Balancing Checks
A "Terrific Symbol": Physical Personalization of Pandemic Relief Enhances Presidential Support
Henry Hale
PS: Political Science & Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments worldwide -- many that previously prioritized austerity -- to approve large relief packages. Political economy tells us that politicians will try to profit from this electorally, but much remains unknown about precisely how pandemic relief might influence voting intentions. Then-President Donald Trump foregrounded this question early in the pandemic by becoming the first US president to physically place his name on Internal Revenue Service relief checks mailed to citizens. By leveraging a nationally representative survey whose timing achieved quasi-experimental variation in the receipt of payments both with and without Trump's name physically on them, this study asks: Can a president successfully win support through physical personalization of the payments? Yes, the study finds. Receiving a physically personalized check in the mail is associated with a much greater self-reported likelihood of voting for the president, with gains mainly from partisan outgroups. No clear effect is found for unpersonalized electronic transfers. These findings withstand multiple robustness checks.
Still Muted: The Limited Participatory Democracy of Zoom Public Meetings
Katherine Levine Einstein et al.
Urban Affairs Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research has demonstrated that participants in public meetings are unrepresentative of their broader communities. Some suggest that reducing barriers to meeting attendance can improve participation, while others believe doing so will produce minimal changes. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted public meetings online, potentially reducing the time costs associated with participating. We match participants at online public meetings with administrative data to learn whether: (1) online participants are representative of their broader communities and (2) representativeness improves relative to in-person meetings. We find that participants in online forums are quite similar to those in in-person ones. They are similarly unrepresentative of residents in their broader communities and similarly overwhelmingly opposed to the construction of new housing. These results suggest important limitations to public meeting reform. Future research should continue to unpack whether reforms might prove more effective at redressing inequalities in an improved economic and public health context.
Regulatory Diffusion
Jennifer Nou & Julian Nyarko
Stanford Law Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Regulatory diffusion occurs when an agency adopts a substantially similar rule to that of another agency. Indeed, regulatory texts proliferate just like other forms of law like constitutions, statutes, and contracts do. While this insight has been explored across countries, this dynamic also occurs closer to home: American administrative agencies regularly borrow language from one another. By our measure, in recent years, agencies reused one out of every ten paragraphs of the Code of Federal Regulations from another rulemaking. These insights are timely given a recent Supreme Court decision calling for judges to engage in less deferential regulatory interpretation. As a result, there is newfound significance as to questions of how legislative rules are written and why. This Article explores the descriptive and normative implications of regulatory diffusion. The empirical analysis reveals a fairly steady rate of text reuse, with a notable increase during the Trump Administration -- perhaps the result of well-documented staffing problems and vacancies. More generally, both the number of borrowing and lending agencies has increased, with a relatively small number of agencies borrowing text from an increasingly larger group. In other words, regulatory text has diffused from more agencies. This behavior appears to vary by whether the agency is executive or independent in nature. These findings raise important questions about whether such diffusion is desirable, as well as how to interpret the regulations that result. To assess the tradeoffs, we propose that rulewriters should be required to explain why they are emulating other regulatory texts to allow executive branch oversight over the practice. We also argue in favor of the in pari materia canon -- the idea that similar regulations should be interpreted similarly by judges -- and propose ways for judges to decide when and how to apply it.
Electoral Turnovers
Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons & Vincent Rollet
NBER Working Paper, February 2022
Abstract:
In most national elections, voters face a key choice between continuity and change. Electoral turnovers occur when the incumbent candidate or party fails to win reelection. To understand how turnovers affect national outcomes, we study the universe of presidential and parliamentary elections held since 1945. We document the prevalence of turnovers over time and we estimate their effects on economic performance, trade, human development, conflict, and democracy. Using a close-elections regression discontinuity design (RDD) across countries, we show that turnovers improve country performance. These effects are not driven by differences in the characteristics of challengers, or by the fact that challengers systematically increase the level of government intervention in the economy. Electing new leaders leads to more policy change, it improves governance, and it reduces perceived corruption, consistent with the expectation that recently elected leaders exert more effort due to stronger reputation concerns.
How the Ultra-Rich Use Media Ownership as a Political Investment
Guy Grossman, Yotam Margalit & Tamar Mitts
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can the ultra-rich shape electoral results by controlling media outlets that openly propagate their political interests? How consumers discount slanted media coverage isa question gaining urgency as a growing number of billionaires mix ownership of major media outlets with business interests and political agendas. We study this question in the context of Israel, where billionaire Sheldon Adelson launched in 2007 Israel Hayom, a right-leaning newspaper. Handed out for free, it soon became the most widely read newspaper nationally. Utilizing local media exposure data since the launch, our analysis indicates that the newspaper exerted significant electoral influence, primarily benefiting Netanyahu and his Likud party. This shift helped bring about a sea-change in the right's dominance of national politics. The findings highlight the immense impact the ultra-rich can exert in shaping politics through media ownership.
The Pivotal and Distributive Politics of Senate-Confirmed Appointee Vacancies
William Resh, Nicholas Napolio & Eli (Keunyoung) Lee
Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2022, Pages 60-83
Abstract:
We examine the influence of discretionary agency outlays on the relative length of Senate-confirmed presidential appointee vacancies over time. We argue that key Senate pivots in the appointment process are more (or less) likely to extend a vacancy based on an agency's discretionary spending outlays to the Senator's state. We combine a uniquely thorough dataset on PAS vacancies with federal budget data by state and agency and show that co-partisan Senate pivots in the confirmation process seem to reward presidents with shorter vacancies when a given agency is more generous in discretionary outlays. However, under divided government, vacancies lengthen in presidentially aligned agencies as status quo agency outlays increase to key pivots. Our work speaks to both the pivotal politics of the Senate and the extent to which presidents and Senators might value filled (vacant) PAS positions.
Capitol Punishment: Effects of Congressional Seniority Ranks on Corporate Outcomes in the U.S.
Mehmet Canayaz
Pennsylvania State University Working Paper, December 2021
Abstract:
I study the effects of congressional seniority ranks on corporate outcomes in the U.S. I show that firms located in districts of lower-ranked legislators exhibit weaker sales to government, corporate downsizing, and lower valuations. These firms are also more exposed to civil disorder, including attacks that specifically target government offices, infrastructure, and employees. Seniority lotteries in House committees suggest that the links between congressional seniority ranks and corporate outcomes are causal.
Political Information Flow and Management Guidance
Dane Christensen et al.
Review of Accounting Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine whether politically connected firms play a role in disseminating political information via their management guidance. Using campaign financing activity or the presence of a government affairs office to proxy for firms' access to political information, we find that politically connected firms are more likely to issue management guidance, and their guidance is more likely to discuss government policies. Further, these relations are attenuated for firms facing high proprietary costs of disclosure. To provide evidence on the source of the political information disclosed through guidance, we examine the timing of when guidance is issued. We find that politically connected firms are more likely to issue guidance and change their government policy-related disclosures prior to the public revelation of government policy decisions. Collectively, these findings suggest that the privileged information firms obtain through their political connections is shared with investors through voluntary disclosures.
Government Subsidies and Corporate Disclosure
Ying Huang
Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Government subsidies allocated by politicians are ultimately funded by taxpayers, who care about how tax money is spent and demand transparency. I argue that subsidized firms, as beneficiaries of government subsidies, have incentives to provide more disclosures to help politicians achieve a reputation for transparency as well as to lower their own costs from public scrutiny. Using a novel dataset that tracks government subsidies, I provide the first large-sample evidence on the relation between government subsidies and firm disclosure. I find that relative to unsubsidized firms, subsidized firms provide more voluntary disclosures of general information about their business activities and profitability, as well as more disclosures of subsidy-goal-related information, such as job creation and capital investment. Further, these associations are stronger for firms operating in or obtaining subsidies from states whose politicians reveal a stronger preference for subsidy transparency, and for firms that are more likely to attract public scrutiny.
Handmaidens of the legislature? Understanding regulatory timing
Simon Haeder & Susan Webb Yackee
Journal of Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
When does legislation trigger regulation? The US Congress regularly passes laws that authorise government agencies to write legally binding regulations. Yet, when this occurs, agencies may take years to act - or, at times - may never act at all. We theorise that the breadth of the congressional statutory delegation drives the timing of agency policy production. In particular, when Congress expressly tells an agency to promulgate a rule, we expect agencies to do so quickly. Yet, when Congress provides greater policymaking discretion to agencies, we expect other factors - and especially, internal agency considerations - to drive regulatory timing. We use data from almost 350 statutes spanning four decades, which are then matched up with thousands of regulations, to assess the argument. Using innovative methods, we find support for our hypotheses. Overall, we produce a deeper understanding of the link between delegation and discretion: suggesting when it occurs, as well as, importantly, why.
Bad Impressions: How Journalists as "Storytellers" Diminish Public Confidence in Media
Brian Calfano, Jeffrey Layne Blevins & Alexis Straka
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, forthcoming
Abstract:
A somewhat common journalistic branding effort is use of the cue "storyteller." To better understand the impression the "storyteller" brand leaves, we fielded a survey-embedded experiment from a national sample of 2,133 US adults. The randomly assigned treatment credits a news article on a local political matter to a journalist using the "storyteller" brand. Drawing on media bias survey questions from the literature and sentiment analysis, we find consistent evidence that the "storyteller" cue lowers positive response to the journalist among respondents (although there remain various research avenues for additional insights on this topic).