Last minute policies and the incumbency advantage

Elena Manzoni and Stefan P. Penczynski

No 14-24, Working Papers from University of Mannheim, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper models a purely informational mechanism behind the incumbency advantage. In a two-period electoral campaign with two policy issues, a specialized incumbent and an unspecialized, but possibly more competent challenger compete for election by voters who are heterogeneously informed about the state of the world. Due to the asymmetries in government responsibility between candidates, the incumbent's statement may convey information on the relevance of the issues to voters. In equilibrium, the incumbent sometimes strategically releases his statement early and thus signals the importance of his signature issue to the voters. We find that, since the incumbent's positioning on the issue reveals private information which the challenger can use in later statements, the incumbent's incentives to distort the campaign are decreasing in his quality, as previously documented by the empirical literature. The distortions arising in equilibrium are decreasing in the incumbent's effective ability; however, the distortions may be increasing in the incumbent's reputation of expertise on his signature issue.

Keywords: Incumbency advantage; electoral competition; information revelation; agenda setting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 D72 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cta, nep-mic and nep-pol
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https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/37189/1/Manzoni_und_Penczynski_14-24.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Last Minute Policies and the Incumbency Advantage (2018)
Journal Article: Last Minute Policies and the Incumbency Advantage (2018)
Working Paper: Last minute policies and the incumbency advantage (2013)
Working Paper: Last Minute Policies and the Incumbency Advantage (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mnh:wpaper:37189

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