Informative Campaign promises

Abstract

This paper investigates the consequences of campaign talk for elections and public policy. We build a model with successive elections in which candidates for office give campaign promises without a commitment fulfill them. We find that a candidate's promises signal her policy intentions, but they also generate inefficiencies in public policy following the election (these inefficiencies are attenuated when incumbents are nominated for re-election). We find, furthermore, that limits to individual political careers (either natural aging or institutionally imposed term-limits) devalue campaign talk. However, it remains influential if we interpret our game as electoral competition by political parties rather than individual candidates.

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