Appointed public officials and local favoritism: Evidence from the German states

Thushyanthan Baskaran and Mariana Lopes da Fonseca

VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: We study the local favoritism of appointed German state ministers. Matching hand-collected data on ministers’ place of residence to a sample of more than 8,000 west German municipalities during the period 1994–2013, we find that the home municipality of a state minister experiences higher employment growth than control municipalities. Given the institutional context, this effect is ostensibly due to apolitical favoritism (home bias) rather than electoral considerations. We conclude that favoritism may lead to a distortion in the allocation of public resources even in contexts with strong political institutions.

Keywords: Distributive politics; Favoritism; Employment growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 H70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Appointed public officials and local favoritism: Evidence from the German states (2021)
Working Paper: Appointed Public Officials and Local Favoritism: Evidence from the German States (2017)
Working Paper: Appointed Public Officials and Local Favoritism: Evidence from the German States (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc18:181574

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