2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Dynastic Politicians, Seniority, and Government Spending: Theory and Evidence from Japan and the United States

Research Project

Project/Area Number	24830095
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Public finance/Monetary economics
Research Institution	Waseda University
Principal Investigator	ASAKO Yasushi 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 講師 (70634757)
Project Period (FY)	2012-08-31 – 2014-03-31
Keywords	議員属性 / 公共政策 / 政府支出 / 利益誘導政策 / 世襲議員 / 議員の年功 / 多選禁止制
Research Abstract	This research investigates the effect of political dynasty and seniority of politicians on government spending by using formal models and data of Japan and the US. First, as compared with non-dynastic legislators, dynastic legislators bring more distributions to the district, enjoy higher electoral success, and harm the economic performance of the districts despite the larger amount of distributive benefits they bring. Second, the amount of spending decreases as the average seniority of a legislature increases from low to moderate, while it increases as the average seniority increases from moderate to high. Third, the adoption of term limits that dramatically reduces average seniority increases the amount of spending.