Candidates, Credibility, and Re-election Incentives
研究公民候选人无法做出有约束力的政策承诺但受连任可能约束的选举，发现当政策效用函数为凹时，非中位候选人当选，政策不趋同，从而减少寻租、提高选民福利。
I study elections between citizen-candidates who cannot make binding policy commitments before taking office, but who are accountable to voters due to the possibility of re-election. In each period a representative voter chooses among heterogeneous candidates with known policy preferences. The elected candidate chooses the policy to implement, and how much rent-seeking to engage in, when in office. As the voter decides both which candidate to elect and, subsequently, whether the candidate is retained, this framework integrates elements of electoral competition and electoral accountability. I show that, in the best stationary equilibrium, when utility functions are concave over policy, non-median candidates are elected over candidates with policy preferences more closely aligned with the voter. In this equilibrium, there are two candidates who are elected at some history, and the policies these candidates implement in office do not converge. This divergence incentivizes candidates to engage in less rent-seeking, increasing voter welfare. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.