Electoral Institutions and Electoral Cycles in Investment Incentives: A Field Experiment on Over 3,000 U.S. Municipalities
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Through a field experiment and audit study, we test how the electoral calendar affects the use of local economic development policies. We explore how electoral timing along with local political institutions and party composition affect local governments’ offers of investment incentives to outside firms. We legally incorporated a consultancy and, on behalf of a real investor in manufacturing, approached roughly 3,000 U.S. municipalities with inquiries. The main experimental results show no greater tendency to offer incentives for investment anticipated prior to than after elections—a null result that is estimated with high precision. Limiting the sample to municipalities that specialize in manufacturing, the relevant subgroup, suggests that election timing matters in this most likely set of locales. Some observational findings include additional evidence on how direct elections of executives and partisanship correlate with incentive offers. Verification Materials: The data and materials required to verify the computational reproducibility of the results, procedures, and analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/8PIIAI. Seminal studies in political science, economics, and public policy have theorized that the election calendar alters politician action toward economic policy or public spending (Hibbs 1977; Nordhaus 1975; Nathan M. Jensen is Professor, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, 4.132 Batts Hall, Austin, TX 78712 (natemjensen@austin.utexas.edu). Michael G. Findley is Professor of Government, Department of Government and LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, 3.108 Batts Hall, Austin, TX 78712 (mikefindley@utexas.edu). Daniel L. Nielson is Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University, 790 KMBL, Provo, UT 84602 (daniel_nielson@byu.edu). ∗We preregistered the research design with the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) Network (www.egap.org) on July 31, 2013, prior to the execution of the experiment in August 2013. The registration documents were embargoed until September 2014 to avoid detection in the field experiment. Anonymized preregistration documents are available from EGAP upon email request. We registered substantial information including the study background, hypotheses, expected analysis procedures, and who would carry out the research. We precommitted to report certain interventions and results regardless of the outcome, which we have done throughout, and we also note where we deviate from the preregistration document. We thank Aaron Chatterji, Adam Dynes, Darren Hawkins, Susan Hyde, Stephen Meier, and participants at various seminar, conference, and workshop presentations, including the International Studies Association (2013), the Midwest Political Science Association (2013), the International Political Economy Society (2013), the Political Science Department at Brigham Young University, BYU’s Political and Economic Development Labs, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the University of Illinois Department of Political Science, the Yale International Relations seminar, and the MIT International Relations seminar. For excellent research assistance, we thank Brock Laney, Benjamin Layton, Billy Mathias, and Elizabeth McGuire. Institutional review board (IRB) clearances were received on February 22, 2013 (BYU), April 2, 2013 (Washington University in St. Louis), and May 8, 2013 (UT-Austin IRB). The research design for this experiment was registered on July 31, 2013, with the Experiments in Governance and Politics registry as study [28] 20130731. Of the interventions registered, in this article we report on Hypotheses 1 and 2. In other work (Chatterji et al. 2016), we report on the results for Hypothesis 3. Between the articles, we report fully on all aspects outlined in the original registered design document as stated, in addition to other analyses flagged as not preregistered. Funding for this project was provided by Richard and Judy Finch; the Department of Political Science at BYU; BYU’s College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences; BYU’s David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies; the Weidenbaum Center and Center for New Institutional Social Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis; and the Bannister Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. Persson and Tabellini 2003; Rogoff 1990). The observational research testing these theories empirically, however, reveals mixed findings (de Haan and Klomp 2013; Franzese 2002). These results also face well-known American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 64, No. 4, October 2020, Pp. 807–822 C ©2020, Midwest Political Science Association DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12499