Electoral Incentives for Policy Innovation: Evidence from the US Welfare Reform (2021)
Working Paper: The Role of Electoral Incentives for Policy Innovation: Evidence from the U.S. Welfare Reform (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13763

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13763

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().