Capital taxation and electoral accountability

Electoral Accountability and Responsive Democracy

We consider a canonical two-period model of elections with adverse selection (hidden preferences) and moral hazard (hidden actions), in which neither voters nor politicians can commit to future choices. We prove existence of electoral equilibria, and we show that in response to electoral incentives, office holders mix between “taking it easy” and “going for broke” in the first period. Even in t...

Social Identity and Electoral Accountability

In a laboratory experiment, we explore the effects of group identities on the principal-agent relationship between voters and representatives. In an adverse selection framework with observable effort, voters can choose to condition their reelection choices on representatives’ effort alone, beliefs about representatives’ competence, or both of those jointly. We show that inducing social identiti...

Term Limits and Electoral Accountability∗

Periodic elections are the main instrument through which voters can hold politicians accountable. From this perspective term limits, which restrict voters’ ability to reward politicians with re-election, appear counterproductive. We show that despite the disciplining effect of elections, term limits can be ex ante welfare improving from the perspective of voters. By reducing the value of holdin...

Taxation and Capital Spending

Government Responsibility and Electoral Accountability in Federations

Because federalism can be a threat to accountability, a model of voting behavior in federations must accommodate voters' attributions of responsibility to each order of government for policy outcomes. This study uses a panel survey of Canadians in both federal and provincial elections to ask whether voters are able to hold governments accountable in a federal context. Voters may ignore issues w...