Do higher wages produce career politicians? Evidence from two discontinuity designs

0497264 - NHÚ 2019 RIV CZ eng V - Research Report
Palguta, J. - Pertold, Filip
Do higher wages produce career politicians? Evidence from two discontinuity designs.
Prague: CERGE-EI, 2018. 56 s. CERGE-EI Working Paper Series, 630. ISSN 1211-3298
Institutional support: RVO:67985998
Keywords : re-election * political selection * electoral competition
OECD category: Applied Economics, Econometrics
https://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp630.pdf

Wages paid to politicians affect both the selection of candidates into electoral races and the on-the-job performance incentives of incumbents. We differentiate between selection and incentive effects using two regression discontinuity designs based on: 1) population thresholds shifting politicians' wages and 2) electoral seat thresholds splitting candidates into those who narrowly won or lost. We find that higher wages do not increase the electoral incumbency advantage, suggesting that the incentive effect of higher wages does not impact re-election rates. We further show that higher wages motivate narrowly elected incumbents to run again much less often than past narrowly non-elected candidates.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0289828