Journal Article10.2139/ssrn.4092294
Representation Failure
6
TL;DR: In this article , the authors use rich data on thousands of candidates in three Brazilian legislative elections to quantify the relative value voters place on candidates' policy positions and non-ideological attributes and evaluate voters' welfare given the set of candidates they face.
read more
Abstract: Democratic representation is constrained by the alternatives available to voters. To assess the extent to which the “supply side” of politics hinders voter welfare, we use rich data on thousands of candidates in three Brazilian legislative elections to (i) quantify the relative value voters place on candidates’ policy positions and non-ideological attributes and (ii) evaluate voters’ welfare given the set of candidates they face. Our estimates uncover substantial welfare losses for voters relative to three alternative benchmarks of ideal representation. The average voter suffers only a moderate loss due to policy incongruence but a large loss due to deficiencies in candidates’ non-ideological characteristics. For the typical municipality, the welfare loss attributable to non-ideological factors is more than seven times larger than the policy welfare loss. To evaluate the consequences of potential institutional reforms, we develop and estimate a model of equilibrium policy determination. Through counterfactual experiments, we show that institutional reforms aimed at improving the quality of representation may have sizable unintended welfare consequences due to equilibrium policy adjustments.
read more
Chat with Paper
AI Agents for this Paper
Find similar papers on Google Scholar, PubMed and Arxiv
Write a critical review of this paper
Analyze citations of this paper to find unaddressed research gaps
Citations
Campaign Finance in the Age of Super PACs
TL;DR: In this paper, the influence of Super PACs on U.S. Congressional general and primary elections was investigated. But they found that Super PACs do not have significant influence on voting outcomes but did increase election spending between 2010-2016.
11
Quantifying Theory in Politics: Identification, Interpretation and the Role of Structural Methods
TL;DR: The authors argue for the importance of explicitly integrating rigorous theory into the empirical process and focus on the advantages of doing so, by integrating theoretical structure into one's empirical strategy, researchers can quantify the effects of competing mechanisms, consider the ex-ante effects of new policies, extrapolate findings to new environments, estimate model-specific theoretical parameters, evaluate the fit of a theoretical model, and test competing models that aim to explain the same phenomena.
Misrepresentation and migration
Anders Kärnä,Patrik Öhberg +1 more
TL;DR: In a representative democracy, politicians should either implement policies that voters want or policies that politicians believe are in voters long-term interest, even if voters currently oppose them as discussed by the authors , and the exact balance between these goals is debatable and politicians' policy engagement can tempt them to dismiss voters' preferences and resist information counter to their own policy position.
2
Party Discipline in Elections and Latent Policy Ideals
Christian James. Cox,Ian Shapiro +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper , a multi-stage election model that incorporates party discipline with election spending is developed and estimates the importance of policy gaps with candidates to parties and special interest groups (SIGs).
Misrepresentation and Migration: Differences between Voters and Politicians in Sweden
Anders Kärnä,Patrik Öhberg +1 more
TL;DR: This paper showed that Swedish politicians favored a much more generous policy towards accepting refugees than their own voters, despite limited evidence that a generous refugee policy is economically favorable in the long run, politicians on average held that belief.
References
Large sample properties of generalized method of moments estimators
TL;DR: This paper investigates the large sample properties of generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators, a class of estimators that encompasses various standard econometric estimators, and demonstrates their strong consistency and asymptotic normality under certain conditions.
15.3K
Automobile prices in market equilibrium
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed techniques for empirically analyzing demand and supply in differentiated products markets and then applied these techniques to analyze equilibrium in the U.S. automobile industry.
Chapter 36 Large sample estimation and hypothesis testing
Whitney K. Newey,Daniel McFadden +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, conditions for obtaining cosistency and asymptotic normality of a very general class of estimators (extremum estimators) are given to enable approximation of the SDF.
3.5K
Incentives to cultivate a personal vote: A rank ordering of electoral formulas☆
TL;DR: For instance, the authors found that the value of a personal reputation rises if the electoral formula itself fosters personal vote-seeking, but falls if it fosters party reputation-seeking.
2.5K
•Book
Constituency Influence in Congress
Warren E. Miller,Donald E. Stokes +1 more
- 01 Aug 1993
TL;DR: The constituency influence over the lower house of Congress is commonly thought to be both a normative principle and a factual truth of American government as mentioned in this paper, and many political scientists feel regretfully that the Framers' wish has come all too true.
2.1K