TY  - BOOK
AU  - Iaryczower,Matias
AU  - Montero,Sergio
AU  - Kim,Galileu
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - Representation Failure
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2022///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
KW  - Estimation: General
KW  - jelc
KW  - Econometrics of Games and Auctions
KW  - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
KW  - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
N1  - April 2022; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - Democratic representation is constrained by the alternatives available to voters. In this paper, we develop a methodology to gauge the extent to which the "supply side" of politics hinders voter welfare. Using rich data on thousands of candidates in three Brazilian legislative elections, we quantify the relative value voters place on candidates' policy positions and non-ideological attributes, and we evaluate voters' welfare given the set of candidates they face. Our estimates uncover substantial welfare losses to voters relative to three alternative benchmarks of ideal representation. On average, the typical voter suffers only a moderate loss due to policy incongruence but a large loss due to shortages in candidates' non-ideological characteristics. To evaluate the welfare consequences of potential institutional reforms, we develop and estimate a model of equilibrium policy determination. Through counterfactual experiments, we show that institutional reforms aimed at improving the quality of representation may have sizable unintended consequences due to equilibrium policy adjustments
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w29965
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w29965
ER  -