Does restricting choice in referenda enable governments to spend more?

Holcombe, Randall G.; Kenny, Lawrence W.

doi:10.1007/s11127-008-9282-1

“…In doing so, we contribute to the scholarly understanding of voter support for public financing of sports stadiums (Ahlfeldt and Maennig 2012;Brown and Paul 1999;Coates and Wicker 2015;Friedman and Mason 2004). Our findings highlight the importance of the public choice literature on electoral timing (Anzia 2011;Dunne et al 1997;Holcombe and Kenny 2008;Meredith 2009), given that we find that a higher voter turnout is associated with fewer 'yes' votes. Having these referenda on the ballot at the same time as a Presidential election almost certainly reduced the likelihood of getting a majority of cast votes for either measure.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 52%

Public Choice

2019

0

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“…In doing so, we contribute to the scholarly understanding of voter support for public financing of sports stadiums (Ahlfeldt and Maennig 2012;Brown and Paul 1999;Coates and Wicker 2015;Friedman and Mason 2004). Our findings highlight the importance of the public choice literature on electoral timing (Anzia 2011;Dunne et al 1997;Holcombe and Kenny 2008;Meredith 2009), given that we find that a higher voter turnout is associated with fewer 'yes' votes. Having these referenda on the ballot at the same time as a Presidential election almost certainly reduced the likelihood of getting a majority of cast votes for either measure.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 51%

The Public Choice of Public Stadium Financing: Evidence from San Diego Referenda

Johnson

¹

,

Hall

²

2019

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Local politicians and team owners frequently argue that the public financing of stadiums is important for local economic development. The sports economics literature, however, has largely found that new professional sport facilities do not generate any new net economic activity. We provide context to this literature by exploring the public choice in the public financing of stadiums. In 2016, San Diego had two ballot measures related to the San Diego Chargers. Measure C would allow officials to raise hotel taxes to pay for a new downtown stadium for the Chargers. Measure D would also raise hotel taxes, but explicitly prevented any money being spent on the Chargers. Both measures failed to receive 50% of the votes cast. We find that zip codes with a higher voter turnout were more likely to vote against both measures, highlighting the importance of the timing of referenda in limiting the ability of clearly defined groups, such as Chargers fans, to have a large influence on the voting outcome. Meanwhile, areas with more Trump voters were more likely to support higher taxes for the purpose of building the Chargers a new stadium.

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“…To investigate our specific 10 e.g. Romer, Rosenthal, and Munley (1992) and Holcombe and Kenny (2008) show that referendum requirements affect spending. 11 We obtained the data and Stata-dofiles from the authors through the journal website.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Can We Trust Population Thresholds in Regression Discontinuity Designs?

Ade¹,

Freier

²

2011

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. i Abstract: A recent literature has used variation just around deterministic legislative population thresholds to identify the causal effects of institutional changes. This paper reviews the use of regression discontinuity designs using such population thresholds. Our concern involves three arguments: (1) simultaneous exogenous (co-)treatment, (2) simultaneous endogenous choices and (3) manipulation and precise control over population measures. Terms of use: Documents inRevisiting the study by Egger and Koethenbuerger (2010), who analyse the relationship between council size and government spending, we present new evidence that these three concerns do matter for causal analysis. Our results suggest that empirical designs using population thresholds are only to be used with utmost care and confidence in the precise institutional setting.Acknowledgments: We would like to thank

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Does restricting choice in referenda enable governments to spend more?

Abstract: Representative democracy, Median voter model, Referendum, School finance,

Cited by 11 publications

References 27 publications

Public Choice

Public Choice

The Public Choice of Public Stadium Financing: Evidence from San Diego Referenda

When Can We Trust Population Thresholds in Regression Discontinuity Designs?

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