Legislative Term Limits and Government Spending: Theory and Evidence from the United States

43 Pages Posted: 13 Jul 2012 Last revised: 23 Dec 2014

See all articles by Yasushi Asako

Yasushi Asako

Waseda University

Tetsuya Matsubayashi

University of North Texas

Michiko Ueda

Syracuse University

Date Written: December 8, 2014

Abstract

What are the fiscal consequences of legislative term limits? To answer this question, we first develop a legislative bargaining model that describes negotiations over the allocation of distributive projects among legislators with different levels of seniority. Building on several predictions from the model, we develop two hypotheses for empirical testing. First, the adoption of term limits that results in a large change in the variance of seniority within a legislature increases the amount of government spending, while the adoption of term limits that results in a small change in the variance shows no change. Second, legislatures that adopt stricter term limits increase the amount of government spending, while legislatures that adopt moderate term limits show no change in the amount. We provide evidence for these hypotheses using panel data for 46 US state legislatures between 1980 and 2010.

Keywords: term limits, legislative bargaining, government spending

JEL Classification: D72, H11, H72

Suggested Citation

Asako, Yasushi and Matsubayashi, Tetsuya and Ueda, Michiko, Legislative Term Limits and Government Spending: Theory and Evidence from the United States (December 8, 2014). APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2105006 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2105006

Yasushi Asako (Contact Author)

Waseda University ( email )

1-6-1 Nishi-Waseda
Shinjuku-ku
Tokyo, Tokyo 169-8050
Japan

HOME PAGE: http://www.yasushiasako.com/

Tetsuya Matsubayashi

University of North Texas ( email )

1155 Union Circle #305340
Denton, TX 76203
United States

Michiko Ueda

Syracuse University ( email )

900 S. Crouse Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13244-2130
United States

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