GOLDEN PARACHUTES, RUBBER CHECKS, AND STRATEGIC RETIREMENTS FROM THE 102D HOUSE

Political scientists have long been interested in the occupational decisions of politicians. Two events prior to the 1992 congressional elections brought journalists and the broader public into emotion-rich but data-poor discussions of how and why to achieve greater turnover in Congress. The House banking scandal gave rise to standard arguments that voters should ''throw the bums out.'' An initially obscure provision in the Federal Election Campaign Act, which allowed certain grandfathered members personally to pocket their campaign war chests, gave rise to somewhat more sophisticated assertions about ''buying the bums out.'' Using preelection data on incumbents' decisions to retire or seek reelection, we estimate the effects of these special features of the 1992 election while improving upon prior estimates of strategic retirements more generally. By embedding an explicit occupational choice model into a maximum-likelihood equation, we find strong evidence of strategic retirements, and we quantify precisely the turnover that can be attributed to rubber checks and golden parachutes.