Frontier Advanced Seminar Series in Economics No. 16

Moral Hazard and Special Interests in Congress

Speaker: Dr. Haishan YUAN (University of Queensland)

Host: Prof. Anzhou ZHANG (Liaoning University)

Introducer: Prof. Xiangjun MA (Liaoning University)

Time: March 17, 2023 (Friday), 14:00-15:30 (UTC +08:00)

Venue: Tencent Meeting (Meeting ID: 3007551 6895)

Language: Mandarin/English

Abstract：We exploit the quasi-random timing of natural disasters to study the connection between public attention to politics and legislative support for special interests. We show that when a disaster strikes, the news media reduce both their coverage of politics in general as well as that of individual legislators in particular. At the same time, members of the House of Representatives become significantly more likely to adopt the positions of special-interest donors as they vote on bills. Taken together, the evidence we present suggests that politicians are more inclined to take actions that benefit special interests when the public is distracted. More broadly, our findings suggest that attention to politics improves electoral accountability, even in an environment with stringent transparency and disclosure requirements.

Speaker Introduction: Haishan YUAN is a Senior Lecturer from the School of Economics at University of Queensland. He is also a research affiliate at the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute of Australian National University. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from University of Maryland and his Bachelor’s degree from University of Sydney. His primary research interests are Political Economics and Development Economics. His research has been published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Banking & Finance, and the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. He has delivered the courses of Globalization and Economic Development, Labor Economics, and Public Economics.