Voter Behavior and Seniority Advantage in Pork Barrel Politics

Cortney Rodet

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper uses experiments to explore electoral accountability in a legislative system that favors seniority. Voters face a trade-off between pork barrel transfers and policy representation. Term limits are tested as a mechanism to reduce the cost of searching for a legislator who better represents voters on policy, as well as reducing the resulting asymmetric distribution of income. Subjects’ preferences on abortion are used in an innovative means of capturing incumbents’ policy choices where subject legislators vote to determine whether a donation is allocated to either a pro-choice or pro-life foundation.

Keywords: voting; legislature; term limits; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D72 D89 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/33192/1/MPRA_paper_33192.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49862/9/MPRA_paper_49862.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:33192

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