Candidate Entry, Screening, and the Political Budget Cycle /

We investigate whether private information about citizens' competence in political office can be revealed by their entry and campaign expenditure decisions. We find that this depends on whether voters and candidates have common or conflicting interests; only in the former case can entry be reve...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Le Borgne, Eric
Other Authors: Lockwood, Ben
Format: Journal
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2002.
Series:IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2002/048
Online Access:Full text available on IMF
Description
Summary:We investigate whether private information about citizens' competence in political office can be revealed by their entry and campaign expenditure decisions. We find that this depends on whether voters and candidates have common or conflicting interests; only in the former case can entry be revealing. We apply these results to Rogoff's (1990) political budget cycle model: as interests are common, low-ability candidates are screened out at the entry stage, and so there is no signaling via fiscal policy. In a variant of Rogoff's model where citizens differ in honesty, interests are conflicting, so the political budget cycle can persist.
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Physical Description:1 online resource (39 pages)
Format:Mode of access: Internet
ISSN:1018-5941
Access:Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students