The Role of Electoral Incentives for Policy Innovation: Evidence from the US Welfare Reform
研究了州长连任动机如何影响政策实验，发现选举支持强的州长更少尝试新政策，而无法连任的州长反而更愿意创新。
How do governors’ reelection motives affect policy experimentation? We develop a theoretical model of this situation, and then test the predictions in data on US state-level welfare reforms from 1978 to 2007. This period marked the most dramatic shift in social policy since the New Deal. Our findings indicate that governors with strong electoral support are less likely to experiment than governors with little support. Yet, governors who cannot be reelected actually experiment more than governors striving for reelection. These findings are robust to controlling for ideology, preferences for redistribution, the state legislature, and cross-state learning.