On the optimality of policy choices in the face of biased beliefs, retrospective voting and the down-up problem
研究选民有偏信念和回溯投票如何影响政策选择，发现当政策好处延迟显现时，回溯投票会放大有偏信念的负面影响，但若执政者强烈关注政策成功，仍可能选择好的长期政策。
Abstract Previous literature has shown that voters’ biased beliefs regarding policy outcomes incentivize the selection of seemingly better, but socially worse, policies. It has also shown that voters’ tendency to gauge an incumbent’s competence by the present state of the economy (retrospective voting) could counteract biased beliefs. In this article, we argue that, when the advantageous consequences of a measure of policy only accrue with considerable lag (the down-up problem), retrospective voting instead amplifies the effects of biased beliefs. Still, we find that it may nevertheless be optimal for an incumbent to select good long-term policies if the incumbent is strongly motivated by the success of the chosen policies. Finally, we investigate the robustness of these conclusions by considering an incumbent bias, limited accountability, and the introduction of incentive and threshold contracts.