REVEALED POLITICAL POWER

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bai, Jinhui H.; Lagunoff, Roger
• 署名单位: Georgetown University
• 刊物名称: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0020-6598
• DOI: 10.1111/iere.12029
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 1085-1115
• 关键词: Campaign contributions; Electoral competition; preferences

摘要

When is a polity biased? Consider an outsider who observes policy data but observes neither citizens' preferences nor the underlying distribution of political power. He views political power as if it were derived from wealth-weighted voting, where the weights determine the wealth bias. Positive weights favor the rich whereas negative ones favor the poor. We show that any policy data is rationalized by any wealth-weighted system. However, policy and polling observations together imply explicit bounds on the set of rationalizing biases. Accumulated data narrows this band. The inferential model is consistent with models of political competition for campaign contributions.