The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Does Electoral Accountability Affect Economic Policy Choices? Evidence from Gubernatorial Term Limits
Abstract
This paper analyzes the behavior of U. S. governors from 1950 to 1986 to investigate a reputation-building model of political behavior. We argue that differences in the behavior of governors who face a binding term limit and those who are able to run again provides a source of variation in discount rates that can be used to test a political agency model. We find evidence that taxes, spending, and other policy instruments respond to a binding term limit if a Democrat is in office. The result is a fiscal cycle in term-limit states, which lowers state income when the term limit binds.
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Citations
Cited by
Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China
Chen, J., Pan, J., & Xu, Y. (2016) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12207 · Cited by 636
MPs for Sale? Returns to Office in Postwar British Politics
EGGERS, A. C., & HAINMUELLER, J. (2009) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055409990190 · Cited by 318
Metadata
- Authors
- Besley, T., & Case, A.
- Venue
- The Quarterly Journal of Economics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1995-08-01
- Volume
- 110
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 769-798
- ISSN
- 0033-5533 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-4650
- OpenAlex
- W2890829820
- Cited by
- 1,044
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 14.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Does Electoral Accountability Affect Economic Policy Choices? Evidence from Gubernatorial Term Limits. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/2946699
- The paper
- Besley, T., & Case, A. (1995). Does Electoral Accountability Affect Economic Policy Choices? Evidence from Gubernatorial Term Limits. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.2307/2946699
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.