13.9 Lab: Study

  • The Financial Incumbency Advantage: Causes and Consequences (Fouirnaies and Hall 2014)
    • “we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of incumbency on campaign contributions in the U.S. House and state legislatures. In both settings, incumbency causes approximately a 20–25 percentage-point increase in the share of donations flowing to the incumbent’s party. The effect size does not vary with legislator experience and does not appear to depend on incumbent office-holder benefits. Instead, as we show, the effect is primarily the result of donations from access-oriented interest groups, especially donors from industries under heavy regulation and those with less ideological ties.” (Fouirnaies and Hall 2014)
    • “by focusing on close elections in which incumbency is”as if" randomly assigned to either the Democratic or Republican party […]. If the campaign contributions donated to the party in the next election cycle in districts it barely won differ systematically from the donations the party receives in districts it barely lost,this difference can be attributed to the impact of incumbency under weak conditions." (Fouirnaies and Hall 2014, 712)
  • Units: Districts (U.S. House and state legislatures)
  • Observations: Districts \(\times\) year
  • Treatment: Incumbency status at election 0 (Yes = 1, No = 0)
  • Outcome: Campaign contributions at election (Democratic campaign-donation receipts in the next electoral cycle)
  • Score/Scoring variable: Democratic vote share winning margin, that is, the difference between the Democratic share of the two-party vote and 50%, the necessary vote percentage required to win office
    • When this variable is above zero, the district (at time t) is ‘treated’ with a Democratic incumbent (= Incumbency)
    • So cutoff on this scoring variable is 0 (Treated > 0, Control < 0)
  • Logic: “If the campaign contributions donated to the party in the next election cycle in districts it barely won differ systematically from the donations the party receives in districts it barely lost,this difference can be attributed to the impact of incumbency under weak conditions.” (Fouirnaies and Hall 2014, 712)

References

Fouirnaies, Alexander, and Andrew B Hall. 2014. “The Financial Incumbency Advantage: Causes and Consequences.” J. Polit. 76 (3): 711–24.