G30D Microeconomic Theory Review notes
A set of revision and review notes will be added here during Revision Week to help you prepare for the Summer exam.
Martin Jensen will be holding a Revision Lecture for material covered in Term 1
WORKING PAPER: The Effects of Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Randomized Field Experiment
Draft – Jan 2013
Abstract
This paper reports the results of a randomized field experiment involving approximately 11,400 households in the constituency of Dublin West, in the Republic of Ireland. Nonpartisan get-out-the-vote messages were conveyed through direct mail in the days and weeks before a by-election in October 2011. After the election, voter turnout records were used to compare turnout rates among people assigned to the treatment and control groups. Consistent with experiments of a similar nature carried out in the US and UK (first-past-the-post elections), the findings indicate that direct mail can be effective in encouraging voter turnout. Varying the intensity of the treatment and increasing the personalisation of the treatment suggest non-partisan direct mail campaigns can be made more effective. Male and female recipients reacted differently to the treatment, while an analysis of spillover effects suggests as much as 60 per cent of the treatment effect spills over to another voter in the same household.
Paper here: The Effects of Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Randomized Field Experiment
Teaching: MSc Microeconomic Theory
I am teaching MSc Microeconomic Theory in Spring 2013 at the University of Birmingham. Details can be found here.
WORKING PAPER: Incumbency Advantage in Irish Elections: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis
DRAFT – OCTOBER 2012
This paper exploits the quasi-experimental features of the system of proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PR-STV) to estimate incumbency advantage in Dail Eireann. In very close elections, where there is a narrow margin of victory, it is likely that bare winners are comparable in their unobservable characteristics to bare losers. The regression discontinuity analysis indicates that incumbency causes an increase in the probability that a candidate is successful in a subsequent election. The magnitude of this increase is in the order of 0.18. We also find evidence that incumbency acts as a significant barrier to the re-entry of challengers. Bare winners are twenty percentage points more likely to rerun in a subsequent election compared to bare losers. In testing for heterogeneity of the incumbency effect within parties, we find that the Fine Gael candidates enjoy the largest incumbency advantage.