Arnold Bennett Hall
Biographic Data
| ID | 173344 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arnold Bennett Hall |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arnold Bennett |
| FAMILY NAME | Hall |
| SIGNATURE | HALL A B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7185-2196 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 78 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 885 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 78 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1910 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Polarization and state legislative elections
US state legislatures are critical policymaking institutions that are increasingly polarized, yet data and measurement limitations have prevented researchers from understanding how state legislative elections contribute to this polarization. To address this gap, we construct new measures of candidate ideology based on campaign contributions and roll‐call votes, and we use them to offer the first systematic study of the relationship between candid…
Election-Denying Republican Candidates Underperformed in the 2022 Midterms
We combine newly collected election data with records of public denials of the results of the 2020 election to estimate the degree to which election-denying Republican candidates over- or underperformed other Republicans in 2022 in statewide and federal elections. We find that the average vote share of election-denying Republicans in statewide races was approximately 3.2 percentage points lower than their co-partisans after accounting for state-l…
Who Runs for Congress? A Study of State Legislators and Congressional Polarization
Why have the people running for Congress become more ideologically extreme over time, causing Congress to polarize? In this paper, we study how the pool of state legislators shapes the ideological distribution of congressional candidates. We geographically match state legislators to the US House districts that they could plausibly seek to represent. Although the national pool of state legislators has polarized over time, we find no evidence that …
Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service: Evidence from US states
Extensive research on gender and politics indicates that women legislators are more likely to serve on committees and sponsor bills related to so-called “women's issues.” However, it remains unclear whether this empirical regularity is driven by district preferences, differences in legislator backgrounds, or because gendered political processes shape and constrain the choices available to women once they are elected. We introduce expansive new da…
Does Homeownership Influence Political Behavior? Evidence from Administrative Data
How Do Electoral Incentives Affect Legislator Behavior? Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures
A classic question about democratic elections is how much they are able to influence politician behavior by forcing them to anticipate future reelection attempts, especially in contexts where voters are not paying close attention and are not well informed. We compile a new dataset containing roughly 780,000 bills, combined with more than 16 million roll-call voting records for roughly 6,000 legislators serving in U.S. state legislatures with term…
Economic distress and voting: Evidence From the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
We use nationwide deed-level records on home foreclosures to examine the effects of economic distress on electoral outcomes and individual voter turnout. County-level difference-in-differences estimates show that counties that suffered larger increases in foreclosures did not punish or reward members of the incumbent president's party more than less affected counties. Linking the Ohio voter file to individual foreclosures, difference-in-differenc…
Japan’s Education Policies in Korea in the 1910s: “Thankful and Obedient”
In the 1910s, Japanese colonial officials worked to legitimize their recently acquired rule of Korea by providing public elementary education, gradually expanding from an initially limited offering. Their public schools existed in tension with Korean-run private schools, which the Japanese barely tolerated. There was also a tension within the Japanese camp over the proper curriculum for the public elementary schools. The Korean Education Ordinanc…
How Divisive Primaries Hurt Parties: Evidence from Near-Runoffs in US Legislatures
In many democracies, parties use primary elections to nominate candidates. Primaries may help select quality candidates, but they can expose flaws and offend losing candidates’ supporters. Do divisive primaries help or harm parties in the general election? Existing research is mixed, likely because of issues of selection and omitted variables. We address these issues by studying southern US states with runoff primaries—second-round elections that…
How Newspapers Reveal Political Power
Political science is in large part the study of power, but power itself is difficult to measure. We argue that we can use newspaper coverage—in particular, the relative amount of space devoted to particular subjects in newspapers—to measure the relative power of an important set of political actors and offices. We use a new dataset containing nearly 50 million historical newspaper pages from 2,700 local US newspapers over the years 1877–1977. We …
Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War
How did personal wealth and slaveownership affect the likelihood Southerners fought for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War? On the one hand, wealthy Southerners had incentives to free-ride on poorer Southerners and avoid fighting; on the other hand, wealthy Southerners were disproportionately slaveowners, and thus had more at stake in the outcome of the war. We assemble a dataset on roughly 3.9 million free citizens in the Confederacy…
Do Shark Attacks Influence Presidential Elections? Reassessing a Prominent Finding on Voter Competence
We reassess Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels's prominent claim that shark attacks influence presidential elections. First, we assemble data on every fatal shark attack in US history and county-level returns from every presidential election between 1872 and 2012, and we find no systematic evidence that shark attacks affect elections. Second, we show that Achen and Bartels's county-level finding for New Jersey in 1916 becomes substantively small…
How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees
Concerns that interest groups use their financial resources to distort the democratic process are long‐standing. Surprisingly, though, firms spend little money on political campaigns, and roughly 95% of publicly traded firms in the United States have never contributed to a political campaign. Do interest groups seek political access through their modest contributions, or are these contributions only a minor and forgettable part of the political p…
Who Punishes Extremist Nominees? Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in US Elections
Political observers, campaign experts, and academics alike argue bitterly over whether it is more important for a party to capture ideologically moderate swing voters or to encourage turnout among hardcore partisans. The behavioral literature in American politics suggests that voters are not informed enough, and are too partisan, to be swing voters, while the institutional literature suggests that moderate candidates tend to perform better. We sp…
The Majority-Party Disadvantage: Revising Theories of Legislative Organization
Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage. To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of…
Long-Term Consequences of Election Results
Voters in US elections receive markedly different representation depending on which candidate they elect, and because of incumbent advantages, the effects of this choice persist for many years. What are the long-term consequences of these two phenomena? Combining electoral and legislative roll-call data in a dynamic regression discontinuity design, this study assesses the long-term consequences of election results for representation. Across the U…
The Elusive Quest for Convergence
Does American political representation work as predicted by theory? On average, political candidates diverge considerably in their ideological positioning, but do they diverge less on issues of particular salience to their local constituents? We combine data on congressional roll call votes, electoral outcomes, district demographics, and substantive information about bills to search for convergence in the places we would most expect to find it. D…
Systemic Effects of Campaign Spending: Evidence from Corporate Contribution Bans in US State Legislatures
In this paper, I examine the systemic effects of campaign spending, looking at outcomes at the level of the legislature rather than the individual seat. Using a difference-in-differences design, I show that state-level corporate campaign contribution bans have a large effect on electoral outcomes at the legislature level. A 1 percentage-point increase in the Democratic (or Republican) party’s share of all contributions in an electoral cycle is es…
First Steps Towards Assimilation: Japanese-Run Education in Korea, 1905–1910
During the Protectorate era of 1905–1910 Japanese officials in Korea used education as a tool in their attempt to transform the Korean population into a people both friendly and cooperative towards Japan. As Korea was still formally an independent country, these officials could not openly call for assimilation. Yet they systematically worked to leverage the Koreans’ growing passion for education to achieve their goals, through taking over the lar…
Information and Wasted Votes: A Study of U.S. Primary Elections
We study whether information leads voters and donors to “waste” fewer votes and donations on candidates who do not finish in first or second place. Examining U.S. primary elections featuring more than two candidates, we compare voting and contribution behavior across offices with varying levels of information. We find that voters and donors are more likely to support the top two candidates, and less likely to waste votes or donations on lesser ca…
Assessing the External Validity of Election RD Estimates: An Investigation of the Incumbency Advantage
The regression discontinuity (RD) design is popular because it provides a design-based estimate of the incumbency advantage. However, the RD estimate is "local": it only identifies the effect in hypothetical elections with a 50-50 tie between the Democratic and Republican candidates. There is significant uncertainty and disagreement over the incumbency effect in safer districts away from this threshold. Indeed, mirroring the competing arguments i…
How Legislators Respond to Localized Economic Shocks: Evidence from Chinese Import Competition
We explore the effects of localized economic shocks from trade on roll-call behavior and electoral outcomes in the US House, 1990–2010. We demonstrate that economic shocks from Chinese import competition—first studied by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson—cause legislators to vote in a more protectionist direction on trade bills but cause no change in their voting on all other bills. At the same time, these shocks have no effect on the reelection rates of i…
How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off
This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small amount of scare-off, at least in cases where the previous election was nearly tied. As Lee and others have shown (and as we confirm for our samples) the estimated party incumbency advantage in these same cases is quite large—in fact, it is about as lar…
On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races
The regression discontinuity (RD) design is a valuable tool for identifying electoral effects, but this design is only effective when relevant actors do not have precise control over election results. Several recent papers contend that such precise control is possible in large elections, pointing out that the incumbent party is more likely to win very close elections in the United States House of Representatives in recent periods. In this article…
What Happens When Extremists Win Primaries
This article studies the interplay of U.S. primary and general elections. I examine how the nomination of an extremist changes general-election outcomes and legislative behavior in the U.S. House, 1980-2010, using a regression discontinuity design in primary elections. When an extremist-as measured by primary-election campaign receipt patterns-wins a "coin-flip" election over a more moderate candidate, the party's general-election vote share decr…
On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races
The regression discontinuity (RD) design is a valuable tool for identifying electoral effects, but this design is only effective when relevant actors do not have precise control over election results. Several recent papers contend that such precise control is possible in large elections, pointing out that the incumbent party is more likely to win very close elections in the United States House of Representatives in recent periods. In this article…
What Happens When Extremists Win Primaries
This article studies the interplay of U.S. primary and general elections. I examine how the nomination of an extremist changes general-election outcomes and legislative behavior in the U.S. House, 1980-2010, using a regression discontinuity design in primary elections. When an extremist-as measured by primary-election campaign receipt patterns-wins a "coin-flip" election over a more moderate candidate, the party's general-election vote share decr…
The Financial Incumbency Advantage: Causes and Consequences
In this article, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of incumbency on campaign contributions in the U.S. House and state legislatures. In both settings, incumbency causes approximately a 20–25 percentage-point increase in the share of donations flowing to the incumbent's party. The effect size does not vary with legislator experience and does not appear to depend on incumbent office-holder benefits. Instead, as …
How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees
Concerns that interest groups use their financial resources to distort the democratic process are long‐standing. Surprisingly, though, firms spend little money on political campaigns, and roughly 95% of publicly traded firms in the United States have never contributed to a political campaign. Do interest groups seek political access through their modest contributions, or are these contributions only a minor and forgettable part of the political p…
Do Shark Attacks Influence Presidential Elections? Reassessing a Prominent Finding on Voter Competence
We reassess Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels's prominent claim that shark attacks influence presidential elections. First, we assemble data on every fatal shark attack in US history and county-level returns from every presidential election between 1872 and 2012, and we find no systematic evidence that shark attacks affect elections. Second, we show that Achen and Bartels's county-level finding for New Jersey in 1916 becomes substantively small…
How Legislators Respond to Localized Economic Shocks: Evidence from Chinese Import Competition
We explore the effects of localized economic shocks from trade on roll-call behavior and electoral outcomes in the US House, 1990–2010. We demonstrate that economic shocks from Chinese import competition—first studied by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson—cause legislators to vote in a more protectionist direction on trade bills but cause no change in their voting on all other bills. At the same time, these shocks have no effect on the reelection rates of i…
Does Homeownership Influence Political Behavior? Evidence from Administrative Data
Who Punishes Extremist Nominees? Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in US Elections
Political observers, campaign experts, and academics alike argue bitterly over whether it is more important for a party to capture ideologically moderate swing voters or to encourage turnout among hardcore partisans. The behavioral literature in American politics suggests that voters are not informed enough, and are too partisan, to be swing voters, while the institutional literature suggests that moderate candidates tend to perform better. We sp…
Disentangling the Personal and Partisan Incumbency Advantages: Evidence from Close Elections and Term Limits
Although the scholarly literature on incumbency advantages focuses on personal advantages, the partisan incumbency advantage — the electoral benefit accruing to non-incumbent candidates by virtue of being from the incumbent party — is also an important electoral factor. Understanding this phenomenon is important for evaluating the role of parties vs. individuals in U.S. elections and the incentives of incumbents and their parties in the legislatu…
How Do Electoral Incentives Affect Legislator Behavior? Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures
A classic question about democratic elections is how much they are able to influence politician behavior by forcing them to anticipate future reelection attempts, especially in contexts where voters are not paying close attention and are not well informed. We compile a new dataset containing roughly 780,000 bills, combined with more than 16 million roll-call voting records for roughly 6,000 legislators serving in U.S. state legislatures with term…
How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off
This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small amount of scare-off, at least in cases where the previous election was nearly tied. As Lee and others have shown (and as we confirm for our samples) the estimated party incumbency advantage in these same cases is quite large—in fact, it is about as lar…
How Newspapers Reveal Political Power
Political science is in large part the study of power, but power itself is difficult to measure. We argue that we can use newspaper coverage—in particular, the relative amount of space devoted to particular subjects in newspapers—to measure the relative power of an important set of political actors and offices. We use a new dataset containing nearly 50 million historical newspaper pages from 2,700 local US newspapers over the years 1877–1977. We …
Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War
How did personal wealth and slaveownership affect the likelihood Southerners fought for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War? On the one hand, wealthy Southerners had incentives to free-ride on poorer Southerners and avoid fighting; on the other hand, wealthy Southerners were disproportionately slaveowners, and thus had more at stake in the outcome of the war. We assemble a dataset on roughly 3.9 million free citizens in the Confederacy…
The Majority-Party Disadvantage: Revising Theories of Legislative Organization
Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage. To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of…
Systemic Effects of Campaign Spending: Evidence from Corporate Contribution Bans in US State Legislatures
In this paper, I examine the systemic effects of campaign spending, looking at outcomes at the level of the legislature rather than the individual seat. Using a difference-in-differences design, I show that state-level corporate campaign contribution bans have a large effect on electoral outcomes at the legislature level. A 1 percentage-point increase in the Democratic (or Republican) party’s share of all contributions in an electoral cycle is es…
Assessing the External Validity of Election RD Estimates: An Investigation of the Incumbency Advantage
The regression discontinuity (RD) design is popular because it provides a design-based estimate of the incumbency advantage. However, the RD estimate is "local": it only identifies the effect in hypothetical elections with a 50-50 tie between the Democratic and Republican candidates. There is significant uncertainty and disagreement over the incumbency effect in safer districts away from this threshold. Indeed, mirroring the competing arguments i…
Economic distress and voting: Evidence From the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
We use nationwide deed-level records on home foreclosures to examine the effects of economic distress on electoral outcomes and individual voter turnout. County-level difference-in-differences estimates show that counties that suffered larger increases in foreclosures did not punish or reward members of the incumbent president's party more than less affected counties. Linking the Ohio voter file to individual foreclosures, difference-in-differenc…
Long-Term Consequences of Election Results
Voters in US elections receive markedly different representation depending on which candidate they elect, and because of incumbent advantages, the effects of this choice persist for many years. What are the long-term consequences of these two phenomena? Combining electoral and legislative roll-call data in a dynamic regression discontinuity design, this study assesses the long-term consequences of election results for representation. Across the U…
Nepal in Transition: From People's War to Fragile Peace
Sebastian von Einsiedel, David M. Malone and Suman Pradhan (eds). Nepal in Transition: From People's War to Fragile Peace. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012. pp. xiv + 398. Map. Tables. F
How Divisive Primaries Hurt Parties: Evidence from Near-Runoffs in US Legislatures
In many democracies, parties use primary elections to nominate candidates. Primaries may help select quality candidates, but they can expose flaws and offend losing candidates’ supporters. Do divisive primaries help or harm parties in the general election? Existing research is mixed, likely because of issues of selection and omitted variables. We address these issues by studying southern US states with runoff primaries—second-round elections that…
The Elusive Quest for Convergence
Does American political representation work as predicted by theory? On average, political candidates diverge considerably in their ideological positioning, but do they diverge less on issues of particular salience to their local constituents? We combine data on congressional roll call votes, electoral outcomes, district demographics, and substantive information about bills to search for convergence in the places we would most expect to find it. D…
Information and Wasted Votes: A Study of U.S. Primary Elections
We study whether information leads voters and donors to “waste” fewer votes and donations on candidates who do not finish in first or second place. Examining U.S. primary elections featuring more than two candidates, we compare voting and contribution behavior across offices with varying levels of information. We find that voters and donors are more likely to support the top two candidates, and less likely to waste votes or donations on lesser ca…
Polarization and state legislative elections
US state legislatures are critical policymaking institutions that are increasingly polarized, yet data and measurement limitations have prevented researchers from understanding how state legislative elections contribute to this polarization. To address this gap, we construct new measures of candidate ideology based on campaign contributions and roll‐call votes, and we use them to offer the first systematic study of the relationship between candid…
Election-Denying Republican Candidates Underperformed in the 2022 Midterms
We combine newly collected election data with records of public denials of the results of the 2020 election to estimate the degree to which election-denying Republican candidates over- or underperformed other Republicans in 2022 in statewide and federal elections. We find that the average vote share of election-denying Republicans in statewide races was approximately 3.2 percentage points lower than their co-partisans after accounting for state-l…
Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service: Evidence from US states
Extensive research on gender and politics indicates that women legislators are more likely to serve on committees and sponsor bills related to so-called “women's issues.” However, it remains unclear whether this empirical regularity is driven by district preferences, differences in legislator backgrounds, or because gendered political processes shape and constrain the choices available to women once they are elected. We introduce expansive new da…
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