Business as usual: Politicians with business experience, government budgets, and policy outcomes

Brian Beach and Daniel Jones

No 169, Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

Abstract: Are budget and policy outcomes different under politicians with business experience? We study California city councils and implement a regression discontinuity strategy to provide causal evidence on this issue. Ultimately, we find no evidence that the election of a candidate with business experience has an impact on city expenditures, revenues, debt ratios, unemployment rates, and other outcomes. Future vote shares for candidates with business experience are also unaffected, which suggests that businesspersons are not having an impact that is observed to voters but unobserved in our data. We find weak evidence that the election of a businessperson may lead to lower borrowing costs.

JEL-codes: E (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2016-05-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pr~ and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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