Speech to The Electors
Ideology, Not Affect: What Americans Want from Political Representation
Mia Costa
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do citizens want to be represented by elected officials in an era of affective polarization? Contemporary narratives about American politics argue that people embrace elite expressions of negative partisanship, above and beyond representation on policy. Using three conjoint experiments, I examine how individuals weigh the relative value of substantive representation on issues, constituency service, and partisan affect. The findings challenge the notion that Americans are primarily motivated by their affective, partisan identities and demonstrate the value of policy congruence and service responsiveness in terms of perceptions of political representation. The implication is that people evaluate elected officials in ways that we would expect them to in a healthy, functioning representative democracy, rather than one characterized by partisan animus. Even if polarization is driven by “affect, not ideology,” citizens prioritize representational styles centered around the issues that matter to them.
Surprise Election for Trump Connections
Travers Barclay Child et al.
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We exploit Donald Trump’s nonpolitical background and surprise election victory to identify the value of sudden presidential ties among S&P 500 firms. In our setting firms did not choose to become politically connected, so we identify treatment effects comparatively free of selection bias prevalent in this literature. Firms with presidential ties enjoyed greater abnormal returns around the 2016 election. Since Trump’s inauguration, connected firms had better performance, received more government contracts, and were less subject to unfavorable regulatory actions. We rule out a number of confounding factors, including industry designation, sensitivity to Republican platforms, campaign finance, and lobbying expenditures.
Are Individuals Harmed by Gerrymandering? Examining Access to Congressional District Offices
David Niven, Benjamin Plener Cover & Michael Solimine
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Methods: In a study of six states, we conduct more than 123 million distance measurements to identify residents whose closest district office is in the wrong congressional district. Based on survey results, we then estimate the likelihood that such mismatched individuals will personally visit the office of their member of Congress.
Results: We find that in five gerrymandered states, between 28.7 and 47.5 percent of residents have a mismatched closest district office, a rate several times higher than in a non‐gerrymandered state. Extrapolating from survey results, we find that mismatched residents are 38 percent less likely to visit their own district office, and that across five states gerrymandering effectively deters nearly 600,000 office visits over a two‐year congressional session.
The Partisanship of House Committees and Member Self‐Selection
Josh Ryan
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The extant literature suggests that members choose committees for distributive reasons and seek more prestigious committees as they move up the seniority ranks. But why do some members chose committees like Rules and Judiciary which are not distributive in nature? I claim that committees also offer representational benefits: namely, the ability to signal ideological preferences to constituents. Members from moderate districts seek out committees with jurisdictions over consensual issues, while members from extreme districts prefer committees with highly partisan jurisdictions. Using a unique dataset of committee partisanship constructed from committee roll‐call votes, I show that members are more likely to select ideologically congruent committees and more likely to leave noncongruent committees, though this relationship is conditioned by the distributive value of the committee. This research has implications for committee selection and theories of legislative organization by demonstrating that committees offer ideological representation benefits as well as distributive ones.
Going Public in an Era of Social Media: Tweets, Corrections, and Public Opinion
Dino Christenson, Sarah Kreps & Douglas Kriner
Presidential Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Presidents invariably use the bully pulpit to push a political agenda, but whether this leads to political success in advancing that agenda has long been the subject of debate. The increased reliance on social media has renewed that debate, particularly in light of new policies that flag or remove objectionable presidential content. This research conducts a survey experiment that evaluates the effect of presidential tweets on support for executive policies, including proposed unilateral action, and studies the effect of social media corrections of those tweets. We find little evidence that social media appeals move public opinion overall, although they do increase support among Republicans. Corrections generally worked as intended among Democrats but backfired among Republicans, canceling each other out in the aggregate. The findings offer important insights into the efficacy of going public on social media and of corrections to such claims in an era of stark partisan polarization.
Auditing local news presence on Google News
Sean Fischer, Kokil Jaidka & Yphtach Lelkes
Nature Human Behaviour, December 2020, Pages 1236-1244
Abstract:
Local news outlets have struggled to stay open in the more competitive market of digital media. Some have noted that this decline may be due to the ways in which digital platforms direct attention to some news outlets and not others. To test this theory, we collected 12.29 million responses to Google News searches within all US counties for a set of keywords. We compared the number of local outlets reported in the results against the number of national outlets. We find that, unless consumers are searching specifically for topics of local interest, national outlets dominate search results. Features correlated with local supply and demand, such as the number of local outlets and demographics associated with local news consumption, are not related to the likelihood of finding a local news outlet. Our findings imply that platforms may be diverting web traffic and desperately needed advertising dollars away from local news.
Meetings, Comments, and the Distributive Politics of Rulemaking
Brian Libgober
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, October 2020, Pages 449-481
Abstract:
Rulemaking procedures provide interest groups two opportunities to persuade regulators: ex parte meetings and public comments. Regulated entities use both avenues more extensively than other groups, but how much do they gain by doing so? By analyzing changes in the stock price of firms in the hours following rule announcements, I study the effect of lobbying on Dodd-Frank implementation at the Federal Reserve Board. I find that meetings and comments were associated with abnormal returns in the tens of billions, yet meetings were worth more. Returns of firms that met or commented were excessive in comparison to baseline expectations and the performance of all their disengaged competitors. When comparing firms that lobby with their most similar competitors, however, only meetings are associated with excess returns. By comparing comment requests to rule texts, I show that policy concessions were both pervasive and correlate with market outcomes. I connect these findings to contemporary debates about the design of administrative procedures and regulatory inequality.
Overcoming History Through Exit or Integration: Deep-Rooted Sources of Support for the European Union
Kai Gehring
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The origins of voter preferences about the vertical distribution of political power in federal systems are not well understood. I argue that negative historical experiences with higher-level governments can raise demands for both exit strategies and a decentralization of power, but also for upward integration. I specify conditions when delegating power upwards, for example, from the nation-state to a supranational level or international organization, can better serve the purpose of constraining nation-state actions to overcome history. Empirically, the quasi-random division of the French regions Alsace and Lorraine allows estimating differences in support for integration with a spatial regression discontinuity design. More negative exposure to nation-state actions causes persistently higher support for European integration in three referenda and less Euroscepticism in EU elections. Survey evidence supports exit and integration as two complementary alternatives. Both options can serve the purpose of moving power away from the government level associated with negative historical experiences.
Democratic Party Control Reduces Gender Inequality
John Kuk & Zoltan Hajnal
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women earn less than men who work in the same job with the same level of experience. We know much about this gender wage gap but relatively little about its political or partisan sources. In this article, we examine the effects of party control of state government on gender inequality in income, wages, unemployment, and poverty. Employing both a regression discontinuity design and a dynamic difference‐in‐difference analysis, we find that electing a Democratic majority to the state house leads to substantial improvement in women's incomes, wages, and unemployment relative to men-especially in recent years. We also show that greater female representation in office and more liberal policymaking on policies related to women's rights could be driving that process. We find, however, fewer clear effects on poverty and less robust results for partisan control of the governor's office or the state senate. Parties and politics matter, but not always.
The Role of Electoral Incentives for Policy Innovation: Evidence from the US Welfare Reform
Andreas Bernecker, Pierre Boyer & Christina Gathmann
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do governors' reelection motives affect policy experimentation? We develop a theoretical model of this situation, and then test the predictions in data on U.S. state-level welfare reforms from 1978 to 2007. This period marked the most dramatic shift in social policy since the New Deal. Our findings indicate that governors with strong electoral support are less likely to experiment than governors with little support. Yet, governors who cannot be reelected actually experiment more than governors striving for reelection. These findings are robust to controlling for ideology, preferences for redistribution, the state legislature, and cross-state learning.
In the land of OZ: Designating opportunity zones
James Alm, Trey Dronyk-Trosper & Sean Larkin
Public Choice, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 allowed governors of the fifty states to designate low-income areas as a “Qualified Opportunity Zone” (QOZ), which entitled the investors in these QOZs to significant tax incentives. As a result, each governor’s designation of QOZs provided an opportunity for the governor to introduce investments in low-income communities that would, in principle, increase economic opportunities in these areas. At the same time, each governor’s decision also provided an opportunity for the governor to reward political allies, to buy voter support, and to help business interests. Which of these many factors influenced the designation of QOZs? In this paper we estimate the impact of economic and political variables on the governors’ decisions to choose which areas among all eligible areas would receive QOZ status and which would not. We find that the QOZ selection process overall seems to have been relatively technocratic, with many of the strongest factors that determine QOZ designation being indicators of economic distress such as higher rates of unemployment, welfare receipt, or lower median income, all of which are consistent with the presumed goals of QOZs. Even so, we also find that political factors are significant in QOZ designation, with Democratic representation being negatively associated with QOZ nomination and with political representation by a local politician of the same party as the governor being positively associated with QOZ nomination. Of some note, we also find that areas with higher college attainment are favored.
What Determines Where Opportunity Knocks? Political Affiliation in the Selection of Opportunity Zones
Mary Margaret Frank, Jeffrey Hoopes & Rebecca Lester
Stanford Working Paper, June 2020
Abstract:
We examine the role of political affiliation during the selection of Opportunity Zones, a place-based tax incentive enacted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. We find governors are on average 7.6% more likely to select a census tract as an Opportunity Zone when the tract’s state representative is a member of the governor’s political party. Further, we find that this effect ranges from 0.0% to 25.6% depending on the state-level information channels governors used to select Opportunity Zones, such as engagement of professional advisors and implementation of public comment procedures. These effects are incremental to local demographic factors that increased the likelihood of selection, such as lower income levels and preceding improvements in local conditions. Analysis of the early response to Opportunity Zones (e.g. commercial real estate transactions, new building permits, and construction employment) shows that initial business investment occurs only in those states where the role of political affiliation was mitigated via the state-level information processes. These results provide evidence relevant for concurrent and future academic literature studying this incentive, for five current Congressional legislative proposals to amend the incentive, and for potential Opportunity Zone investors by informing the extent to which state-level politics and processes affected the implementation of this new incentive.