Electoral Bias and Policy Choice: Theory and Evidence
نویسندگان
چکیده
This paper develops an approach to studying how bias in favor of one party due to the pattern of electoral districting a¤ects policy choice. We tie a commonly used measure of electoral bias to the theory of party competition and show how this a¤ects party strategy in theory. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated using data on local government in England. The results suggest that reducing electoral bias leads parties to moderate their policies. We are grateful to Jim Alt, Robert Barro, Andrew Chesher, Steve Coate, Antonio Merlo, Costas Meghir, Francesco Trebbi and Frank Windmeijer as well as two anonymous referees for useful comments. The paper has also bene tted from discussions with numerous seminar participants.
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