What do you know about your mayor? Voters’ information and jurisdiction size

Nicolas Gavoille, Jean-Michel Josselin and Fabio Padovano
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Jean-Michel Josselin: CREM-CNRS and Condorcet Center, University of Rennes 1, France

Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS from Condorcet Center for political Economy

Abstract: This papers empirically studies the relationship between the size of a jurisdiction and the information that voters acquire to cast their vote. If political agency models consider voters' information as exogenous, the literature on the endogenous acquisition of information suggests that the size of the jurisdiction impacts the quality of the information that voters acquire. We use the French municipal context to empirically verify this theoretical prediction. We study how the determinants of the reelection probability of the incumbent mayor change when the size of the jurisdiction varies. To do so, we define incumbent mayors' observable personal characteristics (such as age and gender) as low quality information, and proxy high quality information by an estimate of the incumbent's personal influence on the investment policy of the municipality during his/her mandate. Our results indicate that the larger the municipality, the lower the impact of mayor’s past policymaking on reelection probability.

Keywords: Voters; municipal elections; information; political leaders; investment policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H11 H72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-06, Revised 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cta and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tut:cccrwp:2014-01-ccr

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