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  • 2022
  • Working Paper

Electoral Turnovers

By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Vincent Rollet
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:122
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Abstract

In most national elections, voters face a key choice between continuity and change. Electoral turnovers occur when the incumbent candidate or party fails to win reelection. To understand how turnovers affect national outcomes, we study the universe of presidential and parliamentary elections held since 1945. We document the prevalence of turnovers over time and we estimate their effects on economic performance, trade, human development, conflict, and democracy. Using a close-elections regression discontinuity design (RDD) across countries, we show that turnovers improve country performance. These effects are not driven by differences in the characteristics of challengers, or by the fact that challengers systematically increase the level of government intervention in the economy. Electing new leaders leads to more policy change, it improves governance, and it reduces perceived corruption, consistent with the expectation that recently elected leaders exert more effort due to stronger reputation concerns.

Keywords

Election Outcomes; Regression Discontinuity Design; Political Elections; Change; Global Range; Outcome or Result; Economy; Governance; Performance Improvement

Citation

Marx, Benjamin, Vincent Pons, and Vincent Rollet. "Electoral Turnovers." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29766, February 2022. (Revise and resubmit requested, Review of Economic Studies.)
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About The Author

Vincent Pons

Business, Government and the International Economy
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • May 2023
    • Quarterly Journal of Economics

    How Do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multi-Country Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates

    By: Caroline Le Pennec and Vincent Pons
    • March 2023
    • Faculty Research

    The Creation and Fissuring of Consensus

    By: Vincent Pons
    • February 2023
    • Faculty Research

    The Trouble with TCE

    By: Vincent Pons and Rafael Di Tella
More from the Authors
  • How Do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multi-Country Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates By: Caroline Le Pennec and Vincent Pons
  • The Creation and Fissuring of Consensus By: Vincent Pons
  • The Trouble with TCE By: Vincent Pons and Rafael Di Tella
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