【Micro/Empirical Seminar】Mobile Broadband and the Decline of Incumbency Advantage
2026/05/07
研討會日期 : 2026-05-07
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Nikita Melnikov
地點 : Conference Room B110
主持人 : Professor Bei Qin
演講者簡介 : Dr. Nikita Melnikov received his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2022. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics. His research interests are Political Economics, Applied Microeconomics, and Development.
演講摘要 : Incumbency advantage in U.S. congressional elections has long been a well-established feature of American politics. Using a regression discontinuity design, we document that this advantage remained stable until the late 2000s, after which it sharply declined, falling from a long-term average of about 11 percentage points of additional vote share to about 3 by 2020-2024. Using a differences-in-discontinuities design, we show that the expansion of mobile broadband can account for at least one-half of this decline. Incumbency advantage decreased both for Democrats and Republicans, although it was initially greater for incumbents from the president's party. Mobile broadband increased voters' knowledge of both incumbents and challengers, raised disapproval of incumbents, and enhanced challengers' fundraising capacity.
