Estimating Candidate Valence
利用美国众议院选举的投票份额数据，借鉴生产函数估计方法，控制竞选支出的内生性和候选人进入的选择偏差，估计候选人素质。发现现任者素质显著高于挑战者，平均带来约3.5个百分点的得票率差异；消除素质差异可使挑战者胜选概率从6.5%升至12.1%。
We estimate valence measures of candidates running in U.S. House elections from data on vote shares. Our identification and estimation strategy builds on ideas developed for estimating production functions, allowing us to control for possible endogeneity of campaign spending and sample selection of candidates due to endogenous entry. We find that incumbents have substantially higher valence measures than challengers running against them, resulting in about 3.5 percentage‐point differences in the vote share, on average. Eliminating differences in the valence of challengers and incumbents results in an increase in the winning probability of a challenger from 6.5% to 12.1%. Our measure of candidate valence can be used to study various substantive questions of political economy. We illustrate its usefulness by studying the source of incumbency advantage in U.S. House elections.