The Effect of Macroeconomic Fluctuations on the Electoral Fortunes of House Incumbents
研究宏观经济波动如何影响美国众议院在任议员的连任，发现收入增长和痛苦指数有显著效应，但选民同时考虑在任议员和总统党派因素。
The effect of macroeconomic fluctuations on House elections is a long debated, but still unresolved, issue. We argue that return rates are theoretically superior to vote shares as measures of electoral acountability and that incumbents, not candidates of the president's party, are the legislators voters hold responsible. We develop and test an incumbent accountability model using incumbent return rates in the U.S. House from 1916 to 1994, finding a strongly significant effect of both income growth and the misery index. However, the data reject both our pure incumbency model and the traditional presidential party model, indicating that both factors are relevant to voters.