Matthew Incantalupo’s research while affiliated with Yeshiva University and other places

Local elected leaders make decisions that affect service delivery and quality of life. But budgetary constraints mean that cities cannot indefinitely expand and improve services. Maintaining fiscal balance may be prudent, but doing so can impair service delivery. How are elected officials incentivized to make those trade-offs? Do voters actually care about the financial health of their city government? This research examines these questions in two ways. First, it uses data on elections, local finance, and the political environment in 44 large city governments to demonstrate a relationship between signals of financial health and voter support for incumbents in local elections. Second, it tests those findings using an experimental design that manipulates two dimensions of the political environment, crime rate, and financial health via credit rating. Both demonstrate that voters in local elections hold elected officials accountable for changes in financial health.

This study investigates how information about municipal credit ratings influences voters' evaluations of incumbent mayors. Through an original survey experiment, we assess the impact of credit rating downgrades and crime rate increases on citizens' perceptions of mayoral performance. Our findings reveal that information on both issues significantly affects voters' evaluations, with negative news about public finance and crime rates leading to decreased support for incumbents. Notably, the effects of credit downgrades are nearly as substantial as those of crime increases despite public finance being a more complex and less salient issue. Additionally, we observe that voters with varying political knowledge respond similarly to changes in municipal credit ratings, suggesting that such information serves as a useful heuristic in local elections. Our study underscores the importance of accessible financial information in promoting accountability in local governance.