The Effects of Discretionary Federal Spending on Parliamentary Election Results

Thomas A. Evans

Economic Inquiry, 2006, vol. 44, issue 2, 234-248

Abstract: Parliamentary rules make it difficult for opposition members of Parliament to influence government spending. As the electorate is aware of this situation discretionary federal spending is expected to affect vote-share differently for majority and opposition incumbents. Consistent estimators yield positive and significant point estimates for the impact of increases in spending for majority incumbents in Canadian federal elections yet yield negative but insignificant point estimates for opposition incumbents. Furthermore, $100 additional federal spending per capita in an electoral district is estimated to increase majority candidates' vote-share, regardless of incumbency, by between 1.5 and 2.5 percentage points. (JEL D72, H59) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

JEL-codes: D72 H59 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ei/cbj010 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:ecinqu:v:44:y:2006:i:2:p:234-248

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Preston McAfee

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().