Dynastic Politicians, Seniority, and Government Spending: Theory and Evidence from Japan and the United States

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This research investigates the effect of political dynasty and seniority of politicians on government spending by using formal models and data of Japan and the US. First, as compared with non-dynastic legislators, dynastic legislators bring more distributions to the district, enjoy higher electoral success, and harm the economic performance of the districts despite the larger amount of distributive benefits they bring. Second, the amount of spending decreases as the average seniority of a legislature increases from low to moderate, while it increases as the average seniority increases from moderate to high. Third, the adoption of term limits that dramatically reduces average seniority increases the amount of spending.