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Contact
Information
(773) 789-8508
Email
Pablo Montagnes
Address:
Department of Management and Strategy,
Kellogg School of Management,
2001 Sheridan Road,
Evanston, IL-60208 |
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Working Papers:
Party Labels and Information: The Implications of Contagion in Coelection Environments (with Yosh Halberstam )
In related empirical work, we demonstrate that, relative to midterm elections, in presidential elections a more ideologically moderate electorate produces a more extreme and polarized senate. In particular, we find that senators first elected during presidential election years are relatively more extreme than their counterparts first elected during midterms; conversely, we find that incumbents who leave office in presidential elections are relatively more moderate than those who leave in midterms. In this paper we propose a model in which the presence of party labels in an environment of incomplete information produces a contagion effect across contemporaneous races for office—a coattail effect. In the aggregate, this contagion generates electoral outcomes that are consistent with our empirical findings and other well-known phenomena from the literature, such as midterm attrition.
Consistent Biases in Electoral Environments: Evidence from Entry and Exit of Senators(with Yosh Halberstam)
In this paper, we compare senators first elected in midterms with those first elected in presidential elections and find them strikingly different: the cohort of senators first elected in presidential elections is consistently more ideologically extreme and party disciplined than the cohort first elected in midterms. This result is surprising in light of empirical evidence suggesting that the electorate in presidential elections is more ideologically moderate and less partisan than the electorate in midterm elections. Furthermore, we find that senators who are ousted or retire from office during the time period around presidential elections are significantly more ideologically moderate and vote more independently than those who exit around midterms. Together, these two empirical regularities suggest that the relatively more moderate electorate in presidential elections generates a more extreme and polarized Senate. These findings suggest that holding concurrent races for office is not outcome neutral and raise policy questions about the timing of elections and ballot initiatives. Our empirical approach is robust to econometric specification and outliers and can be extended to examining models of electoral competition and voting behavior.
Work In Progress:
Voting in Contracts
Team Service (with Mallesh Pai)
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