Appointed Public Officials and Local Favoritism: Evidence from the German States

Thushyanthan Baskaran and Mariana Lopes da Fonseca

Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

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 ï¬ nd 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)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2017-09
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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 (2018)
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:mpi:wpaper:tax-mpg-rps-2017-09

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