Natural Disasters, Moral Hazard, and Special Interests in Congress

Ethan Kaplan, Jörg Spenkuch and Haishan Yuan

No 7408, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We exploit the precise timing of natural disasters to provide empirical evidence on the connection between electoral accountability and politicians’ support for special interests. We show that, in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, the evening news substantially reduce their coverage of politics. At the very same time, members of Congress become more likely to adopt the positions of special-interest donors as they vote on bills. Our findings are consistent with standard theories of political agency, according to which politicians are more inclined to serve special interests when, for exogenous reasons, they are less intensely monitored.

Keywords: natural disasters; moral hazard; toll-call voting; special interests; Congress (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-env and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7408

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