Working Paper: NBER ID: w21422
Authors: Elliott Ash; Massimo Morelli; Richard Van Weelden
Abstract: This paper analyzes the effort allocation choices of incumbent politicians when voters are uncertain about politician preferences. There is a pervasive incentive to "posture" by over-providing effort to pursue divisive policies, even if all voters would strictly prefer to have a consensus policy implemented. As such, the desire of politicians to convince voters that their preferences are aligned with the majority of the electorate can lead them to choose strictly pareto dominated effort allocations. Transparency over the politicians' effort choices can re-enforce the distortions, and for some parameters can be bad both for incentivizing politicians to focus on socially efficient tasks and for allowing voters to select congruent politicians. We take our theoretical results to the data with an empirical analysis of how Members of the U.S. Congress allocate time across issues in their floor speeches. Consistent with the theory, we find evidence of political posturing due to elections among U.S. Senators. We also demonstrate empirically that, among U.S. House Members, increased transparency can lead to more divisive speech.
Keywords: Elections; Divisiveness; Political Posturing; Transparency
JEL Codes: P16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Electoral pressures (D72) | Overprovision of effort on divisive issues (D72) |
| Increased transparency (G38) | More divisive speech (J79) |
| Overprovision of effort on divisive issues (D72) | Divisive speech (D72) |