Optimal Electoral Timing: Exercise Wisely and You May Live Longer -super-1

Jussi Keppo, Lones Smith and Dmitry Davydov

The Review of Economic Studies, 2008, vol. 75, issue 2, 597-628

Abstract: The timing of elections is flexible in many countries. We study this optimization by first creating a Bayesian learning model of a mean-reverting political support process. We then explore optimal electoral timing, modelling it as a renewable American option with interacting waiting and stopping values. Inter alia, we show that the expected longevity is a convex, then concave, function of the support. Finally, we calibrate our model to the post-1945 Labour-Tory U.K. rivalry. Our story quite well explains when the elections were called. We also show that election options approximately double the expected time in power in the current streak. Copyright 2008, Wiley-Blackwell.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-937X.2008.00493.x (application/pdf)
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:restud:v:75:y:2008:i:2:p:597-628

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economic Studies is currently edited by Thomas Chaney, Xavier d’Haultfoeuille, Andrea Galeotti, Bård Harstad, Nir Jaimovich, Katrine Loken, Elias Papaioannou, Vincent Sterk and Noam Yuchtman

More articles in The Review of Economic Studies from Review of Economic Studies Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().