Political salaries, electoral selection and the incumbency advantage: Evidence from a wage reform

Jan Palguta and Filip Pertold

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2021, vol. 49, issue 4, 1020-1047

Abstract: Incumbents tend to gain solid electoral advantage in many voting systems. In this study, we examine the relationship between salaries prescribed to politicians and the incumbency advantage by exploiting a political wage reform and data from close elections in a proportional semi-open list system in the Czech Republic. We show that higher salaries reduce the average incumbency advantage, as they increase the probability to run again for previously non-elected candidates much more than for incumbents. Still, we find that higher wages improve candidate selection, especially by encouraging repeated candidacy from university-educated incumbents. Higher wages also improve relative positions of re-running incumbents on candidate lists compared to previously non-elected re-running candidates. Our results overall suggest that incumbency per se changes the relationship between political wages and candidate selection.

Keywords: Political salaries; Incumbency advantage; Electoral selection; Regression discontinuity; Local elections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J45 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:49:y:2021:i:4:p:1020-1047

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2021.04.004

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