Political Rents in a Non-Corrupt Democracy

Helena Svaleryd and Jonas Vlachos

No 698, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: A fundamental problem in all political systems is that the people in power may extract rents to the detriment of the general public. In a democracy, electoral competition and information provided by the media may keep such rent extraction at bay. We develop a simple model where rents are decreasing in the degree of political competition and voter information. In line with our theoretical predictions, we find that both increased political competition and increased local media coverage substantially reduce direct measures of legal political rents among local governments in a non-corrupt democracy (Sweden).

Keywords: Accountability; Political Competition; Media; Political Rents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H10 H70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2007-02-16, Revised 2008-09-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Svaleryd, Helena and Jonas Vlachos, 'Political Rents in a Non-Corrupt Democracy' in Journal of Public Economics, 2009, pages 355-372.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Political rents in a non-corrupt democracy (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0698

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