Andrew B Hall
Biographic Data
| ID | 3810473 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew B Hall |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew B |
| FAMILY NAME | Hall |
| SIGNATURE | HALL A B |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 735 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
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…
Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service
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
Economic distress and voting
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…
How Divisive Primaries Hurt Parties
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 …
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…
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…
Systemic Effects of Campaign Spending
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
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
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
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
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 …
Partisan Effects of Legislative Term Limits
Term limits remain a popular policy reform and have generated a great deal of scholarship as a result. Although many predicted that term limits would benefit the Republican party, the literature finds no marked partisan effects, possibly because termed‐out legislators have largely been replaced by copartisans. This article demonstrates that term limits have indeed had partisan effects—just not on electoral outcomes. Term limits have caused a sign…
On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects
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
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
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…
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 …
Systemic Effects of Campaign Spending
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
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
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…
How Divisive Primaries Hurt Parties
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…
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…
Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service
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…
Partisan Effects of Legislative Term Limits
Term limits remain a popular policy reform and have generated a great deal of scholarship as a result. Although many predicted that term limits would benefit the Republican party, the literature finds no marked partisan effects, possibly because termed‐out legislators have largely been replaced by copartisans. This article demonstrates that term limits have indeed had partisan effects—just not on electoral outcomes. Term limits have caused a sign…
The Financial Incumbency Advantage
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 …
Partisan Effects of Legislative Term Limits
Term limits remain a popular policy reform and have generated a great deal of scholarship as a result. Although many predicted that term limits would benefit the Republican party, the literature finds no marked partisan effects, possibly because termed‐out legislators have largely been replaced by copartisans. This article demonstrates that term limits have indeed had partisan effects—just not on electoral outcomes. Term limits have caused a sign…
Assessing the External Validity of Election RD Estimates
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
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
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…
Systemic Effects of Campaign Spending
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…
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…
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…
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 …
How Divisive Primaries Hurt Parties
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…
Economic distress and voting
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…
Does Homeownership Influence Political Behavior? Evidence from Administrative Data
Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service
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…
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…
Political science (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Legislature (11 works) · Regression discontinuity design (8 works) · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy (7 works) · Media Influence and Politics (7 works)