Businessman Candidates

Scott Gehlbach, Konstantin Sonin () and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya ()

No 5985, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: In immature democracies, businessmen run for public office to gain direct control over policy; in mature democracies they typically rely on other means of influence. We develop a simple model to show that businessmen run for office only when two conditions hold. First, as in many immature democracies, institutions that make reneging on campaign promises costly must be poorly developed. In such environments, office holders have monopoly power that can be used to extract rents, and businessmen run to capture those rents. Second, the returns to businessmen from policy influence must not be too large, as otherwise high rents from holding office draw professional politicians into the race, crowding out businessmen candidates. Analysis of data on Russian gubernatorial elections supports these predictions. Businessman candidates are less likely 1) in regions with high media freedom and government transparency, institutions that raise the cost of reneging on campaign promises, and 2) in regions where returns to policy influence (measured by regional resource abundance) are large, but only where media are unfree and government nontransparent.

Keywords: businessman candidates; government transparency; immature democracy; media freedom; political connections; strength of political parties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-12
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP5985.asp (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Businessman Candidates (2004)
Working Paper: Businessman Candidates (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5985

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP5985.asp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Address: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG
Series data maintained by ().