How valuable is a legislative seat? Incumbency effects in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Micozzi ◽  
Adrián Lucardi
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Additional Term ◽  
Window Of Opportunity ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Executive Positions ◽  
Chamber Of Deputies

AbstractIn many developing countries, national legislative seats are considered less valuable than (subnational) executive positions. Even then, ambitious politicians may seek a legislative seat either (a) as awindow of opportunityfor jumping to an executive office; or (b) as aconsolation prizewhen no better option is available. Using a regression discontinuity design adapted to aprsetting, we examine these possibilities in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies between 1983 and 2011. In line with the consolation prize story, we find that marginal candidates from the Peronist party—which controls most provincial governorships—are more likely to be renominated and serve an additional term in the legislature, but not necessarily to jump to an executive office. The effect is stronger in small provinces.

Incumbency, Parties, and Legislatures: Theory and Evidence from India

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-331
Author(s):  
Alexander Lee
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
And Control ◽  
Incumbency Disadvantage

Incumbent legislators in some developing countries are often thought to face an electoral disadvantage relative to challengers. This article traces this effect to high levels of centralization within the political parties and governments of these countries. In political systems dominated by party leaders, legislators face substantial formal and informal constraints on their ability to influence policy, stake positions, and control patronage, which in turn reduce their ability to build up personal votes. This theory is tested on a dataset of Indian national elections since 1977, using a regression discontinuity design to measure the effects of incumbency. Candidates less affected by centralization-those from less-centralized political parties and from parties not affected by restrictions on free parliamentary voting - have a low or non-existent incumbency disadvantage.

scholarly journals When Running for Office Runs in the Family: Horizontal Dynasties, Policy, and Development in the Philippines

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110242
Author(s):  
Dean Dulay ◽  
Laurence Go
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Family ◽  
Growth Economic

Political dynasties exist in practically every type of democracy, but take different forms in different places. Yet the types of dynastic structures have remained unexplored. We argue that horizontal dynasties—multiple members from the same political family holding different political offices concurrently—affect policymaking by replacing potential political rivals, who may oppose an incumbent’s policy choices, with a member of the family. But in developing countries, the policy change that accrues from dynastic status may not lead to higher levels of economic development. We test this argument’s implications in the Philippines. Using a close elections regression discontinuity design on a sample of mayors, we show that (i) horizontally dynastic mayors have higher levels of government spending, (ii) direct institutional constraints are the mechanism that drives this core result, and (iii) horizontally dynastic mayors do not lead to higher economic growth economic growth or lower poverty.

scholarly journals Housing and sanitation-related diseases

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-508
Author(s):  
Fabio Nobuo Nishimura
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Rental Housing ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Housing Program ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Over Time

Housing and health-related issues are typical concerns of developing countries since their consequences usually lead to deadly diseases. Hence, in order to improve the assertiveness of public policies, minimize the divergence between actions proposed by different studies and contribute to mitigate those issues, this paper seeks to understand the relative impacts of the proposed policies as well as their efficiency. Thus, this paper evaluates the Brazilian Rental Housing Program (RHP) using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) model, a strategy that is strengthened by the performance of robustness tests. As a result, we verified that RHP was able to reduce deaths from sanitation-related diseases by up to 11% and that this effect increases over time.

scholarly journals Effectiveness of a Power Factor Correction Policy in Improving the Energy Efficiency of Large-Scale Electricity Users in Ghana

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 2582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Lotsu ◽  
Yuichiro Yoshida ◽  
Katsufumi Fukuda ◽  
Bing He
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Power Factor ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Power Factor Correction ◽  
Energy Crisis ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
The Government ◽  
Power Factor Improvement ◽  
The Impact

Confronting an energy crisis, the government of Ghana enacted a power factor correction policy in 1995. The policy imposes a penalty on large-scale electricity users, namely, special load tariff (SLT) customers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), whose power factor is below 90%. This paper investigates the impact of this policy on these firms’ power factor improvement by using panel data from 183 SLT customers from 1994 to 1997 and from 2012. To avoid potential endogeneity, this paper adopts a regression discontinuity design (RDD) with the power factor of the firms in the previous year as a running variable, with its cutoff set at the penalty threshold. The result shows that these large-scale electricity users who face the penalty because their power factor falls just short of the threshold are more likely to improve their power factor in the subsequent year, implying that the power factor correction policy implemented by Ghana’s government is effective.

How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off?

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Hall ◽  
James M. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Previous Election ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
State Legislative

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small amount of scare-off, at least in cases where the previous election was nearly tied. As Lee and others have shown (and as we confirm for our samples) the estimated party incumbency advantage in these same cases is quite large—in fact, it is about as large as the average incumbency advantage for all races found using other approaches. Drawing from previous estimates of the electoral value of officeholder experience, we thus calculate that scare-off in these cases accounts for only about 5–7 percent of the party incumbency advantage. We show that these patterns are similar in elections for US House seats, statewide offices and US senate seats, and state legislative seats.

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