Signalling, incumbency advantage, and optimal reelection rules

Caselli, Francesco ORCID: 0009-0001-5191-7156, Cunningham, Tom, Morelli, Massimo and Moreno de Barreda, Inés (2012) Signalling, incumbency advantage, and optimal reelection rules. CEP Discussion Papers (CEPDP1122). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

Much literature on political behavior treats politicians as motivated by reelection, choosing actions to signal their types to voters. We identify two novel implications of models in which signalling incentives are important. First, because incumbents only care about clearing a reelection hurdle, signals will tend to cluster just above the threshold needed for reelection. This generates a skew distribution of signals leading to an incumbency advantage in the probability of election. Second, voters can exploit the signalling behavior of politicians by precommitting to a higher threshold for signals received. Raising the threshold discourages signalling effort by low quality politicians but encourages effort by high quality politicians, thus increasing the separation of signals and improving the selection function of an election. This precommitment has a simple institutional interpretation as a supermajority rule, requiring that incumbents exceed some fraction of votes greater than 50% to be reelected.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion...
Additional Information:	© 2012 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Economics
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General)
JEL classification:	D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Economic Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D78 - Positive Analysis of Policy-Making and Implementation D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D82 - Asymmetric and Private Information
Date Deposited:	26 Feb 2024 12:12
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 19:53
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/121757

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