Fleeing a Lame Duck: Policy Uncertainty and Manufacturing Investment in US States

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Falk, Nathan; Shelton, Cameron A.
• 署名单位: Claremont Colleges; Claremont McKenna College; Claremont Graduate University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20160365
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 135-152
• 关键词: legislative professionalism; government ideology; federalist system; measuring citizen; american states; ELECTIONS; cycles; index

摘要

It is found that electorally induced policy uncertainty decreases manufacturing investment in US states. In a state with average partisan polarization, the elasticity of election-year investment to a specific measure of policy uncertainty is -0.027. When the incumbent governor is term limited, there is greater uncertainty over the outcome, providing an instrument to demonstrate this effect is causal, not simply coincidental. Moreover, manufacturing investment does not rebound following the election. Rather, own-state uncertainty is associated with a large and significant coincident rise in neighboring states' investment. These findings suggest that policy uncertainty at the subnational level drives investment to alternate sites.