The Provision of Public Goods under Alternative Electoral Incentives
American Economic Review
vol. 91,
no. 1, March 2001
(pp. 225-239)
Abstract
Politicians who care about the spoils of office may underprovide a public good because its benefits cannot be targeted to voters as easily as pork-barrel spending. We compare a winner-take-all system--where all the spoils go to the winner--to a proportional system--where the spoils of office are split among candidates proportionally to their share of the vote. In a winner-take-all system the public good is provided less often than in a proportional system when the public good is particularly desirable. We then consider the electoral college system and show that it is particularly subject to this inefficiency.Citation
Lizzeri, Alessandro, and Nicola Persico. 2001. "The Provision of Public Goods under Alternative Electoral Incentives." American Economic Review, 91 (1): 225-239. DOI: 10.1257/aer.91.1.225JEL Classification
- D72 Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- H41 Public Goods