EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Policymakers? Horizon and Trade Reforms

Maurizio Zanardi, Giovanni Facchini and Paola Conconi

No 8251, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We investigate how term length and election proximity affect policymakers? willingness to support trade reforms. We exploit the institutional features of the U.S. Congress--in which House and Senate representatives serve two-year and six-year terms respectively, and one third of the Senate is up for election every two years--allowing us to compare legislators with mandates of different length, as well as three "generations" of senators, with different remaining time in office. We examine the determinants of congressmen?s voting behavior on all major trade reforms undertaken by the U.S. since the early 1970?s. We find that House members are less likely to support trade liberalization bills than Senate members. However, this result does not hold for senators in the last two years of their mandate, suggesting that inter-cameral differences are driven by differences in term length. Focusing on Senate votes only confirms that the last generation is significantly more protectionist than the previous two, a result that holds both when comparing the behavior of different senators on the same bill, and that of individual senators on different bills. Inter-generational differences disappear for senators who have "safe seats" or have announced their retirement, indicating that the protectionist effect of election proximity is driven by legislators? fear to lose office.

Keywords: Term length; Election proximity; Trade reforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP8251 (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:
Working Paper: Policymakers' Horizon and Trade Reforms (2011) Downloads
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:8251

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP8251

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 ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8251