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The Political Business Cycle: Endogenous Election Timing & Hyperbolic Memory Discounting

In the models analyzed in this paper, there exists an incumbent politician with one objective, two choices, and voters who remember the past differently. The politician's primary goal is to get reelected, which is done by maximizing the number of votes on the day of election. The politician can increase their chances of reelection if they influence the state of the economy over time and ensure the economy is in its 'best' state on the days leading up to the election.
In conducting this research, I wanted to study how different rates of memory decay influences the choices the politician makes during the course of their term. Also, I wanted to explore how long a politician would wait to have an election if that were a choice they could make. I found that voters who remember more of the past place a greater constraint on the incumbent leading to moderate fluctuations in the economy and frequent elections.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UTAHS/oai:digitalcommons.usu.edu:etd-8741
Date01 August 2019
CreatorsCottle, Jake R.
PublisherDigitalCommons@USU
Source SetsUtah State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceAll Graduate Theses and Dissertations
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