Working Paper
The economics of split-ticket voting in representative democracies
Abstract: In U.S. elections, voters often vote for candidates from different parties for president and Congress. Voters also express dissatisfaction with the performance of Congress as a whole and satisfaction with their own representative. We develop a model of split-ticket voting in which government spending is financed by uniform taxes but the benefits from this spending are concentrated. While the model generates split-ticket voting, overall spending is too high only if the president?s powers are limited. Overall spending is too high in a parliamentary system, and our model can be used as the basis of an argument for term limits.
Keywords: Government spending policy;
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Bibliographic Information
Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Part of Series: Working Papers
Publication Date: 1997
Number: 582