Do Higher Wages Produce Career Politicians? Evidence from Two Discontinuity Designs

Jan Palguta and Filip Pertold

CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague

Abstract: Wages paid to politicians affect both the selection of candidates into electoral races and the on-the-job performance incentives of incumbents. We differentiate between selection and incentive effects using two regression discontinuity designs based on: 1) population thresholds shifting politicians' wages and 2) electoral seat thresholds splitting candidates into those who narrowly won or lost. We find that higher wages do not increase the electoral incumbency advantage, suggesting that the incentive effect of higher wages does not impact re-election rates. We further show that higher wages motivate narrowly elected incumbents to run again much less often than past narrowly non-elected candidates.

Keywords: re-election; political selection; electoral competition; wages; incumbency advantage; regression discontinuity design; municipal legislatures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H57 H70 J45 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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