Policymakers’ Horizon and Economic Reforms

摘要: This paper investigates the relation between policymakers’ term length and their willingness to support economic reforms. We describe a model in which office-motivated legislators have mandates of different consider introduction trade liberalization reform, gives rise distributional effects that only become known over time. show legislators’ voting behavior depends on political horizon policy interests constituencies. In particular, with shorter are less likely if they represent import-competing To assess validity these results, we examine determinants all votes major U.S. bills cast 1973 2005. exploit particular features Congress, House Senate representatives respectively two-year six-year mandates, one-third being up for election every two years. find members generally more protectionist than Senate. However, this difference disappears senators last years mandate export JEL classifications: D72, F10